Health, or, How to Live

MORAL OBLIGATIONS

Next to our obligations to God, are our obligations to ourselves. If we are in duty bound to treat our Creator right, we are also, next to him, in duty bound to treat ourselves right. This becomes a matter of moral obligation toward him who made us, “whose we are, and whom we ought to serve.” HHTL 339.2

The second table of the moral law, comprehended in this, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” implies the pre-existence of the law of self-love; and the law of self-love involves the obligation of self-protection. What right have we to abuse, or even to neglect ourselves? To do that which will injure our constitution or health, is sinful in the sight of Heaven. To transgress physical law is transgressing God’s law; for he is as truly the Author of physical law, as he is the Author of the moral law. Whoever, therefore, violates the laws of life and health, sins against God as truly as though he break the ten commandments. Every man is under obligation to obey those laws and whoever dares violate them, will find “the way of transgressors is hard.” HHTL 339.3

The moral sense of community is exceedingly obtuse on this subject. With the great majority, appetite is the only law which governs; and in spite of all that can be said, it will probably, in a great degree, continue to be so; and those who choose to have it so, must bear the consequences. But some may possibly be induced to examine their obligations and responsibilities in the case. Where is the consistency of being governed by principle instead of appetite, in regard to the demands of the moral law, and yet let appetite rule instead of principle, in regard to physical law? for, as before stated, when we violate physical law, we do truly violate moral obligation. Whoever will let appetite govern in one thing, is in a fair way to let it govern in all things. Whoever, through appetite, will allow himself to eat too much or too often, is very likely to give license to all other appetites and passions in proportion to their strength and activity. HHTL 340.1

When men will let moral principle govern their eating and drinking, they will greatly advance their physical and moral welfare. Every effort made for the physical salvation of community, should be based on moral principles. If the advocates of temperance had always stood on this platform, they would have accomplished vastly more than they now have done. They have made the cause too much a matter of individual and public expediency. Instead of laboring sufficiently to show that every drop of liquor, taken as a luxury, is so much direct and tangible sin against God, their efforts have been to show, more particularly, that, inasmuch as by the general and extensive use made of it, vast damage was done, we were bound, as a matter of expediency, or of moral obligation based upon general expediency, to entirely abandon its use; that although the evils growing out of its use were very great, and therefore, for the sake of example, we were bound to abandon it, yet it was not so much an evil per se; that if there were no danger of an increased appetite, or of injury by example, a little might not be wrong. HHTL 340.2

When the advocates of reform will plant their feet firmly upon the principle, that drinking a drop of that burning poison, is a violation of physical law which God has instituted in our physical being, and therefore a violation of moral obligation to him — laying the axe first at the root of the tree — they will stand where Heaven will give them moral power to move the world. They will then have the lever of Archimedes, with its fulcrum, and the place to stand which he desired, by which to lift the earth from its base. When men will stand on this foundation, in advocating temperance, they will be likely to maintain consistency in their own habits. They will not bring upon themselves the too just charge of hypocrisy in pleading temperance over a plug of tobacco; of drawing their eloquence from the sensual inspiration of the smoking weed; of pleading abstinence from the weaker bane, and indulging lust for the stronger poison. No man can preach the Gospel or plead its moral reforms with eloquence, while sinning against God with this idol in his mouth. If he would utter his words with moral force, they must proceed from a PURE BREATH, AND FROM CLEAN LIPS. HHTL 341.1