A Healthy Christian by Cuyler

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 29, 1866

A Healthy Christian.

By Cuyler

HEALTH means wholeness. It is a descendant of the old Saxon word "wholth." A healthy man, then, is a whole man; he has nothing broken about him, and all the delicate machinery of his frame plays on without a fracture or a friction. When within this sound, vigorous body you find, in full activity, a pure conscience, a devout heart, and a will wholly attuned to the will of God, you have discovered that highest style of man, a healthy Christian.

The best degree of spiritual health is seldom found in a diseased or ill-used body. Care of physical health is a religious duty—no more to be neglected than secret prayer. For if bad diet and self-indulgence make me irritable and disgrace my religion, is not that dyspepsia an "abomination to the Lord?" Bodily disease is the cause of one-half of the gloomy doubts and religious melancholy that nightmare so many a Christian's daily existence. It is true enough that there is many a spiritual ailment which cannot be reached by the Bible or a tract, that yet can be cured by a good perspiration, a stiff walk, and a mouthful of fresh air. In dealing with anxious inquirers, and with desponding church-members, our first inquiry, commonly, is about the physical habits of the person. Richard Baxter—quite as keen a physician as he was an eloquent divine—in laying down rules for growth in holiness says, "I advise thee, as a further help to heavenly living, neglect not the due care of thy bodily health. Thy body is an useful servant if thou give it its due, and no more than its due; but it is a devouring tyrant if thou indulge its unreasonable desires." The apostle bids us present our body as well as our soul to Christ; and oh! what a wretched, worn out, dyspeptic, lust-eaten carcass, is sometimes offered to him! The body of a believer is the "temple of the Holy Ghost;" shall the divine Spirit be invited to dwell in what is sometimes turned into a dram-shop, sometimes into a brothel, and sometimes into a sty? "For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if ye, through the Spirit, do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live."

Thus much for physical "wholth;" now what are the marks of spiritual health? The first one, and perhaps the most vital, is a good conscience—one enlightened by the Bible, and kept sweet and clean by constant prayer. This is indispensable to vigorous piety and commanding usefulness. A diseased conscience is what a diseased digestion is amid the bodily organs. It throws everything away. It is fatal to right apprehension of truth, to right moral decision, to growth in grace and spiritual power. A good conscience is like a good watch; it is safe to go by just as long as it is regulated by the dial of God's Word, which reflects the unerring sun of heavenly wisdom.

2. A second evidence of soul-health is the enjoyment of a hearty appetite for truth, and a hunger for holiness. An invalid detects the first symptoms of returning health in the new relish for the once loathed trencher of bread or rasher of bacon. He craves food. So does a healthy child of God. He enters church on Sabbath morning positively hungry—not for an intellectual tickle or a spiced pastry, but for the simple bread of life, Christ Jesus, for truth to grow by, for the strong meat of the Word of God. He builds that truth into his soul, as food is built into the physical frame. Nor does he satisfy his soul hunger with truth alone. He craves the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. He hungers for a sanctified heart. He yearns after a similitude to Christ. And everything that makes him like Christ he relishes. It is delightful to preach to hungry Christians; you know just what they crave; and the Bible-larder is always full, while the pastry-shop of a confectioner in poetry is often full of emptiness.

3. A healthy Christian is one who can work too, as well as eat. If there is a heavy load to carry in Christ's cause, he shoulders it up. If there is a wall to build, he is the man to lift the big stones. If some one has to go out into the storm, and endure pelting opposition, who so able to bear it as his broad breast and brawny arm? A man that loves Christ, loves work. A dyspeptic Christian dreads work. A lazy Christian shirks it. What a hospital is many a church! Here lies one poor man, down with paralysis of faith. Here is another, laid up by a sprain which he got by a fall into temptation. Here is one whom the fever of passion has burnt out; he looks hardly worth the medicine to cure him. Alas! for another; he is under pastoral treatment for the blindness of unbelief; and for another, whose gaping wound reveals the spot where Satan's fiery dart went in! Here too is a whole dozen who skulked into the hospital with bandages on, just to "get rid of the draft" from Sunday schools and mission labors. A revival commonly clears the church-hospital. But a long period of spiritual declension crams it to the doorway. Oh! what need that he who went through Galilee healing all manner of diseases, should come into some churches whose atmosphere is loaded with the effluvia of incipient putrefaction!

We would like to say a word here about spiritual symmetry as a mark of healthy piety. This stands opposed to morbidness—to one-idea'd ultraism—and to a fanatical devotion to a single class of moral obligations, while every other class is neglected. The man who throws his dollars into the missionary-box on Sunday, and forgets to pay his debts on Monday, is a very one-sided Christian. The man who pities Southern slaves while he has no word or finger for the poor slaves of alcohol at his own door-way, has a very lopsided philanthropy. To be doctrinal and devotional too is not enough, unless there be a godly living.

But we have only time to give as the last evidence of Christian health—true "joy in the Holy Ghost." This is the joy of emancipation from the slavery of sin, the great slaveholder. This is the joy of fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. This is the joy of victory—of triumph over a besetting lust—of triumph over doubt—of a conquest of the hydras of hell, and even of Apollyon himself, with the sharp weapon of all prayer. Blessed is he who thus overcometh; it shall be given him to eat of the tree of life in the paradise of God.

Good reader, what is the state of your soul's health? How beats your pulse for Christ? What appetite have you for holiness? How do you relish prayer, and the manna of Bible truth? Are you living to God? Can you bear exposure in Christian duty without taking cold? Does the heart glow with love to Jesus? These are fitting questions for every day; they are especially appropriate to those who are about accepting Christ's invitation to sit down with him at his sacramental table. "Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest be in health, and prosper even as thy soul prospereth."