Integrity Among Workers
[
Special Testimonies To Physicians and Helpers, Pages 59-65 (1879).
]
The helpers at the sanitarium should not feel at liberty to appro-
priate to their own use articles of food provided for the patients. The
temptation is especially strong to indulge in things allowed to newcom-
ers, who must be induced gradually to correct pernicious habits. Some
of the workers, like the children of Israel, allow perverted appetite and
old habits of indulgence to clamor for victory. They long, as did an-
cient Israel, for the leeks and onions of Egypt. All connected with this
institution should strictly adhere to the laws of life and health, and thus
give no countenance, by their example, to the wrong habits of others,
which have made it necessary for them to come to the sanitarium for
relief.
Employees have no right to help themselves to crackers, nuts,
raisins, dates, sugar, oranges or fruit of any kind; for, in the first place,
in eating these things between meals, as is generally done, they are
injuring the digestive organs. No food should pass the lips between
the regular meals. Again, those who partake of these things are taking
that which is not theirs. Temptation is continually before them to taste
the food which they are handling; and here is an excellent opportunity
for them to gain control of the appetite. But food seems to be very
abundant, and they forget that it all represents so much money value.
One and another thoughtlessly indulge the habit of tasting and helping
themselves, until they fancy that there is no real sin in the practice.
All should beware of cherishing this view of the matter, for con-
science is thus losing its sensitiveness. One may reason, “The little I
have taken does not amount to much;” but the question comes home,
[409]
Did the smallness of the amount lessen the sin of the act? Again, the
little which one person takes may not amount to much, but when five
act on the same plan, five littles are taken. Then ten, twenty, or even
more, may presume in the same way, until every day the workers may,
to their own injury, appropriate many littles that they have no right
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