IS IT SAFE TO REFORM? by Ellet Joseph Waggoner

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 1, 1867

IS IT SAFE TO REFORM?

By Ellet Joseph Waggoner

A FRIEND asked:—“Can a man do as much work eating only two meals a day, and no meat, as he can eating three meals, and meat?” My way of putting it would be this:—Can a man do as much work living healthfully as he can living unhealthfully? Is a healthy man as strong as an unhealthy one? Making all allowance for the force of habit, it is not so dangerous to correct our errors as to retain them. I know a man over 50 years of age; a worker and a thinker too; of course needing much power to keep his system up in good working order. Yet he changed his diet in the summer season, eating but twice in the long days, working in haying and harvesting, and came through feeling well. It depends much on the amount of will and consecration you bring into the work. If there be an earnest desire and a strong determination to do right, you will succeed, beyond a doubt; but if you approach it as an unwelcome, grievous task, and fret and complain over every ill feeling as if the reform were the cause of it, it may seem to you as though it would kill you. But such a disposition and lack of consecration will be apt to destroy you anyway before the Lord comes; so you need not lay it all to the change.

But physical labor is not “the whole duty of man.” Pray, do not look altogether at the selfish side of the question. God created you for higher purposes than merely to do a great day’s work, and make money fast. Can we overcome as well with a depraved ’appetite as with a natural, healthy one? Can we “bring the body under and keep it in subjection” as well if we stimulate it with gross, heating, food and drinks, as we can to cleanse and purify it, and free it from unhealthy appetites? Who has not lamented his or her weakness? and want of stability in the great work of glorifying God? Who realizes that it is our duty to love the Lord God with all the heart, might, mind, soul, and strength? Who has ever conceived the measure of this love? Who counts it a privilege to “be strong in the Lord and the power of his might?” If our souls indeed “hunger and thirst after righteousness,” we shall learn and realize that this reform has come in a good time and for a good purpose.

Another asks:—“Can we do without meat in a new country, where we have little or no fruit?” The question supposes that meat is a substitute for fruit, which it is not. To be a substitute it must be of like nature and effects; but it is opposite and not like. Meat is concentrated and heating; fruit is unconcentrated and cooling; therefore fruit might be used as

a corrective of meats, but meat is no substitute for fruit. There is more excuse for using meat with fruit than without it. To say we must eat meat, because we have no fruit, is no more reasonable than for an engineer to say he must put more fire under the boiler because the water is too low! He would, of course, succeed in raising a high head of steam for a short while; but the result would be a speedy exhaustion of power or a smash up. And so with the human system. If we raise steam too fast, as we do by using meats and other stimulants, we may feel strong and active for a while, but at the expense of endurance; the power is sooner exhausted, and the nice machinery gives way.

It is a well-known fact that diseases change as the country grows older; more, I think, from artificial than natural causes. As a country improves and grows older, people change their habits, and diseases change with them. But they only change bad habits; they do not correct them; hence, diseases are changed, not eradicated. It is now full time for the remnant to correct their habits, that the weak may grow strong, and the feeble be able to resist the power of the wicked one.

I thank God for the Health Reform. It is no cross; it is no hardship; it brings pleasure in pain, and gives strength in weakness. With my shattered frame, my badly diseased lung, I cannot expect to be rejuvenated, or made healthy and strong. I expect to suffer from disease, partly inherited and partly brought on by exposure and over-laboring; but still I feel somewhat its renovating power. It has come to me as a new revelation of the present truth. It has opened to my mind new views of life, and its relations and its responsibilities. It has given me victories over self for which I longed for years. When bearing heavy burdens of body and mind, when all looked dark and cheerless in this world, it has come as a messenger of mercy, strengthening the body, cheering the mind, and refreshing the spirits, and bringing the peace of the Saviour to the sorrowing soul. It is no hard cross to bear; no privation. But if it were, what then? A dinner of herbs with the love of God shed abroad in the heart, is better than a stalled ox, and leanness of soul. Bless God for the Health Reform!

J. H. WAGGONER.

St. Johns, Mich., Dec. 7, 1866.