VEGETARIANISM AND INTEMPERANCE.
By David Paulson, M.D.
It seems remarkable to us when we read that seven times were the devils cast out of Mary Magdalene, but modern missionary experiences furnish parallel cases. I am personally acquainted with a man who, during the last few years, has given his heart to God and backslidden to the drink habit thirty-three times. He finally stumbled into our Medical Missionary Dispensary, bound down as effectually by this demon as ever were the men who wandered about the tombs on the hills of Gadara. The man made marked improvement under rational remedies properly applied, and then his most pathetic inquiry was, "Who shall deliver me from this body of death?" I told him how spices, condiments, and meats were creating a fiery thirst in him, that even God had not promised to quench. It was a new idea to him. He went away determined to try the force of the truth that I had sought to impress upon his mind. For a number of days he worked about Chicago without the slightest desire for liquor. Then, upon visiting with some of his friends, they persuaded him to dine with them after the "old style," and that meant to that poor man an invitation card to return to his old life. The result was, it was beer in the evening, whisky in the morning, and then a week of profound drunkenness. Sorrowful, miserable, and penitent, the man returned to our dispensary, and said he had demonstrated the truth of what I told him, and asked me, for God's sake, to help him upon his feet once more. This I gladly did in the name of the Master, who continues to pity and forgive our shortcomings, even beyond the "seventy times seven." Twenty weeks have passed away. That man has lived carefully upon the natural products of the earth, has not felt one desire for liquor, and, physically, he is another man. He has learned the valuable lesson that in physical things, as well as in spiritual, God works in harmony with the laws He has instituted. If a mustard-seed plaster is applied externally to even a converted man, it will raise a blister, just the same as it would on a sinner. The same amount of mustard sprinkled upon meat and applied inside will just as surely create a thirst that water can not satisfy. God Himself has established this relation. Providence has opened a way for this man so he has secured a fine position, at a high salary; and his testimony when he comes to the mission, has an intelligent inspiration in it that has encouraged many a poor mortal to seek to investigate the cause for the fetters that seem to fasten him to a life of sin.