p. 21 | How Can Health Reform Be Taught With the Old-Time Enthusiasm?

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 14, 1909

How Can Health Reform Be Taught With the Old-Time Enthusiasm?

By William C. White

MUCH of the old-time enthusiasm among Seventh-day Adventists regarding the study of healthful living, came from the belief that a people who are preparing soon to meet their Lord should be a healthy, happy people, free from the defilements and weaknesses that result from intemperance in any and all of its various forms.

It was also believed that the health reform principles were a Heaven-sent message, to enable men to attain that health of body and clearness of mind that are most favorable to the development of Christian experience, and that will fit them for the service of God in ministry to their fellow men.

At the very first, the line of instruction was brief and clearly defined, and was given to the people by the ministers; thus the church-members received the truths regarding healthful living from the same lips that taught them other truths essential to their souls' welfare. As a result, a large proportion of the Seventh-day Adventist people accepted the health principles as a part of the message, and became health reformers, as they then understood the term.

As years advanced, sanitariums were established, and physicians and nurses were educated, and it was only natural that these should criticize the simple and elementary work of the ministers as teachers and examples in health reform. And by some it was urged that the ministers stop trying to teach health reform, and leave this line of instruction to those who were prepared to teach it more correctly.

As a result of this proposal from the medical men, some ministers dropped the burden of teaching this part of the message, and thus, having lost their chief incentive for continual study of the principles, it was but natural that they should drift backward instead of advancing as intelligent, progressive health reformers.

Yet there were some among the ministers who not only loved the principles, but realized the importance of their being taught to the people in connection with other gospel truths. These studied and taught with great profit to themselves and to the people.

For example: When Elder A. G. Daniells was holding tent-meetings in New Zealand, it was his custom to devote the service each Monday night to a lecture on some phase of the health question. Before his largest audiences, Sunday evenings, he advertised the temperance or health lectures, and before his new audience gathered to hear the health lecture, he advertised his regular religious meetings.

Temperance advocates from various provinces, hearing his temperance lectures in Auckland, invited him to speak in their cities. This he did, and gained an influence that helped greatly in opening the way for the whole message to be presented later.

And in connection with the tent-meeting held by Elder S. N. Haskell and his associates in Sydney, Australia, Mrs. Haskell, Mrs. Starr, and other Bible workers put forth the same faithful effort in their house-to-house work in teaching healthful cookery as in any other subject taught.

In the Newcastle tent-meetings, where a strong church was built up, Elder Geo. B. Starr and Prof. H. C. Lacey arranged for one of our physicians who was an able lecturer, to come one hundred miles once a week, to deliver a health talk to the people; and Sisters Starr and Lacey, and others conducted a school of health each Wednesday afternoon, in the tent.

W. C. WHITE.

(To be concluded)