Improper Eating a Cause of Disease
415
created unnatural appetites, and do not derive half that enjoyment
from your food which you would if you had not used your appetites
wrongfully. You have perverted nature, and have been suffering the
consequences, and painful has it been.
Nature bears abuse as long as she can without resisting, then she
arouses and makes a mighty effort to rid herself of the incumbrances
and evil treatment she has suffered. Then come headache, chills, fevers,
nervousness, paralysis, and other evils too numerous to mention. A
wrong course of eating or drinking destroys health and with it the
sweetness of life. Oh, how many times have you purchased what you
called a good meal at the expense of a fevered system, loss of appetite,
and loss of sleep! Inability to enjoy food, a sleepless night, hours of
suffering,—all for a meal in which taste was gratified! Thousands
have indulged their perverted appetites, have eaten a good meal, as
they called it, and as the result, have brought on a fever, or some other
acute disease, and certain death. That was enjoyment purchased at
immense cost. Yet many have done this, and these self-murderers have
been eulogized by their friends and the minister, and carried directly
to heaven at their death. What a thought! Gluttons in heaven! No,
no; such will never enter the pearly gates of the golden city of God.
Such will never be exalted to the right hand of Jesus, the precious
Saviour, the suffering Man of Calvary, whose life was one of constant
self-denial and sacrifice. There is a place appointed for all such among
the unworthy, who can have no part in the better life, the immortal
inheritance.
Testimonies for the Church 2:427-428
I was shown that your wife does not understand herself. She
shunned care-taking in her youth, and is not disposed to engage in
it even now. She is inclined to lean upon others, rather than upon
her own powers. She has not encouraged a noble independence. She
should, for years back, have been educating herself to bear burdens.
She is not in health. She is predisposed to torpidity of the liver, and is
not inclined to exercise. She has not the faculty of setting herself to
work unless she sees that she must. She eats nearly double the amount
which she ought to eat. All that she takes into her stomach, above that
which her system can convert into good blood, becomes waste matter,