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From Eternity Past
And fathers as well as mothers are involved in this responsibility.
As the result of parental intemperance, children often lack physical
strength and mental and moral power. Liquor drinkers and tobacco
users may transmit their insatiable craving, inflamed blood, and irri-
table nerves to their children. The licentious often bequeath unholy
desires, and even loathsome diseases, to their offspring. The tendency
is for each generation to fall lower and lower. To a great degree, parents
are responsible for the infirmities of the thousands born deaf, blind,
diseased, or idiotic.
The effect of prenatal influence has been by many lightly regarded,
but the instruction sent from heaven to those Hebrew parents shows
how this matter is looked upon by our Creator.
A good legacy from the parents must be followed by careful train-
ing and the formation of right habits. God directed that the future judge
and deliverer of Israel should be under a perpetual prohibition against
the use of wine or strong drink. Lessons of temperance, self-denial,
and self-control are to be taught even from babyhood.
Why the Distinction Between Clean and Unclean Foods
The distinction between articles of food as clean and unclean was
based upon sanitary principles. To the observance of this distinction
may be traced, in a great degree, the marvelous vitality which for
thousands of years has distinguished the Jewish people. The use of
stimulating and indigestible food is often injurious to health and in
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many cases sows the seeds of drunkenness. True temperance teaches
us to dispense entirely with everything hurtful and to use judiciously
that which is healthful. Few realize how much their habits of diet have
to do with their health, their character, their usefulness in this world,
and their eternal destiny. The body should be servant to the mind, not
the mind to the body.
Samson’s Strength Depends on Faithfulness to God
The divine promise to Manoah was in due time fulfilled in the
birth of Samson. As the boy grew, it became evident that he possessed
extraordinary physical strength. This was not, as Samson and his
parents well knew, dependent upon his well-knit sinews, but upon his