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Fundamentals of Christian Education
manner are you fitting yourselves to co-operate with God? “Draw nigh
to God, and He will draw nigh to you.” “Resist the devil, and he will
flee from you.” Let the diet be carefully studied; it is not healthful.
The various little dishes concocted for desserts are injurious instead of
helpful and healthful, and from the light given me, there should be a
decided change in the preparation of food. There should be a skillful,
thorough cook, that will give ample supplies of substantial dishes to
the hungry students. The education in this line of table supplies is
not correct, healthful, or satisfying, and a decided reform is essential.
These students are God’s inheritance, and the most sound and healthful
principles are to be brought into the boarding-school in regard to diet.
The dishes of soft foods, the soups and liquid foods, or the free use of
meat, are not the best to give healthful muscles, sound digestive organs,
or clear brains. O how slow we are to learn! And of all institutions in
our world the school is the most important! Here the diet question is
to be studied; no one person’s appetite, or tastes, or fancy or notion is
to be followed; but there is need of great reform; for lifelong injury
will surely be the result of the present manner of cooking. Of all the
positions of importance in that college, the first is that of the one who
is employed to direct in the preparation of the dishes to be placed
before the hungry students; for if this work is neglected, the mind will
not be prepared to do its work, because the stomach has been treated
unwisely and cannot do its work properly. Strong minds are needed.
The human intellect must gain expansion and vigor and acuteness and
activity. It must be taxed to do hard work, or it will become weak and
inefficient. Brain power is required to think most earnestly; it must
be put to the stretch to solve hard problems and master them, else the
mind decreases in power and aptitude to think. The mind must invent,
work, and wrestle, in order to give hardness and vigor to the intellect;
and if the physical organs are not kept
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in the most healthful condition by substantial, nourishing food, the
brain does not receive its portion of nutrition to work. Daniel under-
stood this, and he brought himself to a plain, simple, nutritious diet,
and refused the luxuries of the king’s table. The desserts which take so
much time to prepare, are, many of them, detrimental to health. Solid
foods requiring mastication will be far better than mush or liquid foods.
I dwell upon this as essential. I send my warning to the College at
Battle Creek, to go from there to all our institutions of learning. Study