What Really Matters by Clinton A. Macomber

• Title Page
• Introduction
• General Overview
• Daniel 1:1-6
• Daniel 1:7-21
  • The Importance of a Biblical Diet
  • Diet in Scripture
  • Quoted
  • Did You Know?
  • Daily Devotion Guide
  • Word Find Puzzle
• Daniel 2
• Daniel 3
• Daniel 4
• Daniel 5
• Daniel 6
• Daniel 7
• Daniel 8
• Daniel 9
• Daniel 10
• Daniel 11
• Daniel 12

Quoted

Less Food is Better

“Most boys would have blest their good fortune, and taken their fill of all that was going in the palace. But these Jewish boys refused the king’s meat and wine, lest they should eat anything forbidden by their religion. And they grew fairer and fatter than all the children in the palace. Like them, you should religiously think about what you eat and drink. The children who are content with plain food become the healthiest and fairest men and women. You will smile with suspicion when I tell you what is the healthiest place in all Scotland, and perhaps in the world. Sir Robert Christion proves that it is Perth Prison. For every man who dies inside it, about ten men of the same age die outside. Many of the prisoners have uneasy minds, and their lives have been wild, but no matter: they have by necessity what our four boys had by choice,—water, and the plainest food, and splendid health. Their food costs fourpence a day. I was in Richmond, Virginia, shortly after the great war. Nearly the whole city was a mass of blackened ruins. Two things, they said, astonished them during the siege; first, that they could live on so very little; and secondly, that fewer people died in days of starvation, than in days of abundance. They made the same discovery during the cotton famine in Lancashire. Plenty, it seems, harms more by its excesses than poverty by its privations. Your eating and drinking help greatly to form your character; for your diet influences the soul as well as the body. That Turk was much mistaken, who, when about to drink wine, warned his soul to quit the body for a little, lest it should be harmed. How many evils have sprung from luxurious living? It destroyed Rome, after Rome had conquered the whole world. How safe and noble is the spirit of these boys! They did not despise the body, as monks do: in the spirit of the Bible they honoured it as the handmaid of the soul. They were not as those who live to eat, but who eat to live. By keeping under their bodies they escaped being castaways.”¹

¹J. Wells in loc. Biblical Illustrator