HEALTH REFORM IN THE SABBATH by Stephen Nelson Haskell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 30, 1900

HEALTH REFORM IN THE SABBATH.

By Stephen Nelson Haskell

The Lord made our bodies to be the temple of the Holy Ghost. “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” 1 Cor. 6:19, 20. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? If any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are.” 1 Cor. 3:16, 17.

When sin entered into the world, man lost the image of God; his body, which was the temple of the Holy Spirit, was marred, and returned to dust. But it is God’s purpose to carry out his original design, and have the body become the dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit; for it was created in his own image. Christ gave himself a ransom for fallen man, to bring back not only the moral image of God, but the body which was lost by sin.

The work of the third day was the creation of vegetation. “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind; and God saw that it was good.” Gen. 1:11, 12.

One use of this vegetation was to supply the physical needs of man, whom the Lord created upon the sixth day: “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” Gen. 1:29. Everything that God had created on each successive day, was good in itself; but when he adapted that which he had created to the direct object for which it was created, then “it was very good.” Verse 31.

The Sabbath brings us into communion with nature, because nature was brought into existence during the first six days, and the Sabbath was instituted to keep in memory the creation of nature. There is no more fitting time for man to commune with God through nature than upon the Sabbath. In the song of the bird, in the sighing of the trees, in the music of the sea, in the gentle breeze of the wind, we may hear the voice of him who talked with Adam in the cool of the day, and communed with him upon the first Sabbath that was ever given to man. It was in this communion with God, with Christ, with angels, that Adam and Eve found the blessing upon their first Sabbath. It is this power in the voice of God, who created angels, as well as heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, that speaks light to the soul. He “who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

It was on the third day that God gathered the waters together, so that the dry land might appear, and then called the dry land Earth, and the water Seas; and then, for the benefit of man, he brought forth vegetation. It did not require years for these trees to grow. They were created full-grown, laden with luscious fruit. No seed was planted, but the trees were created full of fruit, with seed in themselves to perpetuate the same kind of trees. “And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew; for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.” Gen. 2:5, 6.

Here is God’s creative power displayed, which becomes an eternal pledge that he will provide for the temporal wants of every person who keeps his commandments. The Sabbath was to keep in memory this creative power; so when we see a tree laden with fruit, or when we see the seed and the grass, we should remember God’s creative power, and that this same power has been pledged to preserve alive man, the crowning work of creation, and to supply his physical necessities.

But let us carry this matter a step further. The herb and the fruit, etc., which were brought into existence on the third day, God says were created for one purpose,—that they should be given to man for food. Their adaptation to man for his physical sustenance is one of the things God did during the six days. The Sabbath, therefore, keeps in memory this as well as the fact that on the third day God created the trees bearing fruit.

Sin perverted man’s appetite. Flesh has become a prominent article of food. After the Lord had given the original, simple bill of fare, and had adapted all the work of creation to the object he had in creating nature, the chapter closes with these words: “And God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.” It was thus in all God’s creation during the first six days. Nothing did he create to stand apart from relationship to other objects of his creation. The atmosphere was created for man to breathe. This was the work of the second day.

The Sabbath, therefore, can not be commemorated according to God’s design, by him who subsists upon a diet of flesh. In other words, man can not perfectly observe the Sabbath while his diet is not in harmony with God’s original design. Flesh diet was not given to man on the six days of creation; but came in as a consequence of sin. Sunday would be a more fitting memorial of flesh diet; but this would not be in harmony with the first word of the fourth commandment, “Remember the Sabbath day.” The Sabbath should be remembered during the entire week. The restoration of the Sabbath brings man’s mind back to God’s original bill of fare. The true observance of the Sabbath will bring to mind not only the fact of the creation of fruits and grains, but the object of their creation, which was that they might be used for man’s diet. In properly keeping the Sabbath, and in remembering it during the laboring portion of each week, man will return to the original bill of fare. Thus health reform is found in the Sabbath of the fourth commandment. S. N. H.