10
Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene
The apostle Paul exhorts the church, “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.”
[
Romans 12:1
.] Sinful indulgence defiles the body, and unfits men
for spiritual worship. He who cherishes the light which God has
given him upon health reform, has an important aid in the work of
becoming sanctified through the truth, and fitted for immortality. But
if he disregards that light, and lives in violation of natural law, he must
pay the penalty; his spiritual powers are benumbed, and how can he
perfect holiness in the fear of God?
Men have polluted the soul-temple, and God calls upon them to
awake, and to strive with all their might to win back their God-given
[11]
manhood. Nothing but the grace of God can convict and convert the
heart; from him alone can the slaves of custom obtain power to break
the shackles that bind them. It is impossible for a man to present his
body a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, while continuing to
indulge habits that are depriving him of physical, mental, and moral
vigor. Again the apostle says, “Be not conformed to this world; but be
ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what
is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.” [
Romans 12:2
.]
Jesus, seated on the Mount of Olives, gave instruction to his disci-
ples concerning the signs which should precede his coming: “As the
days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For
as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into
the ark, and knew not until the flood came and took them all away; so
shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” [
Matthew 24:37-39
.] The
same sins that brought judgments upon the world in the days of Noah,
exist in our day. Men and women now carry their eating and drinking
so far that it ends in gluttony and drunkenness. This prevailing sin,
the indulgence of perverted appetite, inflamed the passions of men
in the days of Noah, and led to wide-spread corruption. Violence
and sin reached to heaven. This moral pollution was finally swept
from the earth by means of the flood. The same sins of gluttony and
drunkenness benumbed the moral sensibilities of the inhabitants of
Sodom, so that crime seemed to be the delight of the men and women
of that wicked city. Christ thus warns the world: “Likewise also as
it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they