PACIFIC HEALTH JOURXAL - AND TEMPERANCE ADVOCATE. VOLUME VI. OAKLAND, CAL_ JANUARY, 1891. NUMBER 1. W. P. BURKE, M. D., Editor. RELATIONS OF MIND AND BODY IN EAT- 21 82-P21GE MONTHLYe ING AND DRINKING. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE, : $1.00 PER YEAR. THE soul is the source of many of the wrongs Address.—All business for the JOURNAL should be ad- in human life, but it is not the only source. It is dressed to PACIFIC HEALTH JOURNAL, care of Rural a fact that influences both good and bad pass over Health Retreat, St. Helena, Cal. All Drafts or Money Orders sent in payment of sub- from the mind to the body; certainly it is equally scriptions should be addressed to, and made payable to, true that these same influences pass from the lower Pacific Press, Oakland, Cal. All Communications for the JOURNAL should be ad- to the higher nature. Vicious thoughts, lustful dressed to PACIFIC HEALTH JOURNAL, care of Rural feelings and imaginations go from mind to body Health Retreat, St. Helena, Cal. over the road of unbridled appetites, unrestrained passions, and unsubdued lusts, and the same cor- SHORT SERMONS. rupt feelings and evil imaginations return from THE man who loves his duty never slights it. body to mind over the same road, goading it on A FRIEND is one who hunts you when you are to the wildest conceptions of vice. Evil thoughts lost. and imaginations give inward tone to the body, so the body reacts on the mind, by its appetites and COMMON sense is a hard thing to have too passions, increasing the viciousness of the latter much of. by urging it to courses of evil not directly its own. LOVE can see beauty where the world sees only Deut. 21: 20 illustrates this thought. The record deformity. says, "This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he THE busier a man is, the less the devil can will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a trouble him. drunkard." The cause of his stubbornness and No man is as good at home as his picture looks rebellion lay in his gluttony and drunkenness. in a neighbor's albtim. No vices could demoralize the body more, nor IF your life is not a blessing to others, it is spur the mind to greater crimes. To say that not a blessing to you.—Ram's Horn. stubbornness and rebellion were the cause of his gluttony and drunkenness does not help the mat- WHEN you are down, don't despair, for God is ter. Morals must influence manners, therefore yet alive, and he is a friend of the friendless. manners must reflect on morals; yes, they interact; DON'T look for a happy hereafter if your life has that's just the point in view. been bad; you might as well expect to gather grapes Christ, knowing the debasing power of bad bod- of thorns and figs of thistles. ily conditions, healed these before he presented IT is said that half the troubles of life are bor- his principles to the soul. His miracles on the rowed. If people will borrow, why not borrow body were, perhaps, primarily intended to reveal happiness instead of trouble? his divinity, but divinity in its manifestations al- A PURE heart at the end of life, and a lowly ways runs over the whole line of the natural, be- mission well accomplished, are better than to have fore passing into the supernatural; we see, then, filled a great place on the earth, and have a his miracles had a sanitary side to them. stained soul and a wrecked destiny.—/ R. Miller. The power of a debased body on the mind has 2 eACIFIC HEALTH JOURNAL been mostly overlooked by good people, and too ill, dies in the morning or noontide of life, it will' many efforts are made to bring the mind into a not do to say that "God taketh away." The prime holy state while the baser forces of the body are cause of all premature deaths lies in violated law, allowed full sway within. If these latter are and the evidence is plainly written in our bodies. wrong, prayer and psalm singing will not avail If the laws of health were obeyed in us, and in our much. Paul compares a body with sinful ways to ancestry, more than seventy years would be our a thing of death; hence I say that that religion lot. God "takes no pleasure in him that dieth," which takes no thought for good physical condi- but gives life and all the forces of boundless nat- tions is worth nothing, so close is the connection ure to maintain that life until ripe for the grave. between vice and victuals. We would say, then, When the philosophy of Christ is wrought up in Hear the New Testament doctrine of self-denial, human lives by obedience to physical laws, the and obey, and there will come a glorious realm of power of disease and death •over our bodies will liberty from bodily ills; heed it, though you may be greatly broken. Cease then charging to God be called a fanatic; God will take care of the con- what legitimately belongs to ourselves. sequences. Disobedience to law brings penalties; sufferings My experience and observation teach that result from disobedience. Disobedience to the meals eaten hastily and nervously, under great laws of life brings the penalties of sickness and mental activity, or great weariness of muscle, give premature death. We think there is no field poor digestion and nutrition for their return. The where disobedience manifests itself 'more fre- legitimate work of the teeth is imposed on the quently, and with so little thought of consequences, stomach and viscera. Time for eating would give as in the false and unnatural habits of eating and good physical, intellectual, financial, and moral re- drinking. sults. I say, then, with all the emphasis at my com- The voices of revelation and science agree that mand, that our usual manner and times of eating "the blood is the life." From the blood the or- result with us and with our children in great phys- gans of the body are built and rebuilt. The phys- ical demoralization, great wickedness of spirit, and ical, mental, and moral natures are so intimately many premature deaths. Seven-eighths of all the connected that whatever affects the one affects the bodily diseases and immoral acts are the legitimate others. The mental and moral natures, then, as results of improper dietetic habits, which lower the well as the physical, can largely be determined by tone of the physical and moral system, and bring the quality of the blood. Blood is made from the upon us prematurely some disease or sinfulness food we eat, and, when properly circulated, repairs while we are under the pressure of legitimate toil waste tissues and forms new ones. The prime ob- or immoral provocation. ject of food, then, is the building and rebuilding We account for the death of one-half of the of bones, muscles, nerves, and all the tissues of human race before five years of age, through the the body. violation of physical laws connected with dietary The delight of appetite is associated with eating, habits of both parent and children. Ordinarily but by too many it is made the prime object of eat- children are born with such a low state of inher- ing, and the goodness of food is gauged by the sen- ited physical vitality, and so little moral tone, that sations of palate, and not by the law of nutrition- they cannot resist bodily or moral disease, nor Much of our food—delightful to appetite, because throw it off when once upon them. In their bod- of habit—damages the delicate and intricate struct- ies are found both the physical weaknesses and ure of stomach and bowels. It makes bad blood, specific moral tendencies of their parents. Should and this blood carries corruption to the organs in the children live to pass the death-line for infants, the system, putting them in condition easily in- they bear such unnatural relations to dress and, flamed to anger, passion, or revenge; and right diet that it is next to impossible for them to sur- here is the vital connection between bad blood vive long. Some people think this is by direct and bad morals. edict of God, not knowing that it comes through Like begets like everywhere, the same in the violated law. God is not in it, only so far as he physical, in the moral, and in the vegetable world. is in the laws of life here violated. If one over- "Every seed after its kind," "Evil communications eats, or eats of innutritious food, and, becoming corrupt good manners," "Whatsoever a man sow- AND TEMPERANCE ADVOCATE. 3 eth, that shall he also reap," and " By beholding all together, just as the wires which go to make up we become changed," are all expressions in the a submarine cable are bound together so as to con- same catalogue of thought. By beholding evil stitute one insulation. It would take twenty thou- and associating with it, we become changed into sand of these little nerve fibers to make a band it. By beholding the pure and the good con- an inch wide. In the brain there are some three stantly, we are changed into purity and goodness. or four trillion of these cells. They are arranged Should we approach another in the spirit of anger, so as to form the outer layer or covering of the we raise the same spirit in him.