SELF-INDULGENCE by Wm. Penniman

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 14, 1868

SELF-INDULGENCE.

By Wm. Penniman

BRO. SMITH: A part, if not all, of the following article on self-indulgence, I think is well worth a place in the Review, especially as it comes from The American Messenger, a paper which advocates the evangelization of the whole world. To say the least it does not speak very well for the morals of the nineteenth century. It is fearfully true that self-indulgence is one of the greatest evils of the age. It is estimated that three million dollars are spent annually in New York in theater going. Then how many millions are spent all through the land in useless entertainments, in the use of ardent spirits, tea, coffee, tobacco? and how much is expended in the salaries of flowery preachers who preach smooth things to amuse their hearers?

A Rochester paper referring to horse-racing and the demoralizing tendencies of Agricultural fairs, says: “Whether it is to increase the number, or to improve the breed of fast horses or not, it is plain that the number of fast young men, and young women are increased with an unnecessary rapidity; while their morals and manners are not in the least improved. Gambling and betting, drunkenness and profanity, are getting to be as common at county fairs, as at any race-course in the country; and men who regard their character of any account, are obliged to keep away, or be accused of countenancing these growing evils.”

Wm. Penniman.

SELF-INDULGENCE.

No one can read what Jesus said of John the Baptist without being impressed that our Lord not only loved, but admired him. They were very unlike; John the most ascetic of ascetics, in food and dress as wild as the wilderness in which he lived—a very Elijah come again; Jesus, without a tinge of all this in principle or practice, accepting the usages of common life, and sanctifying them by the word of God and prayer.

But different as they were, and distant from one another in their stand-points, Jesus pronounced a high eulogium upon John, calling him “greatest of woman-born,” an heroic servant of God, as unlike the reeds of his desert home as he was to the courtiers, gorgeously apparelled and living delicately in Herod’s palace. And this high praise is all the more emphatic because just then he was lying on the bare rock, his work done, a dispirited prisoner in the fortress of Macherus, the human supports of his faith trembling under him, and he, in his perplexity, compelled to send messengers to Jesus to be certified of his Messiahship. After these messengers had departed to report to their master the incontestable proofs they had seen and heard of the truth of John’s testimony and our Lord’s claims, the words employed by Jesus in vindication of John, leave us in no doubt what sort of men he held to be despicable, and what honorable.

A self-indulgent Christian is as great a solecism as a luxurious disciple of John the Baptist. There is no lesson just now more needed than this. In the progress of a material civilization, comforts and elegances are indefinitely multiplied, new pleasures created, and life so intensified that the results of days are crowded into as many hours. The consequence is that a current, as of Niagara, is bearing our people into unparalleled extravagances. This nineteenth century of the Christian era is producing more men devoted to “soft clothing and delicate living” than did the first, when Herod wore the purple and fared sumptuously amid music and dancing.

Amusement is with multitudes a business—their life’s work, and work it is. That there is a time and place for it, and that in its place it is most wholesome and necessary, none will deny. As a means to clear, vigorous, and happy action, recreation, bodily and mental, is indispensable. But when instead of a means it becomes an end; when one lives to be amused, and this is made the end of existence, it makes what otherwise were beautiful a disgrace, and converts innocence into downright rebellion against God.

It is a first principle of the Christian faith, as recognized everywhere throughout Christendom, that man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever; and he who substitutes anything in place of this, alters God’s fundamental law; and if he put amusement in place of it, he not only does this, but makes himself a thoroughly contemptible character, tried by any standard recognized among right-minded men. Life is an earnest thing; they who do not know it, find it out if they live long enough to know what life is; and whether they know it or not, if they live only to be amused, they are secretly despised and laughed at while they are patronized. It is the opinion of thoughtful observers of American society, that increasing numbers, with increasing wealth and leisure, are devoting themselves to the pursuit of amusement. There are persons, the greater part of whose knowledge, as of their conversation, respects the last novel, the new prima donna, some fresh sensation in the world of pleasure and fashion.

Quite akin to this is the unbounded extravagance of the times. For if pleasure be the recognized end of existence, it follows, of course, that no amount is too great to be expended to procure it and to heighten it. What is money good for, but to be spread over tables in gold and silver plate, and successive courses, each dish more costly than the preceding? How can it be spent more appropriately than in “soft clothing,” “gorgeous apparel,” and “delicate living?” What object of ambition is left to our daughters, but to vie with one another in silks, and velvets, and laces, that each new dress in which they appear in society shall be pronounced the most lovely and expensive product that ever came from the overworked and under-paid populations of the Old World? Who shall blame our sons if they wear the finest broadcloths, cut in the newest style, smoke the best cigars the market affords, and appear in “kids,” the delicate tints of which show them skilled in the latest refinements of fashion?

What is this but the old heathenism come again? What is the logic that lies beneath this mode of thinking and acting, but the epicurean philosophy which opposed Christianity in Paul’s day, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die?” We are living as did the Romans; and what shall arrest our progress, till we reach the enormities of Roman luxury and extravagance, the Golden House of Nero, the villas of Hadrian, the tables of Lucullus, with dishes of singing-birds and fish fattened upon the flesh of his murdered freedmen cut up for their food, and the goblets of Cleopatra, brimming with wine in which pearls had been dissolved—enormities that exhausted the revenues of a subject world, and invited a second deluge, as necessary as the first, and not less overwhelming, the barbarians of the North, pouring over the eternal city, and tumbling her effete citizens, with marbles and bronzes, under their falling palaces, and burying them, like Pompeii, out of sight of men.

If we were heathens in ideas of life and God and eternity, there were reason in living the life of heathens, and necessity in renewing the destiny of heathens; for wealth, devoted to self-indulgence, will re-enact the history of Roman extravagance, luxury, and ruin. But with Christian ideas, to live heathen lives is a guilt and ignominy as yet unparalleled beneath the sun.

Is it possible, by any argument, to make that woman a Christian, who expends upon her toilet thousands of dollars, floating in clouds of silken and gossamer tissues, bright and delicate as if woven of sunbeams and tinted with the dyes of the rainbow; who expends upon her “outward adorning” a revenue sufficient to redeem whole families, scores of her sisters who are nightly treading the sharp edges of poverty, with but a step between them and suicidal vice? Is that young man a Christian who expends all his earnings upon dress, and fashion, and pleasure, and will not throw down even a cigar to practice self-denial for others, for himself, his home, and his Saviour? One thing at least is certain, all this is impossible to one who takes Christ for his teacher and example; impossible for one who would win a share in that love and admiration which Jesus bestowed upon one who made duty his life-work, and martyrdom his reward.

Here is heroism! This it is to live! How superior to amusement John was while prosecuting his work in preparation for Jesus, his Lord and ours; who, now that He has come, gives each of us a better work to do than John’s, and yet this better work many are neglecting, because they want to be amused! How John scorned temptations to self-indulgence! What we esteem necessities, were luxuries to him; he probably fared better in Herod’s prison than he did of choice in the wilderness. We never hear of him in king’s houses but once, and then he was there to proclaim the truth of God to a licentious ruler, and dare the hate of an adulterous woman, who, not content with his severed head, put upon it the indignity Cicero is said to have suffered—piercing his dead tongue with a bodkin!

Jesus loved John, and admired him living and dying. This is enough for us. It teaches us a lesson for all ages, most necessary for us in this nineteenth century: great self-denial makes a great character, and without it there is neither greatness nor goodness.