SUNSHINE by John Harvey Kellogg

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, Cal. · Jun 13, 1906

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 32, No. 23.

SUNSHINE

By John Harvey Kellogg

TALKS TO YOUNG MEN. No. 4.

SUNSHINE.

HOW the earthquake broke things up, not only out in California where men and things in the dreadful power of its clutch felt the strength of its mighty thews; but it gathered the attention of the whole country and beyond the country, and focused it almost wholly on one city on the Pacific Coast. It aroused sympathy, touched hearts, opened pockets, loosed purse strings, and sent money and means flowing to the city by the Golden Gate. It demoralized railway transportation, affected telegraphic communication, and depressed the financial and commercial markets.

The earthquake did this and more. It wrecked hopes and families, it took life and reason, and has left many a mourner throughout the entire land. It clutched the office in which this paper is printed and its walls crumbled. That is why, I suppose, these talks have not appeared more regularly. But what a lesson has it been to us of the puny strength of man matched with the mighty forces of a perverted nature.

But this week we were to talk a little about sunshine, a thing which we ought to let talk for itself.

There is life in light. The strongest, hardest things which grow, grow in the sunlight.

We will not take time to attempt to analyze this potent agency of health. We do not need to know it in detail scientifically to realize its benefits. Demonstrations of its blessings are on every hand.

How frail and sickly are the plants which grow beneath a floor in the dark? This is measurably true when grown where it is light, but having no direct rays of the sun. But how hardy and strong they are when grown in direct sunlight!

The fiber of a tree which grows in the dense forest is much softer and less coherent than that of a tree which grows where the full sunshine bathes it from the topmost twig to root. Men are much like trees. Take the young people who are working in mines and factories and compare them with those who spend their days out-of-doors. What a contrast in complexion, in brightness of eye, in clearness of skin! The one lives in physical gloom; the other in sunlight.

Let the sunlight into your rooms. Sit in it; bathe in it. It is the mightiest germicide in the world. "It fades carpets and pictures and furniture." Let them fade. They are of little worth compared to the growing youth. Get just as much of sunshine as possible in the fresh open air. It is utterly impossible for some of the worst germs to live in it any great length of time. But men thrive on it.

Dr. Sunshine is among the best of physicians. Employ him; use him, constantly.

Sunlight is beautiful. In its fulness it is pure white. But that pure white is broken by the spectrum into seven different colors,—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Let it shine into your physical being till its beauty shall be as manifest in brightness of eye, clearness of skin, rosiness of cheek, as in flower and tree. There is no tariff or duty on it; there is no monopoly of it. The poor can have it as well as the rich. It treats unionist and non-unionist alike.

"Blest power of sunshine—genial day, What balm, what life, is in thy ray!" ABDIEL.