Food and Morals / 6th Edition

by J. F. Clymer

Eating and drinking are always associated with the bar and brothel, and if you will take notice, the eating is always of that kind of food which goes straight for the animal nature, and wakes up in a man everything that is beastly.

The whole tendency of the food furnished at the popular bar-room restaurant is to stir the baser elements in humanity and keep up the demand for alcoholic stimulants. No wonder the drinking saloons can afford to give what they call a “free lunch.” Care is taken to furnish such food as fires the appetite for strong drink, and the rum-seller gets his pay for his “free lunch” through the sale of the whisky that must inevitably follow it. Those who, living on highly stimulating foods, but do not drink strong drinks, will find that the bias of their bodily powers, instead of being toward mental and spiritual spheres, will be toward animal indulgences, dragging the mind and soul into servitude to the flesh, and where there are any moral aspirations, making the conflict between the higher and lower nature so intense that a vast amount of moral force is wasted in self-conflict that ought to go into the world’s redemptive agencies for saving the lost.

I am confident that the American habit of eating sumptuous and late suppers, whether at our homes or church fairs or festivals, is damaging the physical, mental, and moral health of our nation more than any other one thing of its kind; more damaging, because it has the appearance of innocency, and the sanction of our fathers and mothers and some of our pastors.

Furthermore, the habit of eating hurriedly, or hastily, is preying upon the vital and moral forces of many of us. A meal eaten hastily or nervously, under the pressure of intense mental activity or nervous tension, or great weariness, begins its work of nutrition under the greatest possible disadvantage. All our meals should be eaten calmly and deliberately, so as to thoroughly masticate the food, and not impose on the stomach and viscera the legitimate work of the teeth. In the interest of health to soul as well as body I enter an earnest plea for more time for eating, and especially at noon, when most hard working people take their principal meal. Clerks, business men, and school teachers, mechanics, laborers, and our children who attend the public schools, need more time at noon to properly dispose of the chief meal of the day. No better investment could be made to secure the best possible physical, intellectual, financial, and moral returns than for all classes of people to take two hours at mid-day for resting and eating dinner. Selfish greed demands otherwise, and makes a show of gain; but the loss is sure to come in due time to all parties concerned.

My friends, when will we fast-living, fast-eating, fast-working, and fast-dying Americans learn the great lesson, that life is a unit, that the Divine Trinity in us, namely, the physical, intellectual, and spiritual, is one life, with different phases of expression; and whatever mars one mars the whole, and whatever builds up one most surely builds up the others? All our powers are many members in one body, with an inter-dependence which is eternal. Slight your body, and you smite your soul and enervate the mind. Corrupt the mind, and you debase both body and soul. When will those who profess to be God’s children by the adoption of the Holy Ghost, catch the Spirit of His great Apostle Paul, who, more than any other sacred writer, maintained the sanctity of the human body and its subservience to the mind and soul. Hear him: “I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” I admit the power of the Holy Ghost in the work of regeneration, but is there not something for us to do, in keeping our bodies under, “lest we become cast-aways?” I do not say that all human evils and ills have their primary origin in physical habits, but I do say that the great mass of impulsions from the excited, inflamed, over-stimulated body toward the soul, are in the interests of sin. The economy of salvation orders otherwise. By the Gospel the body may become the temple of the Holy Ghost. By the law of self-denial of the New Testament, our bodies, with all their fiery elements, may be made an inspiration to our souls. It is not the purpose of God that a life-time warfare shall be kept up between the body and the soul. There ought to come to every true Christian a day of final victory over his bodily powers, in which they will cease their rebellion, and come into the sweetest union with the soul in its great work of developing a likeness to Christ.

Why are we called upon to present the body a living sacrifice to God, if its powers are not to be sanctified to holy purposes? Why should we spend all our life waiting for the adoption of our whole nature, to wit, the redemption of the body, as well as the soul.

Our fondest dreams for the progress of humanity must be based in a newly created body by strict obedience to the laws of God, written on every fibre, tissue, muscle, and bone. We cannot develop the human brain and heart to the possibilities that God has put in them, while they are the tenants of bodies the laws of which are violated in the commonest habits of every-day life.

Regeneration does a mighty work for us; but generation has also much to do with our highest and best development. The sins of the fathers must cease, so that the sons may be spared their terrible visitations; the accumulated virtues of parents must roll over on their children in purer, stronger, and better bodies until by a blessed economy the whole race shall be exalted to heirship with Christ through loving obedience to all the laws of physical as well as moral life.

Why may we not now, under the laws of redemption, begin to build a new heaven and a new earth, new souls and new bodies. If our souls are redeemed and renewed by obedience and faith, why not secure also the redemption of our bodies? I know it is slow work to teach the subtle but mighty elements of self-restraint. I know the flesh lusteth against the spirit. Yet I thank God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.