Mental Habits That Work Ruin by GEO. D. BALLOU

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 24, 1915

Mental Habits That Work Ruin

By GEO. D. BALLOU

Mind Cure — No. 2

Mental Habits That Work Ruin

GEO. D. BALLOU

Some causes that are thoughtlessly supposed to be purely physical may be traced directly to mental control or lack of control. We are wont to speak and think of intemperance and bad habits of eating and drinking as physical causations. But it is the appetite that is controlling the body. Expressed in another way, the will does not have control of the perverse mental tendency. To this lack of mental control a large part of the ills of mankind are directly due. Some of the wisest dietitians, seeing only the visible forms of this sad phase of human suffering, have thought only of physical causation, and hence have not applied the mental remedies needed. The only cure for such mental habits is the instilling of higher ideals and cleaner conceptions of life, of purer enjoyments and more lasting and satisfying pleasures.

The mind must be diverted to nobler ideals. There is no place for the use of force in this process. It must be a course of cheerful, hopeful persuasion, born of good will and kindness. Step by step the mind must be lifted to higher planes. Patient, courageous, diligent effort will be needed. If after months of apparent success there comes a lapse into the old ways, a loving, merciful ministration will be needed, and the person must not be made to think that his friends have forsaken him because of his last folly. He will be sore and penitent enough for some days; and in this period he must not be permitted to lapse into discouragement. He must be made to feel that while his friends hate his old wretched habits, as he himself sometimes does, yet they have a most earnest, intense, loving interest in his future welfare. Men and women must be taught to eat and drink to live, instead of living to eat and drink.

What we have just said of appetite is true of lust, which also numbers its victims by thousands. This strong mental causation may be purified and ennobled and transformed into a spirit of good will toward all mankind, and the nature that has been besotted in self-gratification may be exalted to a position where all the powers and propensities of the body will be subservient to the control of the divine nature, of which the individual has become a partaker, by having his ideals cleansed and exalted through the precepts and promises of God's Word.

Believe it, brother, there are pleasures that leave no sting, joys that are not

supplemented by regrets, gratifications that are not followed by days of fear and sorrow.

All that was just said about helping the man of appetite is strictly true in laboring for these cases. With one hand grasping the hand of the Divine, the worker may reach out successfully to draw men and women back to the standards of the Creator. Human ideals must be exalted and ennobled by contact with the Divine, then will the spiritual weapons of our warfare bring “into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” 2 Cor. 10: 5.

The task of subduing lust may sometimes be more long and difficult than conquering appetite, and many times appetite will have to be conquered first; yet there is a power that can conquer, and that power succeeds because it connects the human mind with the throne of the universe. It is one thing to be connected with the dry-cell batteries of earth and a vastly different thing to be connected with the great central dynamo of the universe.

One more mental habit, pride, demands our attention. Pride of dress is its most damaging form to the physical being. Many cases of consumption are due entirely to the weakening of the lungs through hindering the breathing by the wearing of bands and stays about the waist line. Many cases of stomach and liver trouble have the same cause. To pride of dress, the corset, and lust are due ninety-five one hundredths of all the cases of surgery for women's peculiar ailments. There is only one remedy: subdue the pride, conquer the lust, and the medical profession will lose one of the most lucrative sources of income.

Corns and bunions are due largely to pride, and the chiropodist and the pedal surgeon live off the miseries produced by this want of mental control. The dainty boot fits the perverted mind even though it gives agony to the foot, and it must be endured because fashion says so.

Let us never again think of the things noted in this article as merely physical causes of suffering, for we have clearly seen that they are deeply seated in a perverted mentality. It needs a full supply of the religion of the personal Christ, not the religion of the creeds, to deal successfully with these physical ills and their mental causes.

Los Angeles, Cal.