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Education in Temperance
195
Temperance reformers have a work to do in educating the people
in these lines. Teach them that health, character, and even life, are
endangered by the use of stimulants, which excite the exhausted
energies to unnatural, spasmodic action.—
The Ministry of Healing,
335
.
Be Brave and Overcome
—The physical life is to be carefully
educated, cultivated, and developed, that through men and women
the divine nature may be revealed in its fullness. God expects men
to use the intellect He has given them. He expects them to use every
reasoning power for Him. They are to give the conscience the place
of supremacy that has been assigned it. The mental and physical
powers, with the affections, are to be so cultivated that they can
reach the highest efficiency....
Is God pleased to see any of the organs and faculties He has given
to man neglected, misused, or deprived of the health and efficiency
it is possible for them to acquire through exercise? Then cultivate
the gift of faith. Be brave, and overcome every practice which mars
the soul-temple. We are wholly dependent on God, and our faith is
strengthened by still believing, though we cannot see God’s purpose
in His dealing with us, or the consequence of this dealing. Faith
points forward and upward to things to come, laying hold of the only
power that can make us complete in Him. “Let him take hold of My
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strength, that he may make peace with Me,” God declares, “and he
shall make peace with Me.”—
Manuscript 130, 1899
.
No Subject of Greater Interest
—God has sent His warning
message to arouse men and women to their danger and peril. But
thousands, yes, millions, are disregarding the word which points out
their danger. They eat food which is ruinous to health. They refuse
to see that by eating improper food, and drinking intoxicating liquor,
they are binding themselves in slavery. They violate the laws of life
and health until appetite holds them in its chains....
No subject which is presented to the inhabitants of our cities
should command so large an interest as that which concerns physical
health. True temperance calls for total abstinence from strong drink.
It calls also for reform in dietetic habits, in dressing, in sleeping.
Those who indulge appetite are not pleased to hear that it rests with
them to decide whether they will be invalids. They need to wake
up and reason from cause to effect. They need to realize that they