THE PROCESS OF PUTTING ON THE “NEW MAN” PHYSICALLY.
By David Paulson
We are bidden in the Scripture to eat “that which is good.” Isa. 55:2. We are also commanded not to eat blood. Gen. 9:4. How to eat flesh food, and at the same time to separate from it the blood and waste matter which cling to and fill the space between its fibers, is not so easy a problem to solve as it might appear at first sight. There are not many who would have the gastric courage to drink blood from a tumbler, or even eat a piece of bread which had been soaked in the same; and yet every time they eat a piece of flesh food they are practically doing precisely this; for the color and taste of flesh is almost entirely due to the amount of blood which still clings to it. A piece of meat subjected to a stream of water for a few hours becomes white and almost as thready as yarn, and practically as tasteless, and yet it now represents the actual food elements, the waste portions, poisons, and blood having been removed by the running water. The Lord commanded Noah, long before the Jewish dispensation began, not to eat blood. Gen. 9:4. The command was reiterated and incorporated in the very heart of the four necessary things that the Gentile Christians must carry out in their lives. Acts 15:28, 29. They were not to eat blood, and were to let alone strangled things. It is well to bear in mind that the average fish dies from strangulation. How impossible it is for God to make clean blood out of these unclean and waste substances can be learned by studying Job 14:4. The same truth can be demonstrated practically in the laboratory by injecting a portion of the secretion of the kidneys of a man who is living upon the natural products of the earth into the veins of a rabbit, and noting how much is required to kill it; allow the individual to live largely upon flesh-foods for a few days, and then it is observed that it will now require only about one-fourth as much of the secretion of the kidneys to kill a similar rabbit. In other words, when the man attempts to eliminate not only the waste products made in his own muscles, but also those that exist in a portion of the body of an ox, he is laying a task upon his eliminating organs which in that particular instance they may be fully qualified to meet; but if he is already on the borderline of Bright’s disease, it may be the one thing that will turn the scale and precipitate him into a premature grave. The sentence that Adam was to toil, that he was to eat bread in the sweat of his face, came from the same source as the promise of his future happiness, and both alike, under the particular circumstances, were intended to be blessings. As long as Adam was in this sinful world, sufficient labor to produce vigorous perspiration would help to eliminate poisonous substances, which would otherwise irritate his nerve-centers, and tend not only to produce an abnormal physical condition, but to make it more difficult for him to experience that spiritual life to which it was his privilege to attain. “Abundance of idleness” was one of the four things that produced Sodom. Eze. 16:49. But the idea is firmly rooted in the human mind to-day that labor is a sort of necessary evil; and one of the great problems that thousands of young men and women are trying to solve is how to get thru the world without working. Honest, substantial toil is despised, and every contrivance from the Turkish bath down is utilized as a means of securing perspiration without having to work for it. But laboratory experiments have clearly shown that the perspiration produced by the application of heat is far less poisonous than that which is produced by work. So, after all, nature maintains that the best way to sweat is to work. Again, the Scripture gives the instruction that “if any would not work, neither should he eat” (2 Thess. 3:10), and nature recognizes the justice of this command by depriving of a healthy appetite the man who does not work. “The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh.” Eccl. 4:5. It is impossible to keep up good, sound flesh, and at the same time fold the hands; or, in other words, neglect to take physical exercise. Exercise increases the activity of the heart, so that the rate of the flow of the blood is accelerated. It helps to wear out the “old man.” It increases the activity of every eliminating organ to carry off the waste products. It paints a fresh color in the cheeks. It tends to put every function of the body into a more normal condition, and increases man’s capacity to take in a larger degree of the joys that God has in store for him, even upon this sin-cursed earth. If a man is so feeble that he can not take exercise himself, then those who “are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak” (Rom. 15:1) to the extent that they will give him massage and other forms of passive exercise. Chicago, Ill. DAVID PAULSON, M. D.