p. 60 | Untitled article by H. C. Miller

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · January 7, 1868

THE PERMISSION TO EAT FLESH.

By H. C. Miller

Some people are always sure to finally fall back upon the permission given to Noah, as recorded in Genesis, to eat flesh, when convinced by sound reasoning of its unfitness as an article of food: “If all this is so, then why did God tell Noah to eat of it?” Here they entrench themselves, seldom inquiring why, with a desire to know, or, at least, not pursuing their investigations far. But those who desire truth, and wish to be found in the way of right, rejoice in the testimonies of the Lord, which show that it was permitted for the purpose of accomplishing the same thing in the people then, that it will do now in us, if we stubbornly reject the light and continue to eat flesh, viz., produce disease, and shorten life.

Lately we have read some testimony from the celebrated Dr. Cheyne, late of England, which shows such agreement with the testimony in Spiritual Gifts, that we copy it, not only for its harmony with what is written, but for the good of some who a little prefer the words of men. He says:

“I have sometimes indulged the conjecture that animal food, in the original frame of our nature, and design of our creation, was not intended for human creatures. They seem to me neither to have those strong and fit organs for digesting it, nor naturally to have those voracious and brutish appetites that require animal food to satisfy them; nor those cruel and hard hearts, or those diabolical passions, which could easily suffer them to tear and destroy their fellow-creatures; at least, not in the first and early ages, before every man had corrupted his way, and God was forced to exterminate the whole race by an universal deluge, and was also obliged to shorten their lives from nine hundred or one thousand years to seventy. He wisely foresaw that animal food and artificial liquors would naturally contribute toward this end, and indulged or permitted the generation that was to plant the earth again after the flood, the use of them for food; knowing that, though it would shorten their lives, and plait a scourge of thorns for the backs of the lazy and voluptuous, it would be cautiously avoided by those who knew it was their duty and happiness to keep their passions low, and their appetites in subjection. And this very era of the flood is that mentioned in Holy Writ for the indulgence of animal food and artificial liquors, after the trial had been made how insufficient alone a vegetable diet—which was the first food appointed for human kind after their creation—was, in the long lives of men, to restrain their wickedness and malice, and after finding that nothing but shortening their duration could possibly prevent the evil.” — Veg. Diet*, p. 98.

H. C. MILLER.