WHAT YOU NEED TO EAT 5

    

 If the Israelites had manifested a spirit of submission to God's wise prohibitions, he would have removed from them everything injurious to their health, and would have suffered no sickness to be among them. But he gave them what they lusted for, because they would not submit to him.

      Appetite has been indulged to the injury of health. Stimulating drinks have been used freely, which have confused the brain and brought down man to the level of the brute creation. While intoxicated, every degree of crime has been committed, and yet the perpetrators have been excused in many instances, because they knew not what they were doing. This does not lessen the guilt of the criminal. If by his own hand he puts the glass to his lips, and deliberately takes that which he knows will destroy his reasoning faculties, he becomes responsible for all the injury he does while intoxicated, at the very moment he lets his appetite control him, and he barters away his reasoning faculties for intoxicating drinks. It was his own act which brought him even below the brutes, and crimes committed when he is in a state of intoxication should be punished as severely as though the person had all the power of his reasoning faculties.

      Nadab and Abihu, by drinking wine, beclouded their reasoning faculties, and so lost their sense of sacred things, that they thought they could as well offer common fire as sacred. God did not excuse them because the brain was confused. Fire from his presence destroyed them in their sin. Some look with horror upon men who have been overcome with liquor, and are seen reeling and staggering in the street, while at the same time they are gratifying their appetite for things differing in their nature from spirituous liquor, but which injure the health, affect the brain, and destroy their high sense of spiritual things. The liquor-drinker has an appetite for strong drink which he gratifies, while another has no appetite for intoxicating drinks to restrain, but he desires some other hurtful indulgence, and does not practice self-denial any more than the drunkard.

      Those who do not control their appetites in eating are guilty of intemperance. In those cases where men lose all sense of their obligation to God, their families, and to community, it is a slow process. They are not changed from the kind husband and father at once. It takes time to degrade them to beasts, where they become mere wrecks of humanity. With many, their first error is in making a god of their appetite, subsisting mostly on highly-seasoned animal food which produces a feverish state of the system, especially if pork is used freely. The blood becomes impure. The circulation is not equalized. Chills and fever follow. The appetite fails. They think something must be done, and perhaps send for ale, which stimulates for the time, but as soon as the influence of the ale is gone they sink as much lower, and a continual use of the ale keeps them stimulated and over-excited. They think that the ale was of so much benefit to them, they must continue its use. After a while it loses its influence, then they use a stronger beverage, until they give themselves up to every excess, and man formed in the image of his Maker degrades himself lower than the beasts. It required time to benumb the sensibilities of the mind. It was done gradually, but surely.

      Tobacco, in whatever form it is used, tells upon the constitution. It is a slow poison. It affects the brain and benumbs the sensibilities, so that the mind cannot clearly discern spiritual things, especially those truths which would have a tendency to correct this filthy indulgence. Those who use tobacco in any form are not clear before God. In such a filthy practice it is impossible for them to glorify God in their bodies and spirits, which are his. And while they are using slow and sure poisons, which are ruining their health, and debasing the faculties of the mind, God cannot approbate them. He may be merciful to them while, they indulge in this pernicious habit in ignorance of the injury it is doing them, but when the matter is set before them in its true light, then they are guilty before God if they continue to indulge this gross appetite