Miss Beecher's Housekeeper and Healthkeeper / Containing Five Hundred Receipes for Economical and Healthful Cooking; also, Many Directions for Securing Health and Happiness

by Catharine Esther Beecher

And here we should notice that most comforting doctrine revealed by Jesus Christ, and that is, that our eternal welfare does not depend on our judging correctly as to what is for the best good of all concerned, both for this life and the life to come. On the contrary, we are assured that it is having our heart, or chief desire, set to do right by obeying all God’s laws as fast as we learn what they are. “Sin is the transgression of law,” and all men have sinned, and will continue to sin, sometimes from ignorance, sometimes from the force of temptation swaying from the prevailing desire and controlling purpose. And so the righteous men of olden times, though they committed heinous sins, were “men after God’s own heart,” because their “heart” was set to obey him in all things. And thus their failures were pardoned, and their eternal safety secured.

The same comforting assurance lessens the anxieties of those whose chief aim and desire is to obey Jesus Christ under the new obligations imposed by him. For the “faith” which saves our fellow-men both before and after Christ, is not the mere intellectual conviction; for the “devils thus believe and tremble.” It is rather that faith which includes intellectual belief in his teachings, and the voluntary conformity of purpose and action to that belief.

So the “repentance” required is not mere sorrow for wrong-doing, but it consists in such sorrow as includes “ceasing to do evil, and learning to do well.”

We now have the general principle which should regulate all expenditures both of time and property. And whenever any number of persons consistently and practically adopt this principle, they will become “a peculiar people.”

The principle is this: The use of property and the use of time must be so regulated as to accomplish all in our power, to save as many as possible from ignorance of God’s laws, and from disobedience to them. It must, in many cases, be difficult to decide as to the most successful way by which our time and property will avail to this end. But that this should be the first and chief object in all our plans, must be conceded by all who accept Jesus Christ as the only authorized teacher of truth and duty. He is the only man who has died and returned from the invisible world to tell us of our prospects there, and his authority is established by the highest evidence of which we can conceive. He is the only being authorized by God fully to explain his laws, both as to our highest happiness while on earth and our future eternal welfare. “There is no other name (or person) given under Heaven” to do this but Jesus Christ.

Having thus gained the main general principle, we may notice some rules to guide us as to the right apportionment of time and property. In employing our time, we are to make suitable allowance for sleep, for preparing and taking food, for securing the means of a livelihood, for intellectual improvement, for exercise and amusement, for social enjoyments, and for benevolent and religious duties. And it is the right apportionment of time to these various duties which constitutes its true economy.

In deciding respecting the rectitude of our pursuits, we are bound to aim at the most practical good as the ultimate object. With every duty of this life our benevolent Creator has connected some species of enjoyment, to draw us to perform it. Thus the palate is gratified by performing the duty of nourishing our bodies; the principle of curiosity is gratified in pursuing useful knowledge; the desire of approbation is gratified when we perform general social duties; and every other duty has an alluring enjoyment connected with it. But the great mistake of mankind has consisted in seeking the pleasures connected with these duties as the sole aim, without reference to the main end that should be held in view, and to which the enjoyment should be made subservient. Thus, men gratify the palate without reference to the question whether the body is properly nourished; and follow after knowledge without inquiring whether it ministers to good or evil; and seek amusements without reference to the great end to which they should minister.

In gratifying the implanted desires of our nature, we are bound so to restrain ourselves, by reason and conscience, as always to seek the main objects of existence—the highest good of ourselves and others; and never to sacrifice this for the mere gratification of our desires. We are to gratify appetite just so far as is consistent with health and usefulness, and the desire for knowledge just so far as will enable us to do most good by our influence and efforts, and no further. We are to seek social intercourse to that extent which will best promote domestic enjoyment and kindly feelings among neighbors and friends; and we are to pursue exercise and amusement only so far as will best sustain the vigor of body and mind.

The laws of the Supreme Ruler, when he became the civil as well as the religious Head of the Jewish theocracy, furnish an example which it would be well for all attentively to consider when forming plans for the apportionment of time and property. To properly estimate this example, it must be borne in mind that the main object of God was to set an example of the temporal rewards that follow obedience to the laws of the Creator, and at the same time to prepare religious teachers to extend the more enlarged views and duties resulting from the dangers of the future life revealed by Jesus Christ.

Before Christ came, the Jews were not required to go forth to other nations as teachers of religion, nor were the Jewish nation led to obedience by motives of a life to come. To them God was revealed both as a Father and a civil ruler, and obedience to laws relating solely to this life was all that was required. So low were they in the scale of civilization and mental development, that a system which confined them to one spot as an agricultural people, and prevented their growing very rich or having extensive commerce with other nations, was indispensable to prevent their relapsing into the low idolatries and vices of the nations around them, while temporal rewards and penalties were more effective than those of a life to come. Such faith in God, his laws, and those temporal rewards and penalties as secured habitual obedience, were all that was required.