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Counsels on Health
a wrong course. The society you are in bears the consequences of your
wrongs, in a great degree, as well as yourselves.
If you suffer from your intemperance in eating or drinking, we
that are around you or associated with you are also affected by your
infirmities. We have to suffer on account of your wrong course. If
it has an influence to lessen your powers of mind or body, we feel it
when in your society and are affected by it. If, instead of having a
buoyancy of spirit, you are gloomy, you cast a shadow upon the spirits
of all around you. If we are sad and depressed and in trouble, you
could, if in a right condition of health, have a clear brain to show us
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the way out, and speak a comforting word to us. But if your brain is
so benumbed by your wrong course of living that you cannot give us
the right counsel, do we not meet with a loss? Does not your influence
seriously affect us? We may have a good degree of confidence in our
own judgment, yet we want to have counselors; for “in the multitude
of counselors there is safety.”
Proverbs 11:14
.
We desire that our course should look consistent to those we love,
and we wish to seek their counsel and have them able to give it with a
clear brain. But what care we for your judgment if your brain nerve
power has been taxed to the utmost, and the vitality withdrawn from
the brain to take care of the improper food placed in your stomachs,
or of an enormous quantity of even healthful food? What care we for
the judgment of such persons? They see through a mass of undigested
food. Therefore your course of living affects us. It is impossible for
you to pursue any wrong course without causing others to suffer.
The Christian Race
“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth
the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth
for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a
corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as
uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under
my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I
have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.”
1 Corinthians
9:24-27
. Those who engaged in running the race to obtain that laurel
which was considered a special honor were temperate in all things, so
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that their muscles, their brains, and every part of them might be in the