PLEA FOR THE CHILDREN by H. C. MILLER

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 12, 1868

PLEA FOR THE CHILDREN.

By H. C. MILLER

In continuing the consideration of what are some of the means by which the young can be led to love home, and to correct the tendency in the young of this generation to be restive under home restraints, let us note the bearing that health reform has upon the subject. I hope none will say, “There comes that health reform again. I do believe they want to lug that into every subject.” But wait and see if it does not come in here as a mighty help to the end sought. One of the first writers on the subject of health reform, adopts as one of his mottoes, “Health reform is the basis of all reform.” We shall not go thus far, but do believe it is to exert a powerful influence in the reforms to be wrought under the third angel’s message. That the unhealthy food that has been used has helped to excite the nervous systems of the young, poisoning the imagination, and exciting the lower propensities to an alarming degree, is apparent to even the casual observer.

That sober, thoughtful, mild-dispositioned man, when under the influence of alcohol, or opium, will be so uneasy, restive, and even frantic, that he will not remain easy a moment. He will not stay in that home, quietly, an hour; he will not keep silent; he will talk, perhaps shout, or yell; all of it being the effects of the liquor he has introduced into his system. Try to detain him on the street, and you can not, even by main strength. He has no object in view that absorbs his undivided attention, but here he goes! or there he goes!

Now this is the effect of stimulation in a high degree. Take away the cause and you have a sober, steady, quiet man again.

Take another, a lad of fifteen, who has been fed on meats and fine flour, and condiments—salt, pepper, mustard, &c.—and tea and coffee. Here you have something of the same manifestation, differing in degree. Try to get a child to be cheerful and good tempered with constipation of the bowels and congested brain. Try to have a scrofulous child take a deep interest in agriculture or stock-raising, or even choring. He will work awhile listlessly, and then sit and dream, dream. Try to instill moral principles into the mind of a child whose every imagination is corrupted with lasciviousness, whose animal propensities are fired by, and whose nerves are jumping under, the lashing of those excitants, flesh-meats, tea, coffee, salt, pepper, &c.

Why are the young of this generation so given to evil? why so devoid of the noble, the manly? why so little perception of right and wrong? why so given to learning vile habits, smoking, chewing, &c.? Surely the habits of eating and drinking, which they have formed, have much to do in causing the sad condition of the young of the present day. We believe the health reform is a basis of all reform in this direction. It is no use to talk, even with tears, of holy things, of God, Heaven, angels, truth, salvation, &c., to such children, so habituated to intemperate indulgences. Two extracts from the writings of two observers of the relations existing between habits of appetite and of morals, seem to well illustrate the subject, and to show the results that may be expected from attempts to cultivate the moral while neglecting to first, or conjointly, cultivate the physical. The first is by Sylvester Graham, and is quoted by Bro. Waggoner in a sermon in Review, Vol. xxix, p. 26, ¶ 7:

“About eighteen years ago I visited a family of considerable distinction for their wealth, refinement, and piety. The lady seemed to me to be a very paragon of Christian propriety in almost every respect, and especially as a mother. She had three small children, the eldest being about five years old, and the youngest three months. She was unremitting in her maternal care and efforts to imbue the young minds of her children with sentiments of virtue and piety. She daily prayed with her children, and taught them to pray as soon as their lisping lips could articulate sounds. Her eldest was a daughter. Long before this child could speak with sufficient distinctness to be understood by any but the mother, she was taught to repeat, morning and evening, and on various other occasions, little prayers and hymns adapted to her age. As she grew older, she was successively introduced into religious infant, and Sunday, Schools, and Bible Classes. In short, all that a pious and devoted mother, and pious teachers, could do, by way of religious instruction, was done, to train her up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. I was charmed with the character and conduct of the mother, and named her with admiration whenever I had occasion to speak of maternal duties. She pursued the same course with all her children; and to protect them from the contaminating influence of other children, she employed private teachers, who co-operated with her in all her pious plans and measures; and great confidence was entertained that the happiest results would be experienced from such a system of education.

“Two years since, I visited the same family again, and remained with them several weeks. But most sadly was I disappointed in the character of the children. I found them irritable, passionate, contentious, quarrelsome with each other, and exceedingly undutiful and disrespectful toward their parents. They manifested little regard for religion or religious institutions, and seemed to feel exceedingly impatient under parental or religious restraint. The eldest daughter was peculiarly unhappy in her temper and disposition. Scarcely a day passed when she did not get into a violent passion with her mother, or some other member of the family; and her extreme peevishness and jealousy made her almost continually wretched in her own breast. But what surprised me most was her excessive lasciviousness. Wantonness manifested itself in all her conduct when in the company of males; On further inquiry, I found that this lasciviousness was not confined to the oldest child; all the children were more or less affected with it according to their age.

“Here, then, would seem to be a case in which the very best efforts of a pious mother had entirely failed of their object; but a further examination will show a radical defect in the education of these children, which had completely nullified every good measure. This mother, with all her maternal affection, piety, and faithfulness, wholly disregarded the relations between the bodies and the souls of her children; between their dietetic habits and their moral character. She truly ‘made the table a snare to them;’ and they literally ‘fared sumptuously every day.’ Indeed, she prided herself in setting the best table in town. Highly-seasoned flesh-meat, rich pastry, and every kind of rich and savory food, and condiments in abundance, together with strong coffee and tea, and perhaps occasionally a glass of wine, were set before these children for their ordinary fare. The result was just what was reasonably to be expected; and sorrow and tears were the reward of the afflicted mother. Alas! how many parents thus unwittingly afflict themselves, and become active agents in the destruction of their children and their race.”

We see by the above, that books, and religious instructions, and prayers, and teachers, and all else, are apt to fail in the absence of correct bodily training. But with this, by the blessing of God, what good results may we not expect? The second is an extract from the writings of Dr. Jackson:

“It is a great loss to be feeble in body; it is a very great loss to be uncultured in mind, but an infinite loss for one to be spiritually dead. And this is the great, crying sin with our youth. They lack spiritual perception. They are not capable of understanding spiritual things. They do not appreciate spiritual beauty. They have no longings for the spiritually good. Their very ideal of a God is such as either to dispossess him of his great spiritual characteristics, or to make them very indifferent qualities in his character. Hence we see our young men and young women showing in their daily lives, and in the bent of character which they manifest, an almost entire absence of high resolve, of noble purpose, of strong endeavor, of large self-resource, of thorough and continuous exertion of moral power, of strength of will, of keen discrimination upon matters involving right and wrong, and, in general, of large manliness which types out the heroic, and of large womanliness which shadows forth the gracious. In them the divine is nearly dead, and the devilish nearly in bloom.

“Occupying, then, such a position as they do, where is the hope or expectation on the part of Christians to convert them to the great principles which the Bible inculcates, or to the great truths of a noble humanity? Between them and moral or spiritual conditions there are great obstacles. These must be removed. Until these are removed the gospel is powerless, no matter how devout or eloquent its ministers, or how fervent their appeals. Of little avail is it to draw a long bow with deadly intent against your enemy when he is clad in a Spanish steel cuirass. You must find, if you hit him to bring him to your feet, a joint or opening in his harness. Our young men and women are clad in the panoply of the Evil One. They are armed cap-a-pie, and we contend against them at fearful odds. Their passions as wrought out in and through their physical habits, are their great protection.

“Now to seek to induce them to desert the master whom they at present serve, and to follow Christ as their Master, under motives which may be made in them prompt to action, by and through arguments addressed to their moral and spiritual sensibilities, is lost labor. They can be reached only at the point where their lives concentrate themselves, and this is in the sphere of their physical indulgences. If one can show them that they do not partake of half the enjoyment through the depraved gratification of their physical appetites and passions that they might through their healthy and proper gratification, then the argument is one which they are capable of comprehending, and which they will readily consider.

“When Christians themselves come to see that in the direction of their physical habits and propensities Christianity has a claim upon them as truly as she has in the sphere of their intellectual and moral natures, then there will be a very great point gained, not only in the abstract as respects the means to be used, but in a practical sense also in respect to the example presented. Our young men and young women cannot be expected to draw very nice distinctions. A father feels grieved at his boy’s disposition to lawlessness, that is, to the inordinate gratification of his amativeness; while, at the same time, he himself is a living illustration before his boy, daily, of the inordinate gratification of a kindred propensity—his alimentiveness. A lewd sinner is not a very much worse man, under any aspect in which he may be viewed, than a gluttonous saint.”—Sex. Org., pp. 75, 76.

Then as a great means in the work of turning the hearts of fathers and children to each other, in the Lord, to prepare them for the great and dreadful day just before us, does not the health reform stand prominent? Shall we not all recognize it, turn, and endeavor to cleanse our bodies by eating that which is pure and good; eating “for strength,” eating to nourish the body? Yield to the claims of Christianity in the direction of the physical habits and propensities, and thus remove one hindrance to the soul’s delighting itself in fatness?

H. C. MILLER.

Monroe, Wis.