_Gentlemen_:—I have read with great interest a sermon by Rev. Mr.
Clymer, of Auburn, on “The Relation of Food to Morals,” as it appeared
in the Auburn _Daily Advertiser_ of June 20th, 1880. Certainly
everything stands related to morals; and all men, women, and children
should be made to see and feel this.
I suppose I am considered an old-fashioned preacher. I believe in
“original sin,” and I believe in a great deal of sin that is not
original. I believe that every man is so corrupt that he can never be
made pure without supernatural influence; and I believe that he must
take advantage, at the same time, of all the natural helps. Even the
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot make the saint who is in the
flesh, feel alert and happy, so long as he has any serious obstruction
of the biliary duct. When I was a younger pastor in a Southern city, I
was called by a mother to see her daughter, a girl of eighteen, who was
in a dreadful way, inconsolably laboring under the oppressive feeling
that there was no mercy for her. I prescribed for her torpid liver as
my knowledge of the healing art enabled me to do, promising to call
again soon. When I did call, the young lady was relieved, and I was
able to secure her attention to the comfortable truths of our most
holy faith. It is first the natural, and then the spiritual; St. Paul,
1 Cor. xv. 46: “Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but
that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.” We must
always feel our dependence on the spirit of God for our regeneration
and sanctification, but not in such a way as to make fools of us. The
man whose faith in the supernatural makes him depreciate the natural,
has no more sense than he whose faith in the natural utterly excludes
super-nature.
I think you would do a good work to issue Mr. Clymer’s discourse as one
of a series of tracts proclaiming the gospel of hygiene. Will you not
do it?
With kindest regards, yours truly,
CHARLES F. DEEMS.
NEW YORK, February 1, 1881.
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