1. Building No Stronger than Foundation I. Health building and character building must have strong foundations to fight successfully the life-long battle against disease and sin.
2. Foundations laid in childhood. Character defined as a bundle of habits. Word "character" derived from a word meaning to "cut" or "engrave." Habits formed in childhood—character grooves that last forever. Habits farm the foundation. Says Professor James in his Psychology:
"Every smallest stroke of virtue or vice leaves its scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle in Jefferson's play excuses himself after every fresh dereliction by saying, 'I won't count this time.' Well, he may not count it and a kind heaven may not count it, but it is being counted none the less. Down among the nerve cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up, to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, ever wiped out."
Children grow up physically strong, mentally strong, morally strong, or physically weak, mentally weak, morally weak. Physical, mental, and spiritual often associated together in either strength or weakness.
Daily health habits and thought habits soon become bundles of habits, or character. Childhood the sowing time; manhood the time of reaping. In childhood the foundation of truth, honesty, and virtue laid, if ever laid. No man can build achievement on foundation of impurity and deceit. So with the health foundation. Nature a wonderful restorative, but foundation of feebleness laid in youth can never be completely rebuilt, even by strictest health program.
II. Importance of Health Foundation.
I. The physical life.
a. Length of life.
"The misuse of our physical powers shortens the period of time in which our lives can be used for the glory of God. And it unfits us to accomplish the work God has given us to do. By allowing ourselves to form wrong habits, by keeping late hours, by gratifying appetite at the expense of health, we lay the foundation for feebleness. By neglecting physical exercise, by overworking mind or body, we unbalance the nervous system. Those who thus shorten their lives and unfit themselves for service by disregarding nature's laws, are guilty of robbery toward God. And they are robbing their fellow men also."—Christ's Object Lessons, p. 346.
b. Abundance of life.
Joy of living dependent largely upon two factors : physical health and strength a conscience void of offense toward God and man. Without these life is a drudgery. Some men limp along in life-long feebleness. Their physical engine goes on one or two cylinders, when all six cylinders should be supplying the car of life with energy.
2. Physical reacts upon mental and spiritual.
"Health is a blessing of which few appreciate the value; yet upon it the efficiency of our mental and spiritual powers largely depends. Our impulses and passions have their seat in the body, and it must be kept in the best condition physically, and under the most spiritual influence, in order that our talents may be put to the highest use.
"Anything that lessens physical strength enfeebles the mind, and makes it less capable of discriminating between right and wrong. We become less capable of choosing the good, and have less strength of will to do that which we know to be right . . . Transgression of physical law is transgression of the moral law."--/d., PP. 346, 347.
Mental discouragement and spiritual defeat; a morose disposition ; a critical attitude in religion ; in a word, a sour religious experience is often the result of physical feebleness and digestive disturbance. Discouraged Christians deny the faith, give a negative testimony. Says T. DeWitt Talmadge:
"By the mistake of its" friends religion has been chiefly associated with sickbeds and graveyards. The whole subject to many people is odorous with chlorine and carbolic acid. There are people who cannot pronounce the word religion without hearing in it the clipping chisel of the tombstone cutter. It is high time that this thing were changed, and that religion, instead of being represented as a hearse to carry out the dead, should be represented as a chariot in which the living are to triumph."
Christianity, in rightful interpretation, brings joy into life, and happiness into soul. The dark-visaged professor of religion denies the faith. This false interpretation of true religion is often result of intemperance in eating and daily violation of laws of health.
"We need to learn that indulged appetite is the greatest hindrance to mental improvement and soul sanctification: . . . indulgence of appetite is the greatest cause of physical and mental debility, and lies largely at the foundation of feebleness and premature death. Let the individual who is seeking to possess purity of spirit bear in mind that in Christ there is power to control the appetite."—Testimonies, Vol. IX, p. 156.
III. How to Build A Solid Health Foundation
1. Maintain a balance between physical activity, mental activity, and rest.
"Holier than any temple of wood or stone, consecrated for divine right, and moral purposes, is the human body." Physical health and strength necessary to happiness and success. Old Latin poet prayed for a sound mind in a sound body. III-tempered, dyspeptic grumbler an example of an off-balance individual. Nothing gained by too steady mental application. Of what value is an education of mind if the bodily strength is gone, the vital forces wasted?
"The hours of study and recreation should be carefully regulated, and a portion of the time should be spent in physical labor. When the habits of students in eating and drin.king, dressing and sleeping are in accordance with physical law, they can obtain an education without sacrificing health. The lesson must be often repeated, and pressed home to the conscience, that education will be of little value if there is no physical strength to use it after it is gained."—Medical Ministry, p. 77.
2. Good suggestions found in Medical Ministry (p. 77):
Portion of each day given to muscular exertion in open air.
Stated hours devoted to manual labor of some kind.
Equalize taxation of mental and physical powers.
Exercise mental powers, and in no case neglect physical.
The health should be as sacredly guarded as the character.
3. Brain work much more exhausting than hard work.
Says Doctor Hall : "The farmer can work from morning till night, from one week's end to another, and thrive on it, while the brain worker cannot profitably labor more than six hours out of the twenty-four."
Overworking mentally probably cause of many breakdowns.
4. Lost health must be rebuilt.
Horace Mann, in address as president of Antioch College in 1853, said : "I hold it to be morally impossible for God to have created, in the beginning, such men and women as we find the human race in their physical condition now to be."
It has taken millenniums "of the abominations of appetite and ignorance," "successive ages of outrages, excess, and debauchery," "to weaken the race to its present degenerated condition."
Remedies to rebuild our lost health : fresh air, sunshine, the best of well-prepared food, abstemiousness, physical exercise, rest, confidence in God.
5. Better to maintain health than to lose it.
a. Childhood education should emphasize health education. Many inherit weak constitutions ; many more acquire them. Dietary evils the Number 1 enemy of physical strength in childhood. "How many weak, debilitated, half-alive men and women are knocking at the doors of our halls of learning asking admittance; it would be just as reasonable to adorn a tumble-down shanty with a mansard roof, as a physical wreck with an accomplished education."—B. B. Warman in Signal Lights.
Children must be taught that whatever weakens physical or mental powers puts rotten timbers into character foundation. "If I hurt my nerves, if I hurt my brain, if I hurt any of my physical faculties, I insult God and call for dire retribution."
b. Children should be taught the positive, rather than negative.
Emphasize joy of living. Point to successful athletes, who avoid bad habits ; professional and business men, who improved time and talents while young. The tree, bent in youth, never becomes stately giant of forest. Youth the time for building foundations—cleanliness ; pure air, night and day ; exercise of all muscles ; natural foods ; regularity in study, work, recreation, and rest.
c. Parents, who teach these things by example and precept will not only have better results with their children but rebuild their own lost powers while training habits of health in their children. "Our first duty is to become healthy." —Havelock Ellis.
"He who is well has half won the battle."—Portuguese Proverb.
"Shut the door to the sun and you will open it to the doctor."—Italian Proverb.
"Late hours are shadows from the grave."—Marden.
"A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools."
"The ingredients of health and long life are great temperance, open air, moderate labor, and little care."—Sir Philip Sidney.
"Good health is the first essential to all success in life, and this can be attained by the following rules : Don't drink. Don't smoke. Don't chew. Get all the sleep you can. Get all the pure, fresh air you can. Eat wholesome food." —Robert Fitzsimmons.
"Habit is a cable ; we weave a thread of it each day, and it becomes so strong we cannot break it."—Horace Mann.
"Habit is ten times nature."—Wellington.
"In the field of destiny we reap as we have sown."—Whittier.
6. Far more important than all other training is the religious. Faith in God inspires courage and hope, and these react upon health, character, life. Without God in the life, there can be no abundant life, no fullness of happiness. Faith in God gives inspiration to achievement. To neglect the religious life of a child—prayer, Bible stories, character lessons—is to destroy life at its beginning.
"If there is anything that will endure
The eye of God, because it still is pure,
It is the spirit of a little child,
Fresh from His hand, and therefore undefiled.
Nearer the gate of Paradise than we,
Our children breathe its airs, its angels see ;
And when they pray, God hears their simple prayer,
Yea, even sheathes His sword, in judgment bare."
—R. H. Stoddard.
