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SOWING FOR PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALTH

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 17, 1900

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 77, No. 29.

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SOWING FOR PHYSICAL AND SPIRITUAL HEALTH

By David Paulson; W. S. Sadler

David Paulson · W. S. Sadler

THE STARCH FAMILY.

(Continued.)

MORAL OPPORTUNITIES CONSTITUTE OUR SPIRITUAL EXERCISE.

Heaven-sent opportunities to uplift, or better, the condition of fallen man constitute the Christian’s gymnasium, whose apparatus, in the form of divine opportunity, is carefully arranged by an infinite hand to meet the varied needs of each and every child of God. To neglect these God-given opportunities is but to weaken, while to improve them is to strengthen, the characters we are building for eternity.
The opportunity to work for the betterment of man—physically, mentally, and morally—constitutes the great opportunity we have in this life, of working for God. The Creator of the universe is to-day in no need of our service, except in the person of his needy, fallen creatures. Therefore it is that every opportunity we have for working for fallen man, is an opportunity to work for God.
Thus divine opportunity becomes heaven’s gymnasium on this sinful earth. When we, as Christians, fail to recognize, appropriate, and utilize heaven-sent opportunities in our spiritual experience, we are doing just what the diabetic is doing physically in failing to utilize starch: he eliminates the digested starch unused, untouched, unappropriated; we, Christians, by our moral inactivity, are day by day eliminating from our experience heaven-sent opportunities unimproved, untouched, yea, often even unrecognized.

SIGNIFICANCE OF OUR INABILITY TO RECOGNIZE AND UTILIZE GOD-GIVEN OPPORTUNITIES.

Diabetes indicates a physical condition in which the cells that make use of starch have their intelligence so perverted as to be unable to recognize, appropriate, and use this material. This is but an illustration of the spiritual condition of those persons who have rejected light and truth, or neglected their opportunities to do good. Spiritual diabetes (this term is used for the sake of clearly bringing out the force of the comparison) is the result of having had the spiritual intelligence, or discernment, befogged or muddled by the presence of moral poisons (error, etc.). If this condition is allowed to exist, by and by it develops into a chronic state; day after day the one so afflicted will go on grumbling and finding fault with God because of his condition. Before long the grandest possibilities and the greatest opportunities will be passed by wholly unrecognized, owing to this spiritual blindness, or loss of moral sight, which has developed as a result of the accumulation of spiritual poisons in the soul, which in turn owe their existence in the soul to moral inactivity.

“QUENCH NOT THE SPIRIT,” OR THE FIRES OF SPIRITUAL ECONOMY.

It has already been stated that all starch taken into the system must ultimately be burned up, or oxidized. The human body is a living furnace, in which the fires are ever burning; the furnace, as it were, being replenished by the food taken at each meal. Just so with the soul. This in the physical life is but an illustration of the thing that is actually taking place within the moral nature of every growing Christian. The Spirit of God, “the Spirit of burning” (Isa. 4:4), is within the soul, to consume the dross, the selfishness, and the sin. David said, “My heart was hot within me, while I was musing the fire burned” (Ps. 39:3); speaking of a walk with Jesus, the disciples said, “Did not our heart burn within us?” (Luke 24:32); and with cloven tongues of fire the Spirit was made visible on the day of Pentecost. As a devouring fire, it descended to accept the burnt offering of old; and to-day, as the fires of spiritual purity and moral fervor burn and rage within the soul, let every Christian take heed that he does not, by selfishness, compromise, or by indifference to light, quench the Spirit, which burns within for the purification of soul, body, and spirit.
This, while it is one of the shortest verses in the Bible, is one that means much to us: “Quench not the Spirit.” 1 Thess. 5:19. To extinguish the physical fires in the body results in disease: to extinguish the fires of the soul can but result in the production of a spiritual condition unfavorable to moral growth, or the development of Christian character. All truth and spiritual food must be acted upon by the Spirit—must be vitalized by the Spirit—before the soul is able to derive full benefit from it. Truth, like physical food, must be burned up within us; and, like the energy of the food, it must be liberated,—liberated as spiritual heat and moral energy. Eze. 2:9, 10; 3:1-4; Jer. 15:16; 20:9.

HOW STARCH IS DIGESTED.

The saliva meets the starch as soon as it enters the mouth, and at once it begins its work of transforming soluble (cooked) starch into sugar, and it does not cease its activity until after it has been in the stomach for almost half an hour. The salivary glands manufacture about a quart of saliva every twenty-four hours, but this amount is increased or decreased by various circumstances. It is increased by partaking of dry food, also by the various natural flavors contained in the food substances, thus actually proving the truth of the saying that certain foods make the mouth water.
The flow of saliva is decreased by rapid eating. When food is swallowed too quickly, it does not remain in the mouth long enough for a sufficient amount of saliva to mingle with it to completely transform all the starch into sugar. The production of saliva is also decreased by the drinking of fluids at meals, or by the use of liquid or semiliquid foods. Nature is never wasteful; and when the salivary glands find that there is already an abundance of fluid in the mouth, they do not propose to go to the trouble of manufacturing saliva. An actual experiment demonstrated that there is twenty times as much saliva manufactured when eating a dry food substance, as granose, as when eating a liquid or semiliquid food.
Nature evidently expected that many would err in the proper use of the saliva, and so she has arranged, farther along, a digestive process for starch, which is not so directly under the control of man’s will. One of these starch-digesting fluids is the pancreatic juice. This fluid has various functions. It has the power of digesting not only starch, but also albumen and fat. It has more marked activity than saliva, although secreted in a much smaller quantity.
Nature, recognizing the great importance of having the starch thoroughly digested, furnishes it a still further opportunity of being acted upon by the intestinal juice, which also possesses the power of converting starch into sugar. So all the way along the alimentary canal, this process of starch digestion, which was begun in the mouth, is being continued to completion.

SPIRITUAL LESSON FROM STARCH DIGESTION.

Just as the saliva can take the cooked starch submitted to its action, and transform it into a form of sugar that is in every way suited to the nourishment of the body, so the Spirit of God, when allowed to have free access to our hearts, there to carry on his work of transformation, will be able to take us, our characters, and by his transforming power, convert them from the earthly into the heavenly, from the sensual into the spiritual. Just as the saliva is ever ready and ever able to change starch into sugar, so the Spirit of God is both willing and able to carry forward the wonderful work of changing the character of fallen man into that divine similitude that will entitle him to an eternal place in that everlasting building,—the temple of God. “In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are builded together for an habitation of God through the Spirit.”
If the starch is not in a suitable condition to be digested, or transformed, when it comes in contact with the saliva, does it then have to pass on through the system with no further opportunity of being digested?—No, there is yet another opportunity for the digestion of starch.
This second opportunity is when it comes in contact with the pancreatic juice, and possibly a third opportunity is afforded by the action of the intestinal juice. We see the same great principle of divine opportunity extended to man in his spiritual experience. God does not always cast us aside because we are not in a suitable condition to hear his voice the first time. Just as the starch has a probation, as it were, after passing the sphere of the saliva, so the sinner is usually given at least more than one opportunity of turning to God. “For God speaketh once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a dream, in a vision of the night. . . . He openeth the ears of men, and sealeth their instruction, that he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man. . . . He is chastened also with pain upon his bed.” Job 33:14-19.
God speaks once to man to show him the error of his way, and even a second time he makes an effort to show man the folly of his course; and if these opportunities do not accomplish the purpose of changing his mind, of transforming his character, the loving Father gives yet another opportunity, and this he represents as the last; it is the voice of pain, it is the language of disease: through affliction God seeks to make his last appeal to erring man. What a beautiful lesson! Even as the starch may be digested by three distinct fluids in the body, so the man himself is represented as having three distinct opportunities to recognize the necessity of a transformation of character, from pride to humility, from his purpose to God’s purpose; for God says that his object in all his speaking to man is to “hide pride from man,” and to “withdraw man from his purpose.”
Copyrighted, 1900, by David Paulson and W. S. Sadler.