Counsels on Health - Ellen G. White

disease. The sins of the parents, through perverted
appetite, are with fearful power visited upon the
children to the third and fourth generations. The
bad eating of many generations, the gluttonous and
self-indulgent habits of the people, are filling our
poorhouses, our prisons, and our insane asylums.
Intemperance, in drinking tea and coffee, wine,
beer, rum, and brandy, and the use of tobacco,
opium, and other narcotics, has resulted in great
mental and physical degeneracy, and this
degeneracy is constantly increasing.
Are these ills visited upon the race through
God’s providence? No; they exist because the
people have gone contrary to His providence, and
still continue to rashly disregard His laws. In the
words of the apostle, I would entreat those who are
not blinded and paralyzed by wrong teaching and
practices, those who would render to God the best
service of which they are capable: “I beseech you
therefore, 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
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