Health and Temperance by Harriet M. Morris

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 25, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 25.

Health and Temperance.

By Harriet M. Morris

Food and Dress.

Nor only should the food be plain and nourishing in order that children may grow up with normal appetites, but the dress should be simple. "A child decked in silks and ribbons, in tucks and trimmings," says Mrs. Bascom, "is not only a sad sight morally but an offense against good taste. Undue attention to dress in childhood is often fruitful of life-long mischief. It is tainted with that spirit of self-indulgence and excess which is the very gist of intemperance."

It has been said that if children were given plenty to do, were taught to admire the beauties of nature and of art, their talents, literary, artistic, and mechanical, given proper encouragement and aid, this matter of drunkenness would right itself.

Undoubtedly, music, painting, sculpture, poetry, and all the arts by which the beauties of nature, and the genius of human thought find expression, have a refining tendency. However, the special moral effect ascribed to them by some writers and speakers, is to be doubted. If we find, upon inquiry, that those whose talents or genius have delighted the watching eyes and listening ears of the world, have been persons of uniform high moral character; if our musicians and artists have been in any degree notable for their mastery of self; if our lawyers and our statesmen have been sober of life, and strong to resist temptation, we may be convinced of the adequacy of this method of outwitting the enemy. How is it? Have not our men of most brilliant accomplishments been the slaves, rather than the masters of their appetites and passions?

If any art could be in itself a safeguard against vice, music, of which Jean Ingelow says,— "We know they music made In Heaven ere man’s creation; But when God threw it down to us, It dropt with lamentation; And ever since doth its sweetness shade With sighs for its first station,"— It would seem, should be the one whose hold upon the higher nature of man should be the strongest and sweetest of any.

And yet, have not our great musical composers and artists been proverbially men whose excesses have brought shame to their friends and ruin to themselves?

It is plain that something more is needed than mere mental culture and artistic or mechanical skill, though these are not to be underrated as important aids in the development of worthy and useful men and women.

Children should be given special training in regard to physiological laws. A knowledge of the processes of digestion, circulation, and nutrition in their own bodies should be held as more important than the conjugation of verbs, and the bounding of States and Territories.

They should be taught the effects of stimulants and the danger of indulgence therein. They should be made to realize the holiness of life and health and the exceeding sinfulness of abusing their bodies.

Girls should be taught that life is as real and earnest for them as for their brothers; and boys, that there is not one code of honor for them and another for their sisters.

Let them be given large views of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, the sacredness of their relations to humanity, and the eternal, inevitable consequences of wrongdoing.

With all our care and thoughtful foresight, there are many outside influences for evil which we cannot avoid. We do not wish our children to be kept from contact with the world. We do not wish to shut them in bandboxes for fear they will be soiled. We do not wish to make Pharisees of them, thanking God that they are not as others are.

We want them not simply pure, but strong; not simply good, but good for something.

So we must give them the best that is within our souls, and send them out into the battlefield of life, forewarned and forearmed, clad in the armor of God, that they may be able to stand in the evil day.