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.)
AM I MY BROTHER'S KEEPER?
By Bishop F. D. Huntington
OLD Syracuse was admirably literary. When it took its Athenian enemies captive in battle it spared those of them who could repeat the verses of Euripides. But old Syracuse crushed humanity, tortured slaves, worshiped with its appetites, and greedily swallowed its weak competitors till it was itself swallowed by greedier Rome.
"Am I my brother's keeper?" It is Cain's question. Yes, you are; all men and women are one another's keepers, educators, helpers or hinderers, saviours or seducers. You are trying to fill your life with beautiful things. The way is to fill it with right things; for, as society ripens, as the standard of manhood rises, the right things will come to be the beautiful things, as sure as God lives.—Bishop F. D. Huntington.
CHRIST AND THE SABBATH.
By G. E. Fifield
WE have seen that Christ was the Creator of the Sabbath, and its Law-giver, and that the Sabbath is the sign of the soul's submission to Him, and of His indwelling, sanctifying power.
This paper relates to Christ incarnate, Jesus of Nazareth, who walked the earth, and lived, and loved, and taught, eighteen centuries ago. What relation did He sustain, when thus on earth, to the Sabbath He had made, and to the Sabbath law He had given?
We are told that He ignored and abolished that law, and gave another in its place. Surely this would be strange—the Christ incarnate in conflict with, in antagonism to, the Christ eternal.
This position of the popular church on the question of the Sabbath involves a complete misunderstanding of the mission of Jesus. If the Sabbath, and the law in the heart of which it was enshrined, could be so easily set aside, He need not have come at all.
Satan for four thousand years had been seeking to set this law aside. All wicked men were, and ever had been, arrayed with Satan in this work. Christ did not become incarnate to complete the work of Satan, and of wicked men, but, as He says, "to do the will of My Father, and to finish His work." He did not come to give us the privilege to break that law, which, from the very nature of the law, as we have seen in former articles, would be no privilege at all, since it would inevitably bring misery and death. He came to reveal and impart the power to keep that law. "What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Rom. 8:3, 4. What this sin is that is thus condemned in the flesh, the Bible tells. "Sin is the transgression of the law." 1 John 3:4. Jesus condemned sin in His own flesh, by allowing the Spirit's power to triumph over it utterly, so that the temptation was never harbored in the thought, far less translated into action. He condemned sin in our flesh, by thus revealing the Spirit's power, which is for us all, and which if received will enable us to triumph as He did. We are to blame for sin, because it is unnecessary, since He came to save His people from their sins. This, then, is Christ's mission. He came, not to permit sin (the transgression of the law), but to save from it. All this He had been doing from the beginning, and is doing now.
There can be no conflict between the Christ eternal and the Christ incarnate. The Christ incarnate was a local and temporal revelation, and manifestation of an eternal fact. Christ had, from the beginning, when received into human hearts by faith, been living the spiritual life of His spiritual law there, lifting that soul above the strife, and turmoil, and conflict of sin, into the rest of true Sabbath-keeping in Him. He had been saving that soul from spiritual death unto eternal life; in short, doing all for that soul who received Him that He did openly and visibly when on earth. All this He is doing to-day for all who receive Him fully by faith. The eternal Christ, the infinite Word, gave the Sabbath and the law. So far from there being any conflict between the Christ eternal and the Christ incarnate, the eternal Christ became incarnate for the one purpose of revealing, truly, and visibly, and openly, His eternal purposes of love,—purposes which He even now promises to accomplish in every human life that will fully resign itself to His keeping.
This purpose is to establish His divine law of love in human hearts, by so writing its every precept, Sabbath and all, in the inner fiber of the soul that it will be the inner actuating principle of the life, and so cease to be an outer commanding and restraining force.
Just in proportion as the law is written by the Spirit in the desires of the heart, that soul will be free, and legalism will give place to that love which is the fulfilling of the law. Thus Christ becomes the end of the law for righteousness to every one who believes.
Before Christ came, it was prophesied of Him that He should "magnify the law, and make it honorable." Isa. 42:21.
Both of these predictions were grandly fulfilled. In His first recorded sermon He said: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." Matt. 5:17, 18. "And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail." Luke 16:17.
Those who think that Jesus abolished the Sabbath He had previously made and enshrined in His law, should remember that the Sabbath commandment is so much more than a jot or a tittle that it is the longest commandment of the law. Jesus taught that murder and adultery extended to the first faint thought of hatred or lust consciously entertained in the heart. How grandly this fulfilled the prophecy that He would "magnify the law"!
He found that the Jewish rabbis, while professing to honor the Sabbath, had really made it dishonorable by hedging its observance around by traditions, until what God had intended to be a "delight," had become a burden hard to be borne. From the prophets these rabbis had learned that Israel had been driven into captivity, and Jerusalem left desolate, because the Sabbath had been desecrated. They rightly determined to avoid a repetition of this catastrophe.
But they did not discern that the law was spiritual, and that the Sabbath could only be observed in truth when the soul was so submitted to Christ that He dwelt there, introducing His own rest by His blessed, "Peace, be still." Being ignorant of this spiritual righteousness of God, and going about to establish their own righteousness by the works of the law, they did not attain unto true Sabbath-keeping. Yet so ardent were they in their efforts that they added several hundred laws to the Sabbath commandment. By their traditions it was unlawful for a man to walk on the grass on the Sabbath; for he might shell out some of the seed, and this would be threshing7on the Sabbath. He must not even carry a handkerchief, for this would be bearing a burden on the Sabbath; however, if he pinned it to his coat, it would pass as a part of that garment, and the law would thus be evaded. Before eating an egg, one must learn that the hen had not produced it on the Sabbath day, else he would not be guiltless. Especially, one must avoid doing any work to relieve or heal the sick on the Sabbath day, since it was considered more pious that they should suffer than that work be done to relieve them.
Thus the divine impulse of unselfish love in the heart, was denied and repudiated for outward forms. In this way the Sabbath was made dishonorable, and the day that God intended to be a blessing, and the most joyous day of all the week, was transformed into a burden and a curse.
God made the Sabbath to be a sign of the indwelling sanctifying power of divine love, which should consecrate the life to the service of loving ministration. But this meaning was entirely lost, and denied and contradicted by these traditions. Creation's rest, the Sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord and honorable, had been transformed into an instrument of inhuman neglect, priestly self-righteousness, and cruel criticism.
How did Jesus relate Himself to all this? If He came to abolish this Sabbath and institute another, here, at least, was excuse for such a change. If this had been His object, He would surely have left the hypocritical Pharisees and their Sabbath undisturbed, while He gave another sabbath, unincumbered by their traditions, to His followers.
Did He do this?—So far from this, He threw His life boldly into the breach, to stop this tide of formality and traditionalism, and fulfil the prophecy concerning Him, that He should magnify the law and make it honorable. He always kept the Sabbath, and so did His disciples, but He ignored these rabbinical traditions concerning it. When the captious criticism came, "Why do Thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?" the cutting but truthful response was ready, "Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your traditions?" The Pharisees accused His disciples of breaking the Sabbath, because they transgressed their tradition against shelling the seed, by rubbing the heads of wheat and eating the grains as they hungered while passing through the fields. Christ pointed them higher than any human ceremony or tradition, to that law of love, which seeks to feed the hungry and alleviate human suffering, and said, "If ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless." He thus pronounced them guiltless of Sabbath-breaking, according to God's law, and, to emphasize His own right to interpret the true meaning of that law, He immediately added, "For the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day."
"They asked Him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day? that they might accuse Him." His reply is sublime in its simplicity and force: "What man shall be among you, that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much then is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days." Thus He outlawed their traditions by showing that they set mercenary motives above love, and the paltry money value of a sheep above human life; and then He declared that the sacrificing service of loving necessity is not Sabbath-breaking, but lawful on any day.
Then, altho He knew they were watching Him to take counsel how they might destroy Him, altho He knew that in the end they would accomplish their purpose, and murder Him, because He ignored their God-dishonoring traditions, and by His life taught them truly how the Sabbath should be kept, yet He calmly said to the palsied man, "Stretch forth thy hand," and He restored it whole as the other. "And the Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the Herodians against Him, how they might destroy Him." Mark 3:6. See, also, Matt. 12:14.
Again and again Christ taught the true meaning of the Sabbath day, by calmly offering the service and sacrifice of love on that day, tho He well knew the Pharisees were maddened to murder by the deed. Thus Jesus gave His life for the Sabbath day. Not in His teaching merely, but even more fully in His life, He magnified the law and made it honorable.
"In His life the law appears
Drawn out in living characters."
"The law of the Lord is perfect."
His life was perfect, simply and only because it perfectly lived that perfect law. Any other conception of Sabbath-keeping or commandment-keeping than that revealed in the life of Jesus, is faulty and incomplete, and only a revival in another form of Jewish ceremonialism.
Thoroughness in Christian Regeneration
By T. D. Witherspoon
In religion, as in agriculture, everything depends upon the thoroughness with which initial processes are conducted. In opening the way for the reception of the Gospel, the plowshare of the Spirit must be permitted to go deep enough not only to stir the thin soil of emotion which lies upon the surface of the "evil heart of unbelief" that is by nature in us all, but to upturn and remove the underlying rock itself. Only thus will the good seed of the kingdom find its way into that deep subsoil where the conditions of permanent vitality and fruitful development can be found. No mere surface work will do here, nothing but such a radical regeneration as shall "take away the heart of stone out of the flesh,"—such as shall make old things to pass away and all things to become new. Emotions are transient; only principles abide. A religion that flourishes in times of revival in the church, and withers as soon as they are gone, is a miserable cheat. The sooner it is detected and renounced, the better for the soul.—T. D. Witherspoon.
"BLIND KITTENS."
By Editor
The New York Evening Journal asked a question, "Is there a God? and will my soul live forever?" It received many replies, affirmative and otherwise. To the doubters, the editor has this to say, and his thoughts are suggestive:—
Many, to our amazement, seem to think that science in its workings has discovered that we could get on very well without a God. But science has done just the contrary. And here, if you please, we shall build up a sort of a parable.
A man had a box full of motherless blind kittens. He was very kind to them. He put their box on wheels and moved it about to keep it in the sun. He gave them milk at regular intervals. With loving-kindness he drove away the dog which growled and scared the little kittens into spitting and back-raising.
The kittens trusted the man; loved him, and felt that they needed him. That was the age of faith.
One day the dog got a kitten and tore it to pieces.
The kitten had disobeyed orders and laws. It had crawled away from the box.
But another kitten, with one eye now partly open, got thoughtful and said: "There is no such thing as man. Or, if there be such a thing, he is a monster to let little Willie get torn up. Don't talk to me about kitten Willie being a sufferer through his own fault. I say there is no such thing as a man. We kittens are bosses of the universe and must do our own dog fighting."
That speaker was the Ingersoll kitten.
A kitten of higher mental class opened both eyes just a little and actually made observations.
Said he: "I am a scientist. I discover that we owe nothing to man's kindness. We are governed by laws. This box is on wheels. It rolls around in the sunlight of its own volition. True, I do not know who shoves it, but no man could do it. Further, I discover that there is such a thing as the law of 'milk-passing.' Milk comes this way just so often. Its coming is nature's law. It has always come. It always will come. Good-night, I am going to sleep. But don't talk to me any more about a kind man, it's all law, and I am certainly great, for I saw the laws first."
That was the Newton kitten, but he lacked the Newton faith.
We have no time to tell what the Darwin kitten said. He was very long-winded.
But this happened. The kittens grew up—such as did not perish through their own fault. They got their eyes fully opened. They saw the man, recognized him, and asked only to be allowed to stay in his house. "Excuse us," they said, "for being such foolish kittens. But you know our eyes were not quite open."
"Don't mention it," said the kind man. "Go down cellar and help yourselves to mice."
That's the end of the parable. We are all blind kittens, and our few attempts at explaining nature's wonders and kindness only get us into deeper and deeper mysteries.
We discover that the earth goes around the sun. But the greatest scientist must admit his inability to tell or guess why it goes. "Give me the initial impulse," he says, "and all the rest is easy."
The blind kittens in their wagon say, "Give our wagon just one shove and we'll explain the rest."
The kitten gets hold of a law of "milk-passing," and substitutes that for man's individual kindness.
The feeble-minded agnostic seizes the law of gravitation and thinks he can discard God with gravity's help.
But the great mind that defined gravity's law was a religious mind—too profound to see anything final in its own feeble power.
Newton was no atheist. None better than he knew the mysterious character of his law. That it has worked from all eternity "directly as the mass and inversely as the square of the distance," he knew and told his fellow-creatures. That is all he knew and all that any man knows about it.
To-day Lord Kelvin, a worthy follower in Newton's steps, is asked to explain WHY gravity acts. He can only say:—
I accept no theory of gravitation. Present science has no right to attempt to explain gravitation. We know nothing about it. We simply know NOTHING about it.
Darwin asks, without answering his question, "Who can explain what is the essence of the attraction of gravitation?"
To our doubting friends we say: Doubt if you must. But doubt intelligently and doubt first of all your own blind-kitten wisdom. Remember that YOU at least know absolutely nothing. Study and think. Read. But don't let the half-developed wisdom of others choke up your brain and leave you a mere clogged-up doubting machine.
Whatever you do, never interfere with the faith of others. Spread KNOWLEDGE, spread FACTS. Keep to yourself the doubts that would disturb others' happiness and do them no good. Tell what you KNOW. Keep quiet about what you GUESS.
COME TO JESUS.
By Claudia Campbell
JESUS, the loving Shepherd,
Is calling to you to-day,—
O! heed ye the Spirit's pleading,
And come without delay.
Come, all ye heavy-laden,
And sick, and tired of sin;
Open your hearts to Jesus;
Open, and let Him in.
Come with your heavy burden,
Come, tho you be distressed.
Jesus will comfort and help you;
Jesus will give you rest.
Then, when you meet with trials,
Then, when you meet with care,
Then you can go to the Saviour,
And tell all to Him in prayer.
He'll help you to bear each trial,
For He knows your every need.
O! then you will find that the Saviour
Is truly a Friend indeed.
So come, O come, to the Saviour!
Come to Him now—to-day.
Jesus is waiting to save you;
Come to Him while you may.
