WHAT YOU NEED TO EAT 7
If the Israelites had manifested a spirit
of submission to God's wise prohibitions, he would have removed from them
everything injurious to their health, and would have suffered no sickness to be
among them. But he gave them what they lusted for, because they would not
submit to him.
Appetite has been indulged to the injury
of health. Stimulating drinks have been used freely, which have confused the
brain and brought down man to the level of the brute creation. While
intoxicated, every degree of crime has been committed, and yet the perpetrators
have been excused in many instances, because they knew not what they were
doing. This does not lessen the guilt of the criminal. If by his own hand he
puts the glass to his lips, and deliberately takes that which he knows will
destroy his reasoning faculties, he becomes responsible for all the injury he
does while intoxicated, at the very moment he lets his appetite control him,
and he barters away his reasoning faculties for intoxicating drinks. It was his
own act which brought him even below the brutes, and crimes committed when he
is in a state of intoxication should be punished as severely as though the
person had all the power of his reasoning faculties.
Nadab and Abihu, by drinking wine,
beclouded their reasoning faculties, and so lost their sense of sacred things,
that they thought they could as well offer common fire as sacred. God did not
excuse them because the brain was confused. Fire from his presence destroyed
them in their sin. Some look with horror upon men who have been overcome with
liquor, and are seen reeling and staggering in the street, while at the same
time they are gratifying their appetite for things differing in their nature
from spirituous liquor, but which injure the health, affect the brain, and
destroy their high sense of spiritual things. The liquor-drinker has an
appetite for strong drink which he gratifies, while another has no appetite for
intoxicating drinks to restrain, but he desires some other hurtful indulgence,
and does not practice self-denial any more than the drunkard.
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