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Counsels on Health
also to those who have not yet descended to these depths, but who are
setting their feet in the same path? There are thousands occupying
positions of honor and usefulness who are indulging habits that mean
ruin to soul and body. Should not the most earnest effort be made to
enlighten them?
Ministers of the gospel, statesmen, authors, men of wealth and
talent, men of vast business capacity and power for usefulness, are in
deadly peril because they do not see the necessity of strict temperance
in all things. They need to have their attention called to the principles of
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temperance, not in a narrow or arbitrary way, but in the light of God’s
great purpose for humanity. Could the principles of true temperance
be thus brought before them, there are very many of the higher classes
who would recognize their value and give them a hearty acceptance.
Durable Riches for Earthly Treasure
There is another danger to which the wealthy classes are especially
exposed, and here also is a field for the work of the medical missionary.
Multitudes who are prosperous in the world and who never stoop to
the common forms of vice are yet brought to destruction through the
love of riches. Absorbed in their worldly treasures, they are insensible
to the claims of God and the needs of their fellow men. Instead of
regarding their wealth as a talent to be used for the glory of God and
the uplifting of humanity, they look upon it as a means of indulging
and glorifying themselves. They add house to house and land to land,
they fill their homes with luxuries, while want stalks in the streets and
all about them are human beings in misery and crime, in disease and
death. Those who thus give their lives to self-serving are developing
in themselves, not the attributes of God, but the attributes of Satan.
These men are in need of the gospel. They need to have their eyes
turned from the vanity of material things to behold the preciousness
of the enduring riches. They need to learn the joy of giving, the
blessedness of being co-workers with God.
Persons of this class are often the most difficult of access, but
Christ will open ways whereby they may be reached. Let the wisest,
the most trustful, the most hopeful laborers seek for these souls. With
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the wisdom and tact born of divine love, with the refinement and
courtesy that result alone from the presence of Christ in the soul, let