Christian Temperance General Principles
11
sold, they planted, they builded; but the same day that Lot went out of
Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them
all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed.”
[
Luke 17:28-30
.]
[12]
Christ has here left us a most important lesson. He would lay
before us the danger of making our eating and drinking paramount. He
presents the result of unrestrained indulgence of appetite. The moral
powers are enfeebled, so that sin does not appear sinful. Crime is
lightly regarded, and passion controls the mind, until good principles
and impulses are rooted out, and God is blasphemed. All this is the
result of eating and drinking to excess. This is the very condition of
things which Christ declares will exist at his second coming.
The Saviour presents to us something higher to toil for than merely
what we shall eat and drink, and wherewithal we shall be clothed.
Eating, drinking, and dressing are carried to such excess that they
become crimes. They are among the marked sins of the last days, and
constitute a sign of Christ’s soon coming. Time, money, and strength,
which belong to the Lord, but which he has intrusted to us, are wasted
in superfluities of dress and luxuries for the perverted appetite, which
lessen vitality, and bring suffering and decay. It is impossible to present
our bodies a living sacrifice to God when we continually fill them with
corruption and disease by our own sinful indulgence.
Knowledge must be gained in regard to how to eat and drink and
dress so as to preserve health. Sickness is the result of violating
nature’s law. Our first duty, one which we owe to God, to ourselves,
and to our fellowmen, is to obey the laws of God. These include
the laws of health. If we are sick, we impose a weary tax upon our
friends, and unfit ourselves for doing our duty either in the family or
to our neighbors. And when premature death is the result, we bring
sorrow and suffering to others; we deprive our neighbors of the help
we might have rendered them; we rob our families of the comfort and
help which they should have received from us, and rob God of the
service he claims of us to advance his glory. Then are we not, in a
high sense, transgressors of God’s law?
[13]
But God is compassionate and tender, and when light comes to
those who have injured themselves by sinful indulgence, if they repent
and seek pardon, he mercifully accepts them. But what an inferior,
pitiful offering at best, to present to a pure and holy God! O, what