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SOWING FOR PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALTH

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 15, 1901

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 78, No. 3.

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SOWING FOR PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALTH

By David Paulson; W. S. Sadler

David Paulson & W. S. Sadler

AUTO-INTOXICATION, OR HOW A MAN MAY POISON HIMSELF

SOURCES OF POISON WITHIN AND WITHOUT THE BODY

The human body may be regarded as a living form through which a stream of poisonous substances is flowing.
Unnatural, Unwholesome, and Diseased Foods.—Branch 1 of the accompanying diagram (No. 4) represents poisoning which may result from the use of unnatural and diseased foods. We should eat for strength, and not for drunkenness; but food is frequently so prepared that it tends to produce drunkenness rather than strength. The earth is carefully ransacked, and even the scavengers of the great deep are brought to the surface, in the endeavor to find something that will gratify the perverted taste.
Originally, the sense of taste was intended as a protection against eating anything that would not serve to build up the human brain, thus enabling it to think God’s thoughts after Him. The human body is more and more regarded as a harp whose delicate strings are to serve no other purpose than to produce music, as it were, for self-indulgence. The person who uses any function of his body simply to minister to self, instead of to the good of others, will soon reap a crop of the thorns and thistles of misery, whereas he might have gathered the beautiful roses and lilies of health and happiness. The food and drink that should help build up and nourish the man, often become the chief source of his destruction.
The common use of flesh foods is perhaps doing more than any other single dietetic error to weaken the human system, and make it a suitable lodging place for dangerous disease germs. Laboratory experiments have demonstrated that when a person who has been living upon the natural products of the earth is put upon flesh diet for a few days, the poisonous properties of the secretion of the kidneys are greatly increased. But the secretion of the kidneys is only an extract of the tissues of the man, and this means that every nerve cell, and each tissue in the body of the flesh-eater, is continually bathed in blood containing this additional quantity of poison. Is it any wonder that the continuous use of animal flesh is laying the foundation of rheumatism, Bright’s disease, and other kindred evils?
Flesh food is an excellent medium for the propagation of disease germs. The same microbes that can not live upon an apple, will cause a piece of meat to decay and decompose within a few days. The common custom of placing meat in the refrigerator for two weeks, to render it tender, is simply subjecting it to a process of decomposition; but the taste of many has become so fastidious that fresh meat actually does not seem so good to them as that which has been undergoing this decomposing process for a number of weeks.
Other animal products are to a less degree harmful, but generally furnish a more suitable medium for the development of germs than do the natural foods which contain the same elements of nutrition. The use of milk is one of the most common causes of biliousness. This condition is, in reality, due to poisoning of the stomach, instead of to torpidity of the liver.
As men have departed from the simplicity of their forefathers in reference to diet, they have also been compelled to leave behind the record for longevity, physical strength, and endurance, as well as comparative freedom from many diseases which are now familiar to all, but which were then practically unknown. To-day, “rich food” does not mean rich in strength-producing qualities, but a mixture that ordinarily furnishes the necessary combinations for fermentation in the alimentary canal. Concentrated sweets, such as jellies and jams, tend to overwhelm the system with an excessive amount of this food element. Highly flavored and rich foods, instead of promoting a natural flow of gastric juice, stimulate a flow of mucus from the walls of the stomach, which is poured out in self-protection.
Many so-called health reformers, after having renounced the errors just mentioned, immediately go to the opposite extreme: after selecting food substances that are in themselves healthful, they really cause them to become virulent sources of poison in the human system, by improper cooking, or by allowing them to ferment. When food is thoroughly saturated with fat, by a process of frying, the fat itself becomes almost indigestible, and every little particle of starch is inclosed in a coating which neither the saliva nor gastric juice can penetrate, and which would be successfully preserved from all use in the human body if it were not for the special activity of the pancreatic juice and the bile, which digest off this covering of fat, thus allowing the starch to be subjected to a belated process of digestion.
To require the digestive juices to dissolve the totally indigestible things that are often dropped into the human stomach seems like an insult to the divine energy that is required for this transforming process. The human system requires a large amount of fluid to carry off its waste products, but too often the fluid that is taken into the body already contains a large quantity of poison. The quantity of alcoholic liquor that is every year drained through men who were formed in the image of the divine, is almost incredible when translated into figures. Tea and coffee are simply drugs mixed with water. The mania for soft drinks is increasing every year, until the front end of every first-class drug store has been cleared to make room for the magnificent and costly apparatus necessary to produce these beverages, the flavors of which, although bearing the names of fruits, were nearly all grown in the chemist’s test tubes.
Diseased Spiritual Food, Errors of Faith, Doctrine, etc.— Considered either in a physical or in a spiritual sense, healthful foods nourish, while diseased foods tend to stimulate. Therefore, for the very same reason that the people of the world to-day are clamoring for diseased physical food,—foods that will stimulate and stir the body,— so their spiritual natures are inclining toward diseased spiritual food—doctrines and teachings which will stimulate and fascinate the soul. Bread, the staff of life, is ever simple, and although tasteful, does not possess the demon-like powers of many modern foods, which excite the taste, and temporarily arouse the sluggish digestion of an overworked and tired stomach. And so the people are tired of the simplicity and homeliness of truth, and clamor for teachings fantastic and doctrines diseased, which will both amuse and stimulate the moral powers, and perchance wring from them, by their novelty, an interest in religious things, which the beauties of the everlasting gospel had failed to arouse.
The contamination of truth by modern errors, perversions, and deceptions, is nothing more or less than the adulteration of our moral food. Paul, in looking down the stream of time, gave utterance to this prophetic statement, “The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine” (2 Tim. 4:3), or, as Rotherham puts it, “healthy teaching.” The world is seeking for diseased moral food, with which to satisfy the longings of the soul, just as it is seeking for diseased meat,—diseased physical food,—with which to satisfy the hunger of the body. The two go hand in hand; and may we not infer thatthey are of mutual help to each other? The excitement and stimulation of the soul is sure to react upon the physical nature, while no one will question for a moment that physical contamination has its inevitable rebound in the perversion and deterioration of the moral nature. This is an age of isms and denominations. New religions, novel creeds, unheard-of doctrines, and fantastic interpretations of Scripture are springing up on all sides, like the mushrooms of night, and are serving the enemy’s purpose of exciting and stimulating the man’s moral emotions, but are uniformly failing to supply him with spiritual food and nourishment for the development and growth of his soul powers.
DIAGRAM 4 DIAGRAM 5
DIAGRAM 4 DIAGRAM 5