p. 14 | The Benefits of Fruit Culture by Daniel Nettleton

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 21, 1912

The Benefits of Fruit Culture

By Daniel Nettleton

DANIEL NETTLETON

OUR Heavenly Father desires the health and happiness of his people. He desires that they should prosper and be in health. He is interested in our physical and mental as well as in our spiritual health.

When the Lord made man, he purposed that man should enjoy himself. He knew the quality of his food would have much to do with his happiness, so he gave him his bill of fare. He said: “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat.” “Behold, I have given you every herb yielding seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for food.

These health- and strength-giving trees, God placed there, and said man might freely eat of them. In a flesh diet, we have our food only at second hand. The animal gets it first from the grains, vegetables, and fruits. Why should not we eat first-class food? The beautiful garden, man’s first home, contained no butcher-shops nor places for the selling of flesh for man to eat. These places are symbols of pain and death. It is unnatural and out of harmony with God’s original plan for man to slay in order to eat.

The advantages of a fruit diet are numerous. In the first place, fruit is a germ killer, a disease destroyer,—a medicinal food. It has been demonstrated that it is impossible for typhoid fever germs to live in lemon-juice. If people would only live on a liberal fruit diet which would destroy fever and other germs, there would be far less sickness and consequently less sorrow.

Fruit culturalists are benefactors and physicians of the people. The substitution of the orchard for the slaughter-house would contribute much to the public health, and since health brings happiness, a fruit diet would be certain to result in much greater happiness for those who adopt it.

The moral influences of fruit culture are also obvious. Our environment has much to do with our character building, for by beholding we become changed.

What a dreary world this would be without trees. How much happier and better men are by the cultivation of trees, vines, and flowers. Man’s employment in his sinless state was to cultivate the trees and flowers that God had planted, and after the fall he was sent forth to till the ground and earn his bread in the sweat of his face. This was not a curse, but a blessing.

There is a refining and uplifting influence in the society of beautiful trees and plants, especially fruit-trees. Their beautiful blossoms making the air fragrant with heavenly perfume, their rich, growing fruits in bright clusters bending, tend to restrain in man that which is rough and cruel, and encourage him to cultivate kindness and gentleness. The cultivation of fruit-trees, vines, and flowers helps to make gentle men and lovely women.

Children who receive their first and most lasting impressions surrounded by cattle yards and pig-pens, who have to listen constantly to the squealing of pigs, do not have the elevating and refining influences that those do who come from sweet, clean homes surrounded by green grass and blossoming trees, among whose leafy boughs happy birds build their nests, rear their young, and warble their sweet melodies.

That there is no employment more healthful than fruit-growing, all who study the health question will admit. The pale-faced men and women of our cities pine for the green fields and groves of the country. Many of the great commercial class, herded in crowded cities, love to think and sing:— “How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood, When fond recollection presents them to view, The orchard, the meadow, the deep-tangled wild-wood, And every loved spot that my infancy knew.”

The cities are not the best places for developing strong men and sweet, loving women. The noise and confusion of the street do not refine and develop the moral qualities of men as do the fields of golden grain, blooming trees, and fruit-laden orchards.

Man’s new and everlasting home will be adorned with trees and flowers. “The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it,” says the prophet, “the excellency of Carmel and Sharon.” The glory of Lebanon was its trees; the excellency of Carmel, its flowers. We are told of one tree in the midst of the paradise of God, bearing twelve manner of fruit and yielding its fruit every month, and “the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.” Therefore let us make our homes beautiful and happy by planting and cultivating fruit-trees and flowers. Let us seek to make our present earthly home as nearly as possible like man’s first Eden home; and by so doing we shall help to make ourselves and others fit to enter in and enjoy our home in the earth when it is made new.

Fort Townsend, Wash.