J. F. Clymer

“ 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. ”

“ It follows then that our bodies are made of the food we eat. Evidently it was the design of our Creator that the prime object of eating should be the building up of tissue—muscles, bones and brains. That this may be a pleasure to us, He has associated with eating the delights of appetite. But most of us have so far perverted the divine order as to make the pleasures of appetite the chief object of eating. “Give us something good to eat,” is the great cry of humanity, and the goodness of food is gauged by the sensations of the palate and not by the law of nutrition. ”

“ And if you could look into their private lives you would find all their baser qualities having the fullest sway, stopping, it may be, inside the fence of human laws and customs, but seldom considering the claims of a higher and divine law. I charge, then, very much of our household misery, domestic woe, and connubial wretchedness, to unrestrained lust begotten in the body by the inordinate use of animal food.
We forget, my hearers, that the great law of nature, “Like produces like,” is universal. “Every seed after its kind is the law of all creation.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ God does not arbitrarily kill anybody. Most of those who die in infancy or in early life, come to death by the violation of God’s laws written in their bodies. If these laws were obeyed in us and in our ancestry, most of us ought to live beyond three score years and ten, and drop from this life into the other in a ripe, mellow old age, just as ripe fruit drops from its bough in autumn time. But you ask where is God in the many untimely deaths that occur? I answer He is present in his great hearted goodness to help the dying to an eternal victory over death, if they will only let Him. ”

“ This bill of fare was given to the Jews not only for the preservation of their health, but, as God’s great purpose was moral reform, He had an eye single to their moral condition in the matter of their eating. Does any one doubt that the unhealthy, ugly, and vicious elements that make up the flesh of most of the animals we eat, enter our blood, and in that way affect the disposition or carriage of the soul? I am confident, if there was less demand for animal food the quality would be very much better. ”

“ That is, if one overeats, or eats innutritious food, or at improper times, making himself sickly, so that he becomes an easy prey to disease, and dies suddenly or at the noon tide of life, all the good people say—“What a strange Providence!” As if God had everything to do with such a death, and the deceased had little or nothing to do with it. I incline to the opinion that Divine Providence has little or nothing to do with such deaths only in so far as Divine Providence is in the laws of life violated. The primary cause of all premature deaths is violated law. ”

“ Hence we readily admit the fact that influences, good or bad, may pass over from the soul to the body, but we do not so readily admit that other fact, equally [Pg 4] true, that influence good or bad may go over from the body to the soul. The road over which vicious thoughts and lustful imaginations pass from the soul to the body is the highway over which unbridled appetites, unrestrained passions and unsubdued lusts in the body may go to the soul, goading it to the wildest conceptions of vice and lecherous imaginations. The warm rays of the sun may gender rottenness in the muddy pool ”

“ How is it possible to account for the death of one half the human family before five years of age, unless we trace it to the violation of physical laws in some way connected with the eating habits alike of parent and child? Many children enter the world with such a low state of inherited physical vitality, and so little moral tone, that they are unable to resist the attacks of bodily disease or throw it off when on them, and much less able to throw off moral disease and rise above their immoral heritage if spared to pass through childhood to years of maturity. ”

“ I am, therefore, confident that the widespread appetite for intoxicating liquors is largely due to the false relations that the American people hold to their food. We cannot hope much from moral suasion and legal enactments so long as we overlook the physical condition of the drunkard. If you would cure disease or vice effectually, you must shut off that which nourishes them, instead of putting all your force in efforts to antidote them. ”

“ Because religion has been considered as having little or nothing to do with the body, I shall encounter the settled opinions of good men to this effect. Because our popular methods of eating have the sanction of custom and the defense of long established habits, I may not criticise them without losing the favor of those who are content with things as they are. Because I shall call in question many indulgences of appetite hitherto considered sinless, I shall run the risk of being called a fanatic or fool. ”

“ Those animals that live on the grains and the higher order of foods are the best, most beautiful, and most useful, such as the horse and cow. If this law obtains among animals, why not among men? Beyond a doubt it does. If you want proof of this, study the character and lives of those who live largely on animal food, and you will find them very animal-like in all their relations—restive, impatient, passionate, ugly in their ways, fiery in their disposition, easily provoked, readily put out of humor. ”

“ Having given us life, all the forces of His boundless nature are engaged to maintain it in us until He is ready to harvest us as the farmer does the ripened grain. The God of nature and the God of grace are not in antagonism. “The one God is in all and over all.” A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. ”

“ Evolutionary processes may induce a variation in the form or number of the blood corpuscles, but they can not set aside the law that the building and rebuilding of all the organs involved in bodily or mental acts comes from the blood alone. The physical, mental and moral natures are so intimately connected that that which affects one, affects the others. So that a man’s mental and moral nature, as well as his physical, can very largely be determined by the quality of his blood. Now it is a physiological fact that our blood is made out of the food we eat. ”

“ Philanthropists and Christians for the most part have overlooked the power of a debased body on the soul. They forget that Paul likens a body that has sinful habitudes to a thing of death, as compared with the soul that seeks to live the new life in Christ Jesus. Therefore good men have labored to create in themselves and those whom they seek to reform, certain emotional conditions of the spirit, by a tenacious adherence to creeds, or the patient performance of a set round of religious duties, and all this regardless of bad physical conditions begotten by bad habits of eating and drinking. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is high time that good men were awake to this fact, and ceased charging over to Divine Providence what legitimately belongs to ourselves. “Jesus Christ came to destroy him that hath the power of death, that is the devil;” and when the philosophy of Jesus is wrought up into human lives by obedience to physical laws, the power of disease and death over our bodies will be very much broken. The victory over death can be so far achieved by men in the body that they need not die until their minds and hearts have received all the development in this world that infinite love ordains. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As for the hog, if man would not domesticate him, he could not propagate his species. He would become extinct just like the lion, leopard, and hyena, under the march of civilization. As the blessings of civilized life reach us, you notice the carnivorous or flesh-eating animals become extinct. So it seems to me that with the developments of civilization there ought to be such moral refinements in human beings that they [Pg 14] would grow away from their carnivorous tendencies, and eat such food as tends to develop the mental and moral faculties, and not the animal propensities. ”

“ The Health Food Company prepare a “Cereal Coffee” from Wheat Gluten and Barley, which not only makes a delicious beverage, but tends to greatly strengthen both body and brain. Those who would release themselves from the dangerous practice of tea-drinking, and the less injurious but still objectionable use of the commercial coffees, will do well to try this nutrient beverage.
Again, we derange our bodies and demoralize our souls by eating too much. The great end of life with many of us is to eat. ”

“ 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? ”

“ During the warm season a diet made up chiefly of fruits, grains, and vegetables will be most healthful for body and soul. Instead of the scrofula-breeding pork or ham for breakfast, use some one of the great variety of grains, especially oat-meal, than which there are few better foods for growing children and hard working adults. Instead of fried cakes, rich pastry, and candies, use fruit, of which there is an abundant variety, ten-fold more nourishing than pies or cakes, and very cleansing to the blood. ”

“ The popular habit of using, inordinately, appetizers in the shape of the ordinary table condiments, begets a false and unnatural appetite. The time comes when honest food palls upon the depraved senses. The pampered, jaded appetite no longer finds satisfaction in simple food-flavors; the palate must be prompted with pungent things. The cook, who is never a physiologist, responds to the demand for spurs to appetite, and finds them in mixtures of spices and peppers and mustards and acids and essential oils and chemicals, and multitudes of non-food substances. ”

“ Thus the poor body, subject to these revulsions of unnatural action in overwork and stimulation and sedation, is goaded to abnormities and unnatural action, sending up to the soul no other influences but those which drive it to moral madness and vicious deeds.
Now, vice is a morbid exhibition of the will. The will is represented through the physical organ, the brain, and the brain is straightway affected by the condition of the body and the state of the blood. The will is that power of the mind by which we put forth volitions and perform actions. ”

“ And so it has come to pass that with advanced medical men, in a vast majority of cases of sickness, the support of the life-powers by proper nutrients is the foremost thought, the best food proving to be the best medicine.
The kind of food a man eats, and the time and manner of his eating it, are not merely a question of medicine, but one of the first questions of morals. ”

“ Hence a vast amount of food enters the mouth that makes bad blood, blood that in itself is corrupt, and carries poisonous particles to every organ in the system, putting us in splendid condition to be easily provoked to some outburst of anger, passion or revenge. My hearers, there is a sure and vital connection between bad blood and bad morals. Blood always tells in morals as well as in muscles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Since the blood is the life, and since blood is merely food emulsified, mingled with certain digestive fluids and colored by the oxygen with which it is brought in contact in the lungs—it is easy to understand how perfect food may create perfect blood, which shall presently supplant that which is feeble, that which is lacking in waste-repairing power, that which fails to give strength to the muscles or vigor to the brain, and may thus become the most effective medicine. ”

“ Most of us determine the goodness of our food by the amount of sensual delight it imparts to the palate, no matter how much damage it may do beyond to the delicate and intricate structure of the stomach and viscera. ”