Every one can see how true this is in regard to evil habits which destroy health, reason, and life, such as the prevailing use of tobacco and the drinking of intoxicating drinks. If a man drinks thoughtlessly, without knowing any better, he can be taught and shown that it is wrong and a sin to drink poisonous fluids which are entirely unnecessary, and which endanger health, reason, life, and the welfare and happiness of all associated with him, and actually destroy vast multitudes of those who drink them moderately. All children and young persons who are free from bad examples and false teachings can be taught and can readily see that it is wrong and a sin to use such drinks; but let a man strive to justify such habits by the Sacred Scriptures, and to make them accord with his religious principles, and we all know how difficult it is for him ever to see the truth upon this and kindred subjects. MUCH-NEEDED INSTRUCTION. Inquiry should be made into the natural causes of disease, into which spiritual causes flow and cause the suffering, wretchedness, and premature deaths which prevail, and men and women should be led by precept and example to see them as evils and to shun them as sins against God. Swedenborg says:-- "Thus, by washing the feet, is meant to purify the natural principle of man; for unless this principle appertaining to man, when he lives in the world, is purified and cleansed, it cannot afterwards be purified to eternity; for such as the natural principle of man is when he dies such it remains; for it is not afterwards amended, inasmuch as it is that plane into which interior things, which are spiritual, flow in--it being their receptacle; wherefore when it is perverted, interior things, when they flow in, are perverted like it." (A. C. 10,243.)