Your ShelfYour Projects

Overfed Ministers

33%

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 10, 1875

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 1, No. 31.

Read the full edition

Overfed Ministers.

The following remarks from DeWitt Talmage's paper are worthy of special note. The present is an age of gluttony, and it is a shame that ministers are foremost in the sin. They who ought to be "ensamples to the flock" in self-denial and genuine temperance, are leaders in this work of self-indulgence and self-destruction. Many ministers who are "broken down" and have to take a vacation with a trip to Europe or to the mountains, would speedily recover if they would live on graham bread, and saw wood for exercise. We know that there is a fault with the overseers of the kitchen, who love to get up "something good for the minister," as they call their unhygienic and dyspepsia-creating dishes, but the ministers are most to blame, for it belongs to them to discourage the practice and to break up the habit.
"What is more delicious for a minister than to accept an invitation to a parishioner's house, and sit an hour or two in the evening at the table with a collection of pleasant people? But that is what kills ministers. Hot waffles, fresh biscuit, oysters, and cold tongue at seven o'clock in the evening have given many a "man of God" dyspepsia, a dull brain, poor sermons, short pastorate, and an early decease. Rich and late suppers are doing a bad work for some of our best clergymen. We know of ministerial clubs where the members assemble Saturday afternoons to discuss religious topics, tarrying until evening, when a sumptuous table is provided for them. As a consequence they do not sleep well on Saturday night, and the congregation on Sabbath see what they suppose is heavenly pallor on their pastor's cheek, when his wife knows it was hot biscuit at tea the evening before that did the business. If you invite your minister out to eat, better have him at noon or thereabouts; or, if calling him to tea, then, let it be in the early part of the week, giving him time to get over his gustatory indulgences. The most of ministers have a powerful appetite for good food, and capacity to resist temptation in that direction is not one of their strong points." J. H. w.