Health Department by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 18, 1875

Health Department.

By James White

“Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” 3 John 2.

Bible Hygiene.

The Bible, from the earliest record of man’s creation in Genesis, to the closing Revelation which brings to view his triumphant redemption, exalts man as

THE GLORY OF THE CREATOR.

This is seen in the words of Jehovah to his Son, in the beginning, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness;” and is no less apparent in the declaration in the last book of the Bible from the four and twenty elders, as they worship at the throne of Heaven, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honor, and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”

Whether it was man’s moral character, his physical form, or both, that was made in the likeness of God, we leave with theologians to discuss. In either case we behold man as expressed in David’s song of praise to the beneficent Creator, “Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor; thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands. O Lord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth.” The goodness of God in creation, in the gift of his Son for the redemption of fallen man, and in the ministrations of holy angels and the gift of the Holy Spirit, through which his word has been revealed, is feebly expressed in these words of the beloved John, “God is love.”

The record of his creation, his ample provisions and glorious surroundings in Eden, fully attest the love of God to man, and the glory he would confer upon him in this life. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food.”

LABOR A BLESSING.

Man was formed for activity. “And the Lord God took the man, and put him in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.” It was the design of the Creator that he should derive his chief delights of existence from those pursuits that would demand physical and mental action. Before sin entered happy Eden, the representatives of the race were put into the garden, “to dress it and to keep it,” where their minds could trace, in a thousand varied forms, the perfections and power of the divine creative Hand. In the estimation of God, and his Son, and of the holy angels, labor was honorable and for the good of man, even for sinless hands in holy Eden.

After the transgression, God said to Adam, “Cursed be the ground for thy sake.” The earth was cursed in consequence of Adam’s sin. But the fact that he was to eat his bread by the sweat of his face was not the curse. Increased labor was simply a consequence which was for his best good in his fallen condition.

“God is love.” We must not view the curse in the light of retaliation on the part of the gracious Creator. We call in question that lazy theology that makes work the sum of the curse, and looks forward to the time when immaterial spirits shall go to an immaterial Heaven to get rid of work, and sit on the edge of a cloud and sing hallelujahs to all eternity.

But labor, first instituted in holy Eden, is for man’s best good in his fallen condition out of Eden. And as for the future, give us the tangible inheritance of the saints in light, in the earth redeemed from the curse, and happy Eden restored upon it again. There the redeemed, in all the gladness of immortal life, will enjoy the delights of activity of body and mind in a world of inexhaustible variety, bearing the impress of both the creating and the redeeming hand.

GOD IS LOVE.

And in love he created our first parents, and richly endowed them with physical and mental power. This was for the glory of the Creator, and the happiness of the creature man. God is the author of life, health, strength, and true happiness. Death, sickness, sorrow, physical and moral wretchedness, are the legitimate offspring of the transgression of moral and natural law instituted by the divine Author of all good.

“God is love.” He is not the author of sickness, sorrow, and death. In a general sense, sickness is no more a necessity than sin. At a funeral, a sensible minister once made the startling assertion that it was a disgrace to die. He did not mean that death was avoidable at a good old age; but that its existence, even in ripe age, was the result of the first great transgression on the part of the representatives of the dying race. And he might have added that premature death, in childhood, youth, or in the strength of middle life, was the result of continued transgression.

“God is love.” He is not the author of our woes. And it is a stupid reflection upon the divine character to lay our sickness, pains, bereavements, tears, and sorrows, to the mysterious dealings of his providential hand. It may, however, be fashionable, on funeral occasions, for ministers, in their words of condolence with the bereaved, to charge the progress of disease and the ravages of death, in those who should live to bless society, to the wise dealings of the loving Disposer of events. They may gravely state that for very good and wise reasons, he has removed dear friends from us by death. Fashion and custom may dress and decorate corpses of the youth with muslin and flowers. Taste and expense may adorn our cemeteries with the sculpture of art and the glory of nature: yet we hear the voice of revelation and of reason declaring that death is the reward of sin, and is man’s dreaded foe. Poets may sing:—

“Why do we mourn for dying friends? Or shake at death’s alarm? ’Tis but the voice that Jesus sends, To call them to his arms. “Why should we start, and fear to die? What timorous worms we mortals are! Death is the gate to endless joy, And yet we dread to enter there.”

And yet the great apostle, when speaking of the resurrection of the just to the joys of eternal life, says, “The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.” 1 Cor. 15 : 26.

“God is love.” And his revealed will relates to man’s well-being in this life, as well as to that which is to come. God does not take pleasure in the miseries of this mortal state. He delights in the happiness of obedient intelligences in this world, as well as in the future joys of the redeemed in the world that is to come. The Bible teaches how to live so as to enjoy that health and happiness in this life favorable to securing eternal life. True godliness does not neglect the laws of our present being, and dimly view only the immortal existence. It is profitable unto all things. It gives promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.

The religion of the Bible was not intended simply as a garment to put on, to cover moral and physical impurities. It was designed to convert the entire man, soul, body, and spirit, that he might be pure within and without. That bogus piety which would give license to consecrated gluttony, devoted lust, and sanctified filthiness, is simply a burlesque upon the religion of the Bible.

J. W.