p. 143 | Signs of the Times, Vol. 31, No. 9. (3/10/1914)

Relations of Diet, Morals, and Health

By David Paulson, M.D.

Exercise and Sanitation—He Received a New Impulse—The Power to Surmount Obstacles

By DAVID PAULSON, M.D.

Our forefathers earned their bread by the sweat of their face, while the majority of their children are to-day earning theirs by the sweat of their brains; and while our diet is becoming richer and more luxurious, and is partaken of more freely, our habits have become more and more sedentary. Hence the activities of life are not only blocked on one hand by overeating, but are stifled on the other hand by lack of physical activity.

During vigorous exercise, five or six times as much carbon dioxide gas is eliminated from the lungs as when sitting still. Again, during a brisk walk, two thirds of the entire volume of blood in the body is circulating through the muscles. When inactive, two thirds of the blood is passing through the internal organs. This furnishes a hint why sedentary people are so likely to suffer of various internal congestions.

A Pestilential Spot Becomes a Health Resort

We are making tremendous advancement in securing health by law. Sanitary and quarantine regulations have enormously diminished epidemics and contagious diseases. They have transformed Panama from a pestilential spot into a veritable health resort. They have banished yellow fever from our fair land. But such diseases as are due to intemperance, dietetic errors, the use of tobacco, and other enslaving habits, and various excesses, are increasing by leaps and by bounds.

It can not be denied that cancer, Bright's disease, heart-disease, apoplexy, neurasthenia, and a number of other chronic disorders, are largely due to personal violations of the laws of health; and these are enormously on the increase. The prevention of these diseases requires self-denial; and that means, in nine cases out of ten, a new impulse from Heaven.

A New Impulse While Intoxicated

As a capital illustration of just what thousands need, I will tell of what a drunken man received. One night I was in the Life Boat Mission that we used to maintain on State Street in Chicago. A man in the audience was so intoxicated that he kept trying to break up the meeting. I finally took him by the arm and persuaded him to accompany me up-stairs.

I tried to impress upon him the importance of becoming delivered from the liquor habit. He said something about being a drunkard for forty years, and that it was no use. I felt impressed that the Lord could do something for the poor fellow that I could not do. So in spite of his vigorous objections, I succeeded in getting him down on his knees, and then I earnestly prayed the Lord to deliver him, and I told him he must pray. He said he couldn't, he didn't know how. I told him just to ask the Lord to deliver him from the liquor habit, and finally he blurted out these very words: "Lord, if You can do anything for a poor broken-down bum like me, I wish You would. Amen." That was not a very eloquent prayer, but evidently God saw a bigger prayer in the poor man's soul, for he arose practically sober.

Got a New Power in His Life

I took him down again to the mission meeting, intending to see him afterward, but he slipped out unobserved. Six weeks later he came back, well dressed and clothed in his right mind. He wanted to see the doctor, but I was not there that night. When opportunity came to testify, he arose, and said that six weeks before, he had come into that mission a drunken outcast. His wife had left him in sheer despair, his employer had discharged him, his tools had been pawned for drink, but the doctor took him up-stairs and got him down on his knees to pray, and something happened to him. He knew that he went out with a new power in his life.

He hunted up his wife, and told her that if she would live with him, he would give her no further trouble. He told his employer that he could keep sober now. He said that from the hour when he prayed, he lost his appetite for drink. In other words, he received some "pollen" from another world, and it had fertilized his soul. That represents what every man needs who is a victim of an enslaving habit. He does not need merely talk. He needs a new impulse, and that from a higher source.

The Devil Will Be on Hand

The reason the perpetual motion dream never materializes is because we can not entirely eliminate the friction; and the man who starts out to be delivered from soul-and-body-destroying habits, and who adopts health reform principles, and is determined to cultivate healthy habits, will find that the devil will put plenty of obstacles in his way for the purpose of disheartening and discouraging him.

A genuine Christian experience does not necessarily remove all these obstacles. Sometimes for the time being it seems to increase them, but it does give power to surmount them.

I am firmly convinced that if we resolutely resolve to live up to all the light God has sent and is sending to us, and endeavor to make intelligent use of all the helpful means that are within our reach, God will give us all the health He sees we will make good use of; and furthermore, what is equally important, He will bless to our good, not only here, but hereafter, the amount of ill health He permits us to struggle with.

Sickness May Prove a Blessing

While sickness on the whole is an awful curse, it can, in individual cases, be transformed into a lifelong blessing. For the benefit of some discouraged and disheartened invalid, I will add my personal experience.

Just as I was entering manhood, I was stricken down with a terrible attack of diphtheria in its most deadly form. An older brother had just passed away of the same disease. In a few days I was brought to the very brink of the grave. I knew that I was dying and had but a few hours to live.

It Would Not Reach the Other Side

Although I had been brought up in a Christian home, and was a member of the church, it would have been as easy to make a plank extend across Lake Michigan as for my Christian experience to reach over to the other shore. The future outlook was black despair to me. In the agony of my soul I pleaded with God to spare my life, and I promised in return that I would dedicate my life to His service. God marvelously heard my prayer, and that attack of sickness was the means in the hands of God of saving my soul.

Some years ago I visited the home of my childhood. There I met some of my childhood friends who had an outlook similar to what my own had been. Some of them had buried both their talents and their souls in the earth. Then I thanked God that He had permitted me to learn through sickness what I had failed to learn during health, and what these boyhood friends of mine had equally failed to learn since then.

If we are determined not to be disobedient to the heavenly vision, we shall be able to know that all things, including attacks of sickness, may work together for good to those who love the Lord.

The HOME

By Max Hill

WHEN WE ADD

O LIVE on the plan of addition, Add virtue and grace each day; And soon, in the time of fruition, "Well done" will the Master say. Add ever the true to the treasure That heavenly love supplies, And find, when God's gifts you measure, His bounties He multiplies. MAX HILL.

Don't Be a Busybody

By Benjamin Keech

Gossip Can Not Mingle with True Friendliness—Self-Conscious and Eccentric People—“Kindly Affectioned”

By BENJAMIN KEECH

DON'T be a busybody, except to keep the body busy doing good, profitable, legitimate work, preferably at home. This honestly pays better than peddling gossip and using the tongue the wrong way. Life is short, and the tongue is a fateful member. We want to learn to use it the right way.

We can not meet people with the same pure friendliness, after having maliciously talked about them. Indeed, our friends, with perhaps a few splendid exceptions, will not treat us with cordiality after learning that we have been stabbing them in the back with a deadly weapon.

With what confidence and happiness we might all proceed through life if we knew that our friends were talking kindly and not detrimentally about us! It is the sad knowledge that most people are on the lookout for things to gossip about, and are apparently overjoyed when they find them, that casts a deadening gloom over many sensitive souls. O, let us get out of that class, if we are in it!

"DEAL GENTLY WITH THE ERRING"

A man or a woman, for instance, commits some wrong. It may be the first offense, and perhaps only one or two persons know anything about it. Yet they hasten to pass the matter along as a choice bit of gossip, and in time an influence is wrought against the offender which may take long years to overcome. On the other hand, if the occurrence had been wrapped in a charitable silence, or at least, had not been gaily, gladly held up for the world to gloat over, the mistaken one might have progressed safely from the error, cured of any desire to repeat it.

Or perhaps — which is more to the point — the man or the woman did not really commit the error, but was only maliciously lied about, as quite frequently happens. Cruel, unspeakably cruel, is the tongue of the busybody.

MADE ODD, SELF-CONSCIOUS, AND ECCENTRIC

Many persons are made odd, self-conscious, and eccentric by this very treatment. It is difficult for these conscientious ones to appear at ease when they imagine that the lens of adverse criticism is directed constantly upon them. If they could only be treated according to the Golden Rule for a required length of time, what a tremendous strain would be lifted from their minds! Relief comes only through divine love.

In the enlightening First Epistle of John we read, “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer”; and discerning Christians know why — because hate kills, while love is life-giving. We do not have to aim a material weapon at a person to kill or cripple the good there is in him. Our suspicious, critical, hateful, malicious, revengeful, unforgiving, morose thoughts and speeches, resting upon him for years, may do an incalculable amount of mischief.

On the contrary, the gentle beams of divine love, kindness, charity, good will, forgiveness, compassion, and the like have a remarkably revivifying influence, calculated to purify and harmonize all error, not only in the recipient, but in the giver as well. We may not naturally like a person, but we can learn to love him in the divine way — that is, to think and speak only good about him, thus freeing ourselves from responsibility in helping to bring any error upon him.

When we recognize that all the error in the world comes through our wrong thoughts, speeches, and acts, we conclude that improvement can obtain only by a purification of those thoughts, speeches, and acts. How things brighten up when, through pure communion with God, we succeed in expelling error from our minds, and filling them with truth and love! This is the leading way to improve our health and keep well.

The Bible says: “Love one another.” “Be kindly affectioned one to another with brotherly love; in honor preferring one another.” “Therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” He who hates another — and a good many things partake of the nature of hate which are not generally recognized as hate itself — is the worst kind of law-breaker, because he breaks divine law. Even in politics, the wise reformer is he who does not hate people, but confines his energies to correcting unjust principles because of his love for the right.

Apparently good people do bad things, and bad people do good things, proving the truth that we should not judge, because we can not. A person may be actually bad, but we can never make the error less by fighting it with more error. “Overcome evil with good” is the rule. The hateful need love; the discouraged, courage; the sinning, salvation. All need purer hearts, minds, and wills, that we may prefer to see and talk about only the good in people and things.

Don't be a busybody. Our professional busybodies make cowards of us all.

Ripe Olives for Sale

By A. E. Crist

Missions, in 50-gallon barrels, 45c a gallon. In 25-gallon barrels, 55c. In 5-gallon cans, 65c. In 1-gallon cans, 75c. Excellent flavor. A good, dark color. Average size, 5/8 or larger. Hygienically cured. Satisfaction guaranteed. Freight east of Rockies, $1.50 a hundred. Minimum, $2.85. By express, $1.60 for 5-gallon can. A. E. Crist, Chico, Cal.

Cut Down Expense on Your Pay Roll Work

Your business can save what the big concerns have spent to find shortcut pay roll methods. This Pay Rolls Bulletin starts you where they left off.

This bulletin is Free—another Burroughs Service. It is full of meat—for instance: Figuring Time, Timekeeper's Report, Making Up Rate Sheets, Individual and Grand Totals, Insuring Pay Roll Accuracy, How "Uncle Sam" Does It, and Getting Production Costs. You will find the bulletin filled with money saving ideas.

Of course, we have a purpose in offering you this service bulletin. Our business is to furnish machines to cut down Pay Roll costs. We find that the business man who saves money by using shortcut methods is usually ready to look into the still greater saving he can make by handling these same methods on a machine.

Send the coupon or ask our System Service Department for specific information on your pay roll problems.

Burroughs Adding Machine Company No. 154 Burroughs Block, Detroit, Michigan European Office: 76 Cannon Street, London, E. C., England Makers of adding and adding-subtracting bookkeeping machines, listing and non-listing adding and calculating machines, visible-printing adding and calculating machines—86 different models in 492 combinations of features—$150 to $950 in U. S. Easy payments if desired.

Send me a copy of your new Pay Rolls Bulletin. There must be no cost and no obligation to me. Name ........................................................................................................... Firm ............................................................................................................. Street .......................................................................................................... City and State ........................................................................................... Business .......................................................... Employes .......................... Next time your representative is in this vicinity I will also be glad to have him call and explain how a Burroughs Bookkeeping Machine could be profitably applied to my business. O. K.

The Theater and Its Exhibit of Decaying Morals

By L. A. R.

GOD utters a wo upon the man who puts darkness for light, and evil for good. Remembering this wo of God, read the following — which we believe to be a just statement regarding a large portion of the theatrical world to-day — and draw your own conclusions. Mr. William Winter, in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, recently spoke as follows:

"The accession of such noxious trash, a kind of synopsis of police-station blotters and diurnal hospital reports, is a natural consequence of an insidious evil influence which, many years ago, began to show itself, at first furtively, then a little more openly — the influence of writers, some of them very clever, who were willing to seek profit by addressing a morbid curiosity and the carnal propensities of human nature with sophisticated stage pictures of the proceedings of infatuated fools and sentimental demireps — the 'seamy side' of life. That influence received a vigorous impulse from Arthur Pinero's ably constructed but radically unmoral play of 'The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.'"

"Other tainted theatrical fabrics have followed, in rapid succession, till at last almost every barrier protective of good manners, good taste, and public decency has been demolished, and spectacles are now presented, with impunity, against which every normal, right-thinking mind revolts. That revolt, however, finds far too little active expression. Once in a while the police interfere, but to little purpose."

"A common notion — one that, at least, is insistently urged and widely deferred to — is that these reprehensible plays are really 'criticisms of life,' 'bold,' 'virile,' 'progressive,' 'up to date,' scandalizing nobody but fools and prudes. It is impossible, accordingly, to escape the conclusion that, to a large section of the public in New York — which is the center — refinement, morality, reticence, and decency are things worn out and cast away. How else can be explained the teeming abundance and the popularity of 'drama' which is, variously, aberrant, morbid, pornographic, and vulgar?"

"The fact is that the direction of the theater has been almost entirely usurped by illiterate, unscrupulous speculators, solicitous for monetary gain and the gratification of their vanity. And under such managerial dominance, the theater, practically, has been surrendered to an uncouth, ignorant, ill-conditioned democracy, unfit to direct anything; and intellect, judgment, and taste are invited to accept and applaud bad for good, right for wrong, filth for purity, ugliness for beauty, the manifestation of disease and decay for 'progress,' and, in the hysterical blather of a rabid mob, to recognize and reverence the voice of the people as the voice of God!"

Reform Organizations and Naval Expansion

By Editor

Mrs. John Henry Hammond has organized a parents' league "among prominent men and women in New York society." Mrs. Hammond says, "We hope to make it fashionable to be sensible, and unfashionable to be foolish." The aim is a very commendable one, but the task is stupendous. It is interesting to observe, however, that almost every day in the year brings the launching of some new organization for the purpose of working out some much needed reform in society. Either these good people are very greatly mistaken in regard to needed reforms, or else the same ones are mistaken when they are continually telling us that the world is getting better and better all the time. If the world is growing better so rapidly, why the need of such a multitude of reform organizations?

A bill as reported to the House by the Naval Affairs Committee appropriates $140,200,000 for the navy for the next fiscal year. This is exclusive of amounts to be spent for armor and armament. The appropriation provides for two first-class battle-ships of the highest speed and the largest possible radius of action, and to rank among the world's greatest Dreadnoughts. It also provides for one powerful 1,300-ton sea-going submarine with a speed of twenty-one knots. It has not been so very long since these little submarine vessels had a speed of only eight to ten knots.

A large number of influential people, representing one of the great political parties of the state of California, recently met in San Francisco. Many political measures were discussed, and resolutions concerning them were passed. One of those resolutions opposes the campaign in California for state-wide prohibition, on the ground that it will destroy the wine industry, which, it is affirmed, is one among the greatest business enterprises of the state. California has, in addition to its wine industry, a great many thousands of young men and women who are being ruined every year by wine and other kinds of strong drink. The question, then, resolves itself into a very simple one: Will we protect the dollars and cents that are invested in the wineries, or will we protect our young men and women? Where do you stand? Which do you regard the more highly, money, or boys and girls, and especially if those boys and girls happen to be your own? Let the issue be clearly defined. It is a simple one. It is, in plain English, whether we will protect wineries or boys and girls. People who have the ordinary sentiments of human beings, ought to be able readily to know where to stand in an issue of this character.

A news despatch a few days ago stated that there is a continual demand in government and state institutions for persons who have been trained and are skilled in the giving of hydrotherapy treatments. The people who are represented by this paper have been urging the value of hydrotherapy for more than half a century. They have their sanitariums and treatment rooms in every part of the world, where hydrotherapy occupies a leading place in combating the inroads of many diseases. The treatments were at first a subject for a great deal of ridicule; but, like anything else that has real merit, they can afford to endure the ridicule because of the advantages to be gained by humanity later on.

Recent despatches say that excavations in Louisiana have unearthed skeletons of a race of giants that averaged some twelve feet in height. If evolution be true, and man is developing upward from a lower form, why is it that we are constantly finding in so many parts of the world skeletons of individuals who were very much larger than any man that exists on the earth at the present time? If the evolutionists could make their theories to harmonize with the stubborn facts of geology, there would probably be more sense in what they persist in saying.

An attorney in Seattle has brought suit against one of the transportation companies in that section for $2,500 damages for the illness of his wife, occasioned, as he alleges, by the nuisance of tobacco smoke permitted by the company in their cars. His suit also demands a permanent injunction to prevent the smoking of tobacco on the street-cars of the company against which the suit is filed. It would be a splendid thing if this nuisance could be abated, not only in Seattle, but in all parts of the world.

Mrs. William K. Vanderbilt has given her support to a fight against the indiscriminate sale and use of "habit-forming drugs." It is expected that the matter will be carried to Congress for appropriate legislation. There are many drugs to which individuals become addicted that fasten upon them the most slavish chains of habit, and these drugs produce all kinds of mental and physical disorders. The warning against them should be sounded as widely as possible.

Speaking of the breaking of a dam of the West Virginia Pulp and Paper Company, a short time ago, a Western newspaper says, "The loss of life and property in the United States in the last five years alone, because of breaking dams and floods, is really appalling when considered in totals."

Representative L'Engle, of Florida, has introduced a bill appropriating fifteen million dollars for an aeroplane fleet. Mr. L'Engle gave a word picture of cities being destroyed by bombs from invading air craft, and urged that this nation is very far behind the other nations in sky fleets.

An Issue in Fourteen States

By Editor

THE question of prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicants will be voted upon this fall in the following states: California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Texas, Iowa, and New York.

In addition to the foregoing states, Ohio, Kentucky, Florida, Arkansas, Maryland, and Indiana are considering the matter of submitting the question of prohibition to the vote of the people, but the matter as yet has not been fully decided.

A prohibitory constitutional amendment is before Congress, and thus is the question of prohibition a nation-wide issue.

The drink traffic has been a national problem long enough, and we are glad to see it brought to the front as a national issue. Our temperance forces should sink all discussions and differences among themselves entirely out of sight, and rise as one individual to the great work of throttling and destroying this traffic, which is more than anything else the source of the misery, suffering, and the degeneracy that we find in the world. None of our creeds or political affiliations or attachments should be big enough to cast a shadow between us and our duty in this thing that is before us so prominently for this year 1914.

An Important Anti-Saloon Document

By Editor

We have just received from the publishers of the Anti-Saloon League of America, Westerville, Ohio, the Anti-Saloon Year Book for 1914. This is the seventh year of the annual publication of this important encyclopedia of temperance facts and figures. The volume is better this year than ever, containing much detail information on the various phases of the liquor problem, with official statistics for each separate state. One very important feature of the 1914 edition is the statistics of manufactures, crime, pauperism, insanity, industrial conditions, etc., as shown in prohibition states and compared with the states where the open saloon is free to operate.

Since nine states have already decided to vote on prohibition this fall, and six others are considering it, this will make the temperance question an issue in a large part of the nation during the summer, and there is no one document that we know of that will be more helpful in supplying facts than this 1914 Anti-Saloon Year Book.

The Ethical Standard of Confucius

By Editor

IN speaking of the adoption of Confucianism as the state religion in China, the Springfield Republican, among other things, has the following sentences:

"In combating heathen superstitions, it is often enough to expose their falsity. But Confucianism is singularly free from superstitions; and since it is mainly concerned with teaching virtue and wisdom, the missionary is often at a loss in attacking it. In proportion, indeed, as Christianity discards the miraculous, and puts stress on ethical teaching rather than on revelation or a system of rewards and punishments in a future state, it must be inclined to cooperate with Confucianism rather than to oppose it. Of all old religions, Confucianism is perhaps most based on man and least on theism."

The professed ministers of the gospel who have sought to present Christianity merely as a higher system of ethics have not stirred the world, and that for the reason that when you give Christianity as nothing more than an ethical system, you have left out of it its very life and power. Christianity is based upon miracles. The greatest miracle of Christianity was the birth of Christ Himself. The infinite Son of God came into the world, took upon Himself the human form and the human attributes while retaining His divine power, and in this He demonstrated that sin could be conquered and overcome in the human flesh, if it was united with the proffered power of divinity. Take this great miracle, as well as the other miracles, out of Christianity, and offer Christianity merely as an ethical cult, and its power is gone. That is the trouble with much of the professed Christianity of this time. Men are seeking to present it simply as an ethical system; but instead of its being a mere ethical system, it is a plan of salvation that brings living and overcoming power into the life of the one who accepts it.

Who comes... through... In blazing... a mile...