Digestion and Religion.
By H. W. Beecher
It is essential that care be exercised in regard to the use to which men put their stomachs. It is quite in vain for a man to eat so much that he is dyspeptic, and at the same time attempt to live in a state of grace. Over-nutrition, in various ways, in a body strong enough to digest food is perpetually producing an abnormal state of the blood, and carrying things to immoderation, exciting the passions, and filling the body full of feverish conditions. There are many persons who are believed to be children of grace, but who make it a point, once a day, at any rate, to eat themselves into a fair condition of stupidity. Do you suppose a man who spends the whole day in business, plethoric, over-bloated, almost obese from constant feeding, and who, when the blessed hour at last comes that he can lay aside the duties of the office or the store, goes home to his hour, or hour and a half, of gourmandizing, eating till he can scarcely see, purple with blood, somnolent all the evening, and snoring himself, at last, through his devotions, to his bed, and does this every day—do you suppose such a man can grow in grace? or do you suppose that out of such habits as his can come the fruits of the Spirit of God? Do you recollect what the fruits of the Spirit are? It may be worth while for us to carry these along in our memory as we proceed. They are recorded in Galatians: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance.” Now, how can these, which are really the fruits of the higher faculties, and in their most wholesome conditions, exist, or even be known where there is gluttonous stuffing? But there are many persons that are not bon vivants, who habitually over-eat without knowing it; who follow their appetite, and are caught by it as a man is caught in the race-way of a mill. They eat till they are full, and more than full. They eat beyond the power of wholesome digestion. They eat beyond the want of supply in their system. They eat with an eagerness, with a rashness, with an ignorance, that every day lowers the tone of their health, and every day obscures the clarity of their mind. They are obliged to work up against their own blood. It is back-water on the wheel. There is many a man who is a good man, as the world goes, who is temperate in many respects, and who gets along very well so far as the government of his passions is concerned; but who, after all, keeps himself in a low mental condition all the time by over-eating.—H. W. Beecher.