p. 95 | A Foolish Practice

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 5, 1871

A Foolish Practice.

ONE of the unwisest things that persons do, in the sphere of ordinary social life, is, when having friends to breakfast or dinner, to urge them to eat. I scarcely ever sit down to a friend's table but that I am pestered with solicitations on the part of my host or hostess to take something more to eat; just as though I had no mind of my own, and, if not guided and directed by them, would fail to supply myself with the food needful for me. Now, hygienists ought to have sense enough to be above this kind of folly. In the first place, we ought all to live so simply that our appetites should be sauce to our food. Then, however simple and plain the food presented, we should eat with relish, and cease to eat when we had taken enough. Those who cook for friends should have politeness enough to see that they are cared for sufficiently, and when declining to take more, not to urge them to do so. Gluttony, good friends, is a sin. What poor, silly notions we have in respect to social vices. The woman who not for her right hand would ask me to drink a glass of wine, the man who would as soon think of robbing me of my purse as to ask me to drink alcoholic liquors in a saloon or at his private table, has no clearer insight into the true philosophy of appetitial enjoyment than to press me to gorge my stomach with food and thus make myself dietetically a glutton. Let all who have forsworn the old way of making drunkards, also forswear the way whereby gluttons are made. Let us live soberly and righteously in the world, having ways, plans, and habits of our own, which are commendable because they direct persons to higher and nobler feelings and efforts than those which lie alone within the gratification of the appetites and the passions. There is no need of having a table nakedly spread because nobody eats to be a glutton thereat. There is no need of having social relations uncompanionable and cheerless because we are determined to glorify God in our bodies, as well as in our spirits. True hilarity and joyousness are the proper attendants of sobriety and moderation. Please to bear this in mind, and so let us eat and drink as not to bring condemnation on ourselves.—Woman and her Work.