Sowing for Physical and Spiritual Health by David Paulson; W. S. Sadler

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 8, 1901

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

THAT the human system either manufactures poison or transforms healthful food substances into poison has been vaguely understood from time immemorial. But it has been left for the modern scientific observer to demonstrate to a mathematical certainty the source of nearly all these toxic substances, their nature and absolute quantity, as well as their particular effects on the human body. Bouchard, a French physician, has devoted almost a lifetime to solving this problem, and the substance of his conclusions is summed up in the following words: The human body is a laboratory of poisons; man has constantly before him the possibility of being poisoned; and the only reason he does not commit suicide by this auto-intoxication, or self-poisoning, is the fact that he possesses the ability to eliminate these toxic substances as rapidly as they are produced.

Every function of the human body seems to be subject to some rhythmic law. The human mind is at times clear and brilliant, at other times stupid and depressed. At times there is a sense of buoyancy in the nervous system, at other times a sense of weariness. The accompanying diagram illustrates this principle with reference to the amount of poison, the quantity of which varies from hour to hour.

Let A represent the line of health, and the wavy line B represent the line of poisoning. As long as the line of poisoning is a moderate distance below the line of health, the person will feel no inconvenience from the fact that a stream of poison is continually passing through his body, en route to the various organs of elimination. If, on the other hand, by various indiscretions, the line of health is allowed to drop down, or the quantity of bodily poisons is increased, then at times the patient will have a feeling of lassitude, irritability, and other minor disturbances. Diagram 2 illustrates this relation.

When we realize that it is only a question of time, varying from a few minutes to a few hours, until death would occur if the elimination of poison should entirely cease, then it can be readily appreciated how easy it would be for the poison line to rise entirely above the line of health, when “serious times” would come to the patient. Diagram 3 illustrates this condition.

SPIRITUAL AUTO-INTOXICATION, OR HOW LIGHT BECOMES DARKNESS IN THE SOUL

Many important and vital truths have been developed concerning the body as a poison factory—how the individual contains within himself the possibilities of self-destruction by means of the poisons made within. These great truths concerning the poisoning of the body have their counterpart in the spiritual world. There is just as truly a moral auto-intoxication of the soul as there is a physical auto-intoxication of the body. There is a remarkable parallel between the self-poisoning of soul and body.

This stream of self-poisoning we will call spiritual darkness, or moral poisoning. Many Christians fear persecution, fear what man will do unto them; others are similarly fearful of what God will do unto them; but man’s greatest moral dangers have their source within the soul. The spiritual nature must protect itself against spiritual poisons by maintaining a high moral resistance, or else the soul soon gravitates to the condition that might fittingly be compared to the body of a man who is rapidly committing suicide by physical auto-intoxication.

To increase the sources of moral poisoning, and at the same time lower the spiritual resistance, means nothing more nor less than moral suicide—backsliding, and ultimately spiritual death. When a man is sick, he has backslidden physically; when his soul is sick, he has backslidden spiritually. The realm of the spiritual is just as real as that of the physical. Effects never come without causes in the spiritual world any more than they do in the physical. The man or the woman who is backsliding spiritually should begin a strict self-examination “to see whether they be in the faith;” for there is just as surely a literal cause for spiritual lethargy as for physical indisposition.

Copyrighted, 1900, by David Paulson and W. S. Sadler.