MAN, as a physical being, must be greatly affected by the food which he eats. By the process of mastication, digestion, and assimilation, food is manufactured into blood, muscle, sinew, bone, nerve, and brain.
While man may accustom himself to many unnatural and abnormal things, even to deadly poisons, in the way of food and drinks, it is obvious to all that the better the food the better the blood, and the cleaner and healthier every part of the system. It is well known that a continual diet of salt meat breeds scurvy. Swine's flesh is an aid to scrofula and kindred complaints. Certain diseased conditions spring from a constant diet of one kind.
These things need but to be stated to be recognized. The kind and quality of food is therefore important.
Quantity of Food.
But not alone is the kind of food important but the amount also. The Word of God classes gluttony with drunkenness, and the glutton with the drunkard. The active, mighty, long-lived men of earth have been almost universally temperate, frugal, abstemious men. Surfeiting, satiety, eating to fulness, benumbs the brain, dulls the intellect and apprehension, and shuts the door to the higher spiritual nature of the man. It is well nigh as difficult to reach the soul, to awaken the finer sensibilities, of the reveler, the glutton, the gormandizer, as it is those of the opium user and the drunkard. He will assent to the truthfulness of the theory, but his soul is not moved by its vital, life-giving morality.
Both quality and quantity are therefore important—proper and clean and pure in quality, sufficient, and only sufficient, in quantity.
Too great a variety is also evil. Only what is necessary to give the proper food elements should be eaten. Proper combinations of food should be studied. Why should we mix in our stomachs what if mixed upon our plate we would turn from in loathing and disgust? How true it is in many lives, as expressed by one writer:—
"The stomach, crammed from every dish,
Of roast and fowl, and flesh and fish,
Where wind and phlegm and acid jar,
And all the man is one intestine war,
Longs oft the school-boy's simple fare,
The restful sleep, and spirits light as air."
Condiments, stimulating food, too great variety, always tend to overeating, to over-indulgence, even as do stimulating drinks to drunkenness.
The ideal, the best dietary, must therefore be composed of simple, pure, well-prepared, unstimulating food in sufficient quantity and simple variety.
Important in the Sight of God.
That the food we live upon is important in God's sight is evident from the importance attached to it in the Bible. Here are a few of the divine wishes and warnings of the Word of God:—
"Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." 3 John 2.
"Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." 1 Cor. 10:31.
"And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible." 1 Cor. 9:25.
"When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee; and put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite. Be not desirous of his dainties; for they are deceitful meat." Prov. 23:1-3.
"Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy." And they were haughty, and committed abomination [incest, fornication, etc.] before Me; therefore I took them away as I saw good." Eze. 16:49, 50.
"And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand; let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof." Rom. 13:11-14.
"Take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of this life, and so that day come upon you unawares." Luke 21:34.
These scriptures not only show that in the Lord's mind eating and drinking are important, but that in the last days there will be special temptations and dangers in this respect. While the Gentiles, the people of the world, may ask, as all-absorbing questions, "What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" the Christian is to ask, What will best glorify God? What will better enable me to render to Him and my fellow-men more acceptable service? What is the best food, the simplest food? What will furnish the purest and best blood, the clearest mind, the keenest sensibilities, the best health? What kind of food will enable me best to live "temperate in all things"?
An Age of Vital Issues.
This is an age of pressing vital questions. According to the divine prophecies, written not alone in God's Word, but in the histories of nations, in the common every-day occurrences of all phases of common life, the end of all things earthly is at hand. This age is soon to give way to another. Jesus Christ is soon to finish His priestly work, and man will be left6without a Mediator. The plagues of infinite wrath (Revelation 16) are soon to be poured out upon the world, afflicting the bodies of men with combinations of every conceivable malady. Only those who are kept by the power of God within, who have Jesus Christ in the flesh, will endure that fearful ordeal. Thousands will fall at their side, and ten thousands at their right hand, but they will not be injured. Ps. 91:5-10. When it is over, Jesus will come in glory supernal to gather to Himself His own.
In those who will be gathered by Him at His coming will be fulfilled the prayer of inspiration: "The God of peace sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful He is that calleth you, who also will do it." 1 Thess. 5:23, 24. It is said of them that they are "without fault before the throne of God," or, as the Revision has it, "without blemish." Rev. 14:5. Like Israel of old, there will be "not one feeble person among their tribes." Ps. 105:37.
Harmony with God.
It follows from the above considerations and evidences that those who endure to the end will have been brought by faith to complete harmony with the will of God, physically and mentally, as well as spiritually.
During the dark ages of sin in centuries past, even God's people have stumbled on in more or less ignorance. Abraham was "the father of all who believe," but we would not look to him or his life as a law for marriage. Moses and Israel were given great light, but we do not look to that time to justify divorce or slavery. Neither will he who is expecting translation at the coming of his Lord look to David or Solomon to justify polygamy. The true child of God, in whose heart burns the blessed hope of soon meeting his Lord, will be satisfied with nothing save God's purest teaching, of which our Lord's words are the index finger. When the Pharisees asked Jesus, "Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?" our Lord replied by referring them to the primal marriage law, "in the beginning." But they, wishing to justify themselves, refer to Moses: "Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away?" Jesus answered: "Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives, but from the beginning it was not so." Matt. 19:3-8. X. (To be continued.)
