There might well be a busy man's Bible wish:
"I wish you good health. I hope you make plenty of money, and I trust you'll get to heaven." But 3 John 2 does not read that way. It really says, "May your health measure up to your soul's prosperity." Folks back there were long on religion but, because of water scarcity, were short on hygiene. It could read, "Measure your hygiene by the yardstick of your Christian experience."
Were John alive today to see modern, sanitary, civilized ways, he could say it in reverse : "Measure your spirituality by the yardstick of your hygienic privileges." For today bathrooms have crowded out prayer rooms, and the beaten path from the dinette to the garage has done away with the old-time "amen corner." Modern education, hygiene, and hospitalization have displaced a sound soul, a healthy conscience, and religion, but cleanliness is never a good substitute for godliness.
The two earliest sciences, hygiene and religion, were God-joined in the beginning, and traveled hand in hand from Eden. They bear a family likeness, for religion mothered hygiene originally. Even the ancient scientific name, "soteriology," labels them both. The definition of the one describes the other. Hygiene is the science and art, the theory and practice, of the preservation, salvation, and promotion of human health and life. Both follow the first law of all animate nature, which is. desire for life and freedom from pain. It is the primal instinct, innate and inherent in man; in short, it is self-preservation.
In earliest ages the medicine man and the tribal priest Were one person. Among the twelve Israelitish clans, medical doctors and ministering letites were linked in one profession. They were recognized public health officers and observed the )eople medically as well as ceremonially. They )racticed quarantine, and thus protected the camp .rorn contagion and infection. At Sinai people were commanded to wash their clothes, prepare their tents, and bathe before the coming of the Lord on the mountaintop. That was a mass move-nent of more than a million who fostered true -eligion and hygiene.
Washings back there were of double valueiygienic and religious. Many believe that their :amp sanitation, religious health practices, and diet played a large part in preserving the integrity 3f the Jewish race to this day.
As late as New Testament times we note that :he Lord Jesus, Preacher and Healer, sent His clinic subjects to local priests for the medical proof pf His cures. We cannot go wrong if we believe in that closely knit combination today, for we see united in His own person hygiene and true religion. Christ Jesus, who Himself came to a fallen, diseased, afflicted lazar house of a world, stressed these two mightiest factors for human welfare.
Hygiene and religion are united in these last days in a modern scientific movement that belts the globe. Seventh-day Adventists, under God, conduct a chain of hospitals and sanitariums around the world. Hygiene and religion are fused for the good of many peoples, languages, and tribes everywhere. These institutions and clinics are generously equipped and better prepared than ever to minister to the fortunate and enlightened of civilization, and to serve the lowliest peoples of the most darkened minds.
Each missionary doctor and purse becomes a living example of the evangelistic-health movement of which he or she is a part. Men and women go to the most forbidding places of earth, where they ring out cheerfully the glad tidings of soul and health reform to all mankind. Peoples in far-flung and strange countries are assured that a whole gospel, the threefold message, stresses the twin sciences of hygiene and religion that have traveled down through the ages, past the patriarchs, past Jesus and the early church, to our day.
Do you recall the Levitical story of the live bird that was dipped in the blood, as were also the cedar and hyssop and wool? Lastly the man was sprinkled seven times and pronounced clean. Note in all this the religious promise of a hygienic world-to-come through blood washing. Not merely was man to be clean by the blood of Christ, but the running streams and the bird that flew into the air and sprinkled the atmosphere with minute globules of crimson blood, signified that in the day of Christ's kingdom the birds would all be perfect and the air would be cleansed.
The extremes of vegetation marked by the Lebanon cedar and the insignificant hyssop, and all the plants and trees between, were to be cleansed. All worthy animal kind, symbolized by the wool, were to be washed and sanctified by Christ's blood. The tie that bound hygiene and religion through the ages, through Jesus Christ, will have done its final perfect work in a world made over new. True faith in our Lord's blood will make possible a hygienic world—perfection free from all disease microorganisms—in the glorious earth made new. What a happy day that will be!