Temperance in All Things
[
The Review and Herald, July 29, 1884
.]
The health reform is an important part of the third angel’s message;
and as a people professing this reform, we should not retrograde, but
make continual advancement. It is a great thing to ensure health by
placing ourselves in right relations to the laws of life, and many have
not done this. A large share of the sickness and suffering among
us is the result of the transgression of physical law, is brought upon
individuals by their own wrong habits.
Our ancestors have bequeathed to us customs and appetites which
are filling the world with disease. The sins of the parents, through
perverted appetite, are with fearful power visited upon the children to
the third and fourth generations. The bad eating of many generations,
the gluttonous and self-indulgent habits of the people, are filling our
poorhouses, our prisons, and our insane asylums. Intemperance, in
drinking tea and coffee, wine, beer, rum, and brandy, and the use of
tobacco, opium, and other narcotics, has resulted in great mental and
physical degeneracy, and this degeneracy is constantly increasing.
Are these ills visited upon the race through God’s providence? No;
they exist because the people have gone contrary to His providence,
and still continue to rashly disregard His laws. In the words of the
apostle, I would entreat those who are not blinded and paralyzed by
wrong teaching and practices, those who would render to God the best
service of which they are capable: “I beseech you therefore, brethren,
by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice,
holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service. And be
not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of
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your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and
perfect, will of God.”
Romans 12:1, 2
. We have no right to wantonly
violate a single principle of the laws of health. Christians should not
follow the customs and practices of the world.
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