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Counsels on Health
Israel Desired the Fleshpots of Egypt
When the God of Israel brought His people out of Egypt, He
withheld flesh meats from them in a great measure, but gave them
bread from heaven and water from the flinty rock. With this they were
not satisfied. They loathed the food given them and wished themselves
back in Egypt, where they could sit by the fleshpots. They preferred
to endure slavery, and even death, rather than to be deprived of flesh.
God granted their desire, giving them flesh, and leaving them to eat
till their gluttony produced a plague, from which many of them died.
Example after example might be cited to show the effects of yield-
ing to appetite. It seemed a small matter to our first parents to transgress
the command of God in that one act,—the eating from a tree that was
so beautiful to the sight and so pleasant to the taste,—but it broke their
allegiance to God and opened the gates to a flood of guilt and woe that
has deluged the world.
Intemperance and Crime
Crime and disease have increased with every succeeding genera-
tion. Intemperance in eating and drinking, and the indulgence of the
baser passions, have benumbed the nobler faculties of man. Reason,
instead of being the ruler, has come to be the slave of appetite to an
alarming extent. An increasing desire for rich food has been indulged,
until it has become the fashion to crowd all the delicacies possible into
the stomach. Especially at parties of pleasure is the appetite indulged
with but little restraint. Rich dinners and late suppers are served, con-
sisting of highly seasoned meats, with rich sauces, cakes, pies, ices,
tea, coffee, etc. No wonder that with such a diet people have sallow
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complexions and suffer untold agonies from dyspepsia.
Against every transgression of the laws of life, nature will utter her
protest. She bears abuse as long as she can; but finally the retribution
comes, and it falls upon the mental as well as the physical powers. Nor
does it end with the transgressor; the effects of his indulgence are seen
in his offspring, and thus the evil is passed down from generation to
generation.