One of the health features much in need of correction today is the question of vicious immoral living. This has been greatly manifest, as we all know, because of the calling of so many of our young men to war duty. Commander Gene Tunney of the United States Navy is deploring the greatly increased number of young men who are physically incapacitating themselves, by falling into a vicious immoral life. Of course, all wars tend to this sort of corrupt living, and to Seventh-day Adventists with their high standard of purity in body as well as in soul, this rising immorality in the social fabric, due to war psychology and its consequent letdown of social and personal standards, should be a great challenge.
True it is that we are called to give to the world a health message of correct diet. It is also true that we are called to give to the world a message emphasizing that kind of living which will make for character development and will preserve the best elements of true manhood and womanhood. It is most unfortunate that the women of our day in many cases are so deporting themselves in their increased smoking habits as to lower their own moral standards and take away from them that fine, chaste womanly reserve which should ever characterize feminity.
Seventh-day Adventist health leaders should give these various social vices careful attention and should do what they can privately and publicly to resist the downward trend in our present-day relationship between the sexes. May I close this article with these pointed words from Mrs. White in "Counsels on Health," pages 582, 583:
"The life of Solomon might have been remarkable until its close, if virtue had been preserved. But he surrendered this special grace to lustful passion. In his youth he looked to God for guidance, and trusted in Him, and God chose for him, and gave him wisdom that astonished the world. His power and wisdom were extolled throughout the land. But his love of women was his sin. This passion he did not control in his manhood, and it proved a snare to him. His wives led him into idolatry, and when he began to descend the declivity of life, the wisdom that God had given him was removed ; he lost his firmness of character, and became more like the giddy youth, wavering between right and wrong.
"Yielding his principles, he placed himself in the current of evil, and thus separated himself from God, the foundation and source of his strength. He had moved from principle. Wisdom had been more precious to him than the gold of Ophir. But, alas ! lustful passions gained the victory. He was deceived and ruined by women. What a lesson for watchfulness ! What a testimony as to the need of strength from God to the very last !
"In the battle with inward corruptions and outward temptations, even the wise and powerful Solomon was vanquished. It is not safe to permit the least departure from the strictest integrity. 'Abstain from all appearance of evil.'
Thess. 5:22. When a woman relates her family troubles, or complains of her husband, to another man, she violates her marriage vows ; she dishonors her husband, and breaks down the wall erected to preserve the sanctity of the marriage relation; she throws wide open the door, and invites Satan to enter with his insidious temptations. This is just as Satan would have it. If a woman comes to a Christian brother with a tale of her woes, her disappointments and trials, he should ever advise her, if she must confide her troubles to someone, to select sisters for her confidants, and then there will be no appearance of evil, whereby the cause of God may suffer reproach.
"Remember Solomon. Among many nations there was no king like him, beloved of his God. But he fell. He was led from God, and became corrupt, through the indulgence of lustful passions. This is the prevailing sin of this age, and its progress is fearful. Professed Sabbath-keepers are not clean. There are those who profess to believe the truth who are corrupt at heart. God will prove them, and their folly and sin shall be made manifest. None but the pure and lowly can dwell in His presence.
"'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart ; who bath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully.' Ps. 24:3, 4."
