The Violation of Physical Law
[
Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 7-12
(1890).]
Man came from the hand of his Creator perfect in organization and
beautiful in form. The fact that he has for six thousand years withstood
the ever-increasing weight of disease and crime is conclusive proof
of the power of endurance with which he was first endowed. And
although the antediluvians generally gave themselves up to sin without
restraint, it was more than two thousand years before the violation
of natural law was sensibly felt. Had Adam originally possessed no
greater physical power than men now have, the race would ere this
have become extinct.
Through the successive generations since the Fall, the tendency
has been continually downward. Disease has been transmitted from
parents to children, generation after generation. Even infants in the
cradle suffer from afflictions caused by the sins of their parents....
The patriarchs from Adam to Noah, with few exceptions, lived
nearly a thousand years. Since then the average length of life has been
decreasing.
At the time of Christ’s first advent, the race had already so degen-
erated that not only the old, but the middle-aged and the young, were
brought from every city to the Saviour, to be healed of their diseases.
Many labored under a weight of misery inexpressible.
The violation of physical law, with its consequent suffering and
premature death, has so long prevailed that these results are regarded
as the appointed lot of humanity; but God did not create the race
in such a feeble condition. This state of things is not the work of
Providence, but of man. It has been brought about by wrong habits
[20]
—by violating the laws that God has made to govern man’s existence.
A continual transgression of nature’s laws is a continual transgression
of the law of God. Had men always been obedient to the law of the
Ten Commandments, carrying out in their lives the principles of those
precepts, the curse of disease now flooding the world would not exist....
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