George Simpson, the “Buckeye Bullet” of Ohio, is here shown tying the world’s record by winning the 100-yard dash at the 36th annual Penn Relay Carnival, at Philadelphia, in 9 3/5 seconds. Only perfect health conditions permit such feats as this.
Were all the treasures of the world heaped high in my gilded palace, were the gold of a thousand mines a part of my heritage, were the dazzling jewels of the Orient numbered with my possessions, were the men and wealth of the world at my command, and I the helpless victim of suffering and disease, I would envy the pauper his crust of bread and his health. Poor health is the direst of poverty. Good health is abundant wealth.
Good health is vitally connected with religious experience. It is possible for a man to obey the laws of health and have no religion, but it is impossible for a righteous man to ignore the principles of healthful living and at the same time have a triumphant faith. The apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 9:25 that “every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible.”
Life is a race. The prize is eternal life. The crown of victory is worth every sacrifice. To be temperate in all things, to use moderately things that are good, and to abstain entirely from things that are bad, is a prime essential in striving for the mastery.
DANIEL ABSTAINS FROM KING’S FARE
Among the wise men in the court of ancient Babylon were young men from Judea, Hebrew captives of King Nebuchadnezzar. They were the fairest of the fair, the most intellectual of the intellectuals, the wisest of the wise—and there was a reason for it. As Daniel looked upon the rich foods and the delicate wines upon the Babylonian tables, his thoughts went back to the simplicity of fare in his Judean home, and he “purposed in his heart” that he would not defile himself with the king’s meat. They didn’t drink much water in the court of that Oriental monarch. But Daniel looked upon the Babylonian wine and the various meat dishes, and said, “I don’t think I will defile myself—no, I won’t.” And after ten days of trial, upon a bill of fare that was mainly legumes and water, Daniel and his companions stood at the head of the class, 100 per cent perfect.
Does diet mean anything to you? Stand at the side of a prominent street and watch the men go by,—the man with the red nose and the bloated face; the man with the sallow, sickly complexion and hollow cheeks; the man with clear eyes, ruddy cheeks, and firm step,—and then try to picture their diet.
Work and health go together. This picture shows a workman eating his lunch on the top of the Hotel Cecil in London, England, after his morning’s work in tearing down that historic old structure.
The stockman uses the greatest care in feeding his prize animals—no secondhand food for them, no hot pepper sauce, no devitalized, milled, and whitened wheat, no greasy links of pork sausage, but only the purest and finest of foods. But for his children—oh, that’s a different story—a six-course dinner, with fried pork chops, fried potatoes, topped with mustard and pepper and mince pie, to the accompaniment of a sick headache and some Bromo pills—but then, these are only prize children and not prize Holsteins. There’s a lot of truth in the poem by Mr. George H. Free:
Lije Brown is gone, the neighbors say;
Well, some man goes ’most every day,
But food for thought to us is lent
In ponderin’ the way he went.
For Lije, who should have lingered here,
A-plowin’ corn for many a year,
Is lyin’ where the daisies grow,
Because a woman laid him low.
She never baked nor broiled nor stewed,
No matter what the kind of food;
Though fresh or canned, though green or dried,
The woman allus served it fried.
’Twas fried pertaters and fried meat,
Fried eggs, fried hash, fried mush to eat,
Fried pancakes (doughboys, sometimes called),
Until pore Lije’s stummick stalled.
Doc Bolus gives a little cough
When asked what ’twas that took Lije off;
“Acute gastritis,” he replies,
But there’s a look in Doc’s shrewd eyes
Which says he knows as well as me
That Lije’s woman foolishly
Hastened the end of that pore man
By swattin’ with the fryin’ pan.
She never bore Lije no ill will,
But you’ve all heard that love can kill,
Though some may doubt the fiendish darts
That lurk in culinary arts.
Victuals she fried three times a day,
For fryin’ was that woman’s way;
Goose grease and tallow, oil and fat—
’Twould give dyspepsy to a cat.
She didn’t biff him on the head,
And yet Elijah Brown lies dead;
She didn’t play the strong-arm game, But sure and deadly was her aim;
A solar-plexus blow she dealt,
It took him just below the belt.
Though not so vital as the heart,
The stummick plays a needful part.
If I’d the makin’ of the laws,
Them pizen rules should have a clause
To put a skull-and-crossbones ban
On every greasy fryin’ pan.
Oh, gentle housewife, lend an ear
To this sad tale; let wholesome fear
Of God’s command your conscience fill;
He wisely said: “Thou shalt not kill.”
Our Creator, the God who made us and loves us, provided an abundance of good things for us to eat. Luscious fruits, filled with health-giving elements, grains and nuts and vegetables, with their wealth of vitamins, are the God-given diet. But man has “sought out many inventions” to bring upon himself disease and premature death. As a result, degenerative diseases have obtained a fearful hold upon the human race. Cancer, the dread scourge of civilization, has increased 500 per cent in fifty years. Bright’s disease, a degenerative disease of the kidneys, increased 131 per cent in ten years. The mortality from arteriosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, increased 250 per cent in ten years; from heart disease, 50 per cent; from diabetes, 50 per cent—and so the sad story of twentieth-century degeneracy goes. It is safe to say that the transgression of the laws of health is responsible for the prevailing conditions.
PERMISSION TO EAT MEAT GRANTED
After the Flood, permission was given to eat of the clean animals. With amazing suddenness the average length of human life was cut down to one tenth of the antediluvian span of life. Evidently man had to pay with shortness of life for his use of flesh food. But God made a sharp line of distinction between the clean and the unclean animals. Lizards, snakes, buzzards, and other creatures were set apart as physiologically unfit for food. They are by nature “unclean.”5
Classed with the unclean animals is a creature that scoops down garbage, dead snakes, and anything else that he can swallow; he is a scavenger, and God said to let him alone, he is “unclean.” He is no less a “scavenger” to-day than he was in Noah’s time, and yet men consider the hog a fit article of food to be assimilated into their blood stream.
Dr. T. DeWitt Talmage, the noted Presbyterian clergyman of Christian Herald fame, well said: “A man’s food, when he has the means and opportunity of selecting it, suggests his moral nature. The reason the wild Indian is as cruel as a lion is because he has food that gives him the blood of a lion. A missionary among the Indians says that, by changing his style of food to correspond with theirs, his temperament was entirely changed. There are certain forms of food that have a tendency to affect the moral nature. Many a Christian is trying to do by prayer that which cannot be done except through a corrected diet. For instance, he who uses swine’s flesh for constant diet will be diseased in body and polluted in soul—all his liturgies and catechisms notwithstanding. . . . In Leviticus, God struck this meat off the table of the Jew, and placed before him a bill of fare at once healthful, nutritious, and generous.”—Volume 2, published in 1885 by Funk and Wagnalls.
EVEN CLEAN MEAT UNSAFE
Even the clean meats are unsafe in these days of widespread disease. It has been said that if only meats entirely free from disease were sold, the price would be prohibitive. Cattle tainted with tuberculosis, and unsafe for our milk supply, are passed through as meat for our tables. We eat juicy, red-raw steaks from diseased animals, and then we wonder where our disease comes from. The ravages of the hoof-and-mouth disease, of Malta fever, of tuberculosis, tell the story of degeneracy in the animal world. Compare those mysterious links called “hot dogs,” pig’s liver, brains, feet, and even entrails of diseased animals, as a dietary program, with fruits, green vegetables, and cereals, and let common sense tell you which you would rather have in your blood. If all of us would follow the menu of the prima donna Galli-Curci, not a few physicians would have to seek other means of livelihood. In striving for the mastery in the musical world, she is indeed “temperate in all things.” She says: “I live almost entirely on fruits and vegetables, brown bread and butter, milk, and cheese. I use no stimulants of any kind; tea, coffee, and chocolate, wines and all liquors, I never touch. Milk and water are my only beverages, and I drink these in abundance. I drink two quarts of milk a day. I am not a ‘carnivorous animal’ and therefore I do not eat meat in any form, but occasionally I eat eggs for my lunch. Pastry and all sweets, with the exception of honey, are barred from my table. Honey, it must be remembered, is a natural not a manufactured sweet, and
both healthful and nourishing. I never touch candy, and eat only fruit desserts. I eat sparingly of everything. I never go hungry, but I never overeat.”
WORLD TRAVELING AT A MAD PACE
The superlatives of the English language have been exhausted in describing the “high tension,” the “speed,” of this “jazz age.” A narcotized world is speeding along in high gear and at break-heart speed. The pace that kills is maintained in business as well as in pleasure. And “stimulants” help the world to keep the pace. Sad to say, many would prefer to die in the forties or fifties than to give up their pet stimulants for ten added years of life. “Playing the fool” seems to be the only appropriate words to use in describing those who leave God’s highway of health—fresh air, fresh fruits, vegetables, sunshine, and regular habits—and take the bypath of overwork, overplay, overindulgence, and stimulants. Senator Albert J. Beveridge, in giving advice to the young lawyer in his book, “The Young Man and the World,” said: “Do not use intoxicants. Even beware of coffee; it is one of the most powerful nerve and brain stimulants. The coffee habit is as easily formed and as relentless as the alcohol habit. After a while, if excessively used, it produces its sure result; your faculties have been sharpened by this intellectual emery wheel until the edges begin to crumble. Your mind becomes dull; you pass your hands wearily over your eyes; you don’t know what is the matter with you and say so. Overwork, overstimulation, and the worry these produce are what is the matter with you.”
“The curse causeless shall not come” is the declaration of the Bible. It is but another way of saying that the sowing of unhealthful foods, stimulants, and narcotics, will soon bring a harvest of degenerative disease. We read in the papers that “It-il-ruin-ya” cured Mrs. Smith of Hotchkiss, and so we swallow a case or two of a concoction of alcohol, browned sugar, and drugs, at only one dollar a bottle. We let the king of quacks fool us into believing that “un-luckies” will not exact their toll of shattered nerves, lowered resistance, and lessened life. And we fool ourselves into believing that tea and coffee are only harmless “bracers,” essential to keep away that splitting headache.
FATE THEORY IS ONLY A MYTH
Not long ago a woman told me that it makes no difference what we eat or drink, that when our time comes we die, and we cannot die until that appointed time is reached. I looked at her in sheer amazement. Can it be that people believe such nonsense? That poor man in Chicago with his hands raised to heaven pleading for the restoration of sight to sightless eyes is reaping the result of poison alcohol. That ulcer of the stomach does not come as an affliction of Providence. The Lord had nothing to do with that attack of apoplexy that cut off your neighbor in the prime of life. Our forefathers blamed Providence for the devastating scourge that was carried by filth and flies. Providence was made responsible for the dread plagues that were spread by the bite of a mosquito. Little children, snatched from their mothers’ arms, because of impure, germ-laden milk, were said to have been “called home” by Providence. And now people make God the author of a host of degenerative diseases, in order that He may have some means of taking them “when their time comes”! The death that comes from a willful indulgence in the things that kill, is blamed on Providence! Your nervousness, your indigestion, your high blood pressure, have causes—but let the blame be placed where it belongs, upon your wrong habits of living, your indulgence in the things that destroy.
I have read to you quotations from a noted preacher, a noted lawyer, a noted singer; now let me read from the words of a noted physician, Dr. William S. Sadler, as he wrote them for the American Magazine: “Stop a minute! Ask yourself a few questions: Do you feel constantly hurried and worried? . . . Are you living at high tension? . . . Toxic tension, as you probably know, implies the presence of some poison in the system. Many persons are on the verge of a breakdown, simply because their blood stream is more or less saturated with these chemical poisons. The commonest source of such poisons are tea, coffee, tobacco, alcohol, and various drugs which a great many people habitually take, believing them to be harmless or even beneficial. I had one patient, a woman about forty years old, who puzzled me greatly for a while. She was very nervous, and was troubled with insomnia, and a mild but persistent form of headache. She had constipation and peculiar attacks of indigestion. Yet a thorough examination failed to reveal any disease. Finally I found thatSix
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she was drinking fifteen cups of fairly strong tea a day. When she was deprived of her narcotic-stimulant, she went into hysteria. . . . In six months she was a new woman, both in appearance and behavior. We use over 1,250,000,000 pounds of tea and coffee in this country every year. We consume 8,000,000,000 cigars and about 50,000,000,000 ready-made cigarettes. It is estimated that the average daily dose of poison for every man, woman, and child in the United States is 306 grains of alcohol, 6 grains of nicotine, 6 grains of caffeine, and 1.5 grains of opium. . . . You take drugs because you are tense; but they are chemical irritants which make you more tense. . . . Toxic poison may be caused by a diet that increases the acidity of the blood. . . . Water is the best beverage in the world, and a simple diet of milk, fruits, and green vegetables, with a moderate amount of eggs and meat, is the most wholesome.”
GOD IS NOT AUTHOR OF DEATH
Our heavenly Father is the author of life and not of death. He it is who has given to man the blessings of life in the form of sunshine, fresh air, life-giving foods, and pure, fresh water. If we fully appreciate God’s goodness to us, if we are numbered as His children, we shall always remember the words of 1 Corinthians 6:19: “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” Nothing that defiles, nothing that deranges the digestive system, making us irritable and impatient, nothing that deadens the mental faculties, making us less appreciative of truth, nothing that is harmful or impure will enter that sacred “temple.” When tempted to touch the cup that stimulates, when tempted to indulge a perverted appetite, when tempted to reach for that which defiles, we shall ask ourselves the question, “Will this glorify God?” The rule of life for the true Christian is this: “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” We cannot avoid death, for this is the heritage of sin, but we can avoid disease by building up the bodily resistance, and we can avoid digging premature graves with our teeth. And as we radiate health, we shall radiate sunshine and happiness and good cheer and faith, and glorify our Father who is in heaven.
