The Vitality of Mormonism: Brief Essays on Distinctive Doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day SaintsTalmage, James E. (James Edward)
Religion
The Vitality of Mormonism: Brief Essays on Distinctive Doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
Talmage, James E. (James Edward)
Latter Day Saint churches; Latter Day Saints
The brutal protagonists of autocratic tyranny, whose barbarous kultur
impels to crimes innumerable and atrocities indescribable, profess to
regard the might of righteousness as but maudlin sentiment and puerile
weakness. Boastful of material achievements and the temporary success
of their diabolical system of selfishness and arrogance, they blaspheme
the name and power of the living God, whose will it is that every soul
be free.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is the embodiment of the Divine will
and purpose. That Gospel enjoins obedience to righteous law as the
guaranty of individual liberty. It endures as the unchanging expression
of eternal wisdom, though by carnally-minded sinners ridiculed as
foolishness.
As early as 1833, in a revelation through the prophet Joseph Smith, the
Lord declared that both strong drinks and hot drinks were injurious to
the body. In that period the use of alcoholic beverages was common,
and the consumption of hot drinks, particularly as tea and coffee, was
well nigh universal. Promulgation of the Divine warning against these
harmful customs was treated as a fad born of fanaticism. Inexorable
fact has compelled acknowledgment of the Word of Wisdom (see D&C, Sec.
89) as the pronouncement of Nature's God. Prohibition of the use of
intoxicants has become a question of supreme international importance.
The efficiency of armies and navies is seen to be gravely conditioned
thereby. Some of the world's most eminent surgeons aver that the
habitual use of hot drinks is one of the most effective causes of
gastric ulcer and cancer, which are classed among the deadliest of
maladies.
The same revelation voices a direct inhibition against the use of
tobacco by man, and this avowal, now branded as extreme and uncalled
for, is destined yet to become the basis of secular enactment.
The immoderate use of flesh foods was specified by Divine utterance as
harmful. The exigencies of war enforced restriction of meat eating, and
the nation was bettered thereby.
Unchastity, the dominant vice of the ages, has been tolerated as an
irrepressible feature of the social system, and this notwithstanding
the warning fiat of Jehovah against marital infidelity and sexual sin
in all its hideous phases. The imperative demand for efficiency in this
crucial age of stress and struggle has literally forced a measured
though lamentably inadequate acceptance of the Divine requirement, for
the statistical data of incapacity due to so-called social diseases are
so astounding and show a condition so frightful as to make plain that
the very foundations of civilization are jeopardized.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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