1910 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



429 



Our Homes 



By A. I. Root 



And they were astonished at his doctrine; for he 

 taught them as one that had authority, and not as 

 the scribes.— Makk 1 : 22. 



And say unto him. By what authority doest thou 

 these things? and who gave tliee this authority to 

 do these things? — Mark 11 : 28. 



But the men marveled, saying. What manner of 

 man is this, tliat even the winds and the .sea obey 

 him! — Matt. 8 ■.'11. 



From our texts as given above you will 

 notice that the Master was constantly chal- 

 lenged as to his authority. Hitherto all the 

 great and learned doctors and teaolicTS had 

 been able to give only their opinion about 

 certain things; and to-day, away along in 

 the twentieth century, it is much as it was 

 in olden times. There is a constant and un- 

 ending discussion as to who is right and who 

 is wrong. Sooner or later we are all made 

 aware that the best of us are only human. 

 Humanity is infirm, weak, and imperfect. 

 We are making progress, it is true — wonder- 

 ful progress — but every little while we are 

 obliged to take a step backward. Somebody 

 has made a mistake. In olden times the 

 great doctors bled sick people to make them 

 better; and, oh dear me! I need not say olden 

 times, either; for many now living remem- 

 ber the time when the good doctor thought 

 he had to take away a lot of blood, even if 

 the thing the poor patient needed most was 

 more blood and better blood: and it has even 

 been suggested that the father of our nation 

 might have lived longer had not the wise 

 doctors in his time decided that taking away 

 some of Ids ])recious blood was the thing to 

 do. Well, if the doctors were the only peoijle 

 who made mistakes in olden times we should 

 have been comparatively well off, and just 

 noiv, "when doctors disagree, ivho shall de- 

 cide?" 



Whenever any thing new comes up, jieo- 

 ple at once ask "for authority. When I said 

 on these pages that the Wright brothers 

 had a machine that would fly without any 

 balloon, the statement was challenged on 

 every side. People asked, as they had a 

 right to, "Where do the Wrights live, and 

 who are they?" When I published the ac- 

 count of their work and said I had seen them 

 with my own eyes make a trip (of about a 

 mile) through the air and come back to the 

 starting-point, many people began to in- 

 quire who A. I. Root was; and quite a few 

 decided my story was just a made-up piece 

 of fiction. 



Dear friends, the above is a little preface 

 to a talk I want to give you this morning 

 in regard to authority. In order to intro- 

 duce the subject, let me make another ex- 

 tract from the Cosmopolitan for May, from 

 that article by L'pton Sinclair. The last 

 sentence I have put in italics. 



Perfect health! Have you any conception olwhat 

 the phrase means? Can you form any image of 

 what would be your feeling if every organ in your 



body were functioning perfectly? Perhaps you can 

 go back to some day in your youth, when you got 

 up early in the morning and went for a walk, and 

 the spirit of the sunrise got into your blood, and you 

 walked faster and took deei) breaths, and lauglied 

 aloud for the sheer happiness of being alive in such 

 a \\-f)rld of beauty. Now you are grown older— and 

 what would you give for the secret of tliat glorioxis 

 fteling? What would you say if you were told tliat 

 you could bring it back and keep it, not only for 

 mornings, but for afternoons and evenings, and not 

 as something accidental and mysterious, but as 

 something which you yourself had created, and of 

 which you were completely master? 



This is not an introduction to a new device in pat- 

 ent-medicine advertising. I have nothing to sell, 

 and no process patented. It is simply that for ten 

 years 1 have been studying the ill health of myself 

 and of the men and women around me. And I have 

 found the cause and the remedy. 1 have found not 

 only good health, but perfect health: I have found 

 a new state of being, a new potentiality of life: a 

 sense of lightness and cleanness and joyfulness, such 

 as 1 did not know could exist in the human body. 



I look about me in the world, and nearly every- 

 body I know is sick. I could name, one after anoth- 

 er, a hundred men and women who are doing vital 

 work for ijrogress and carrying a cruel handicaij of 

 physical suffering. In one single week's newspai lers 

 last spring I read that one was dying of kidney trou- 

 ble, that another was in a hospital from nervous 

 breakdown, and that a third was ill with ptomaine 

 poisoning. And in my correspondence I am told 

 that another of my dearest friends has only a year 

 to live: that another heroic man is a nervous wreck, 

 craving for death: and a third is tortured by bilious 

 headaches. And there is not one of these people ichom 

 I liiiild not cure if I had him alone for a couple of 

 u-rf/:s: no one of them who uould not in the end be 

 iritlkina dou-n the -street "as if it was such fun.''' 



Sinclair enumerates a list of his sick and 

 ailing friends; and I agree some of those 

 friends were badly off and no mistake, as he 

 describes it; and yet he declares positively 

 he could not only cure every one of them, 

 but he could do it in just a couple of weeks. 

 Is he right about it? Can it possibly be true 

 that his scheme of fasting would work such 

 miracles? And this forces the question uji- 

 on us, "Who is Sinclair? Has he been a 

 sound and sensible man hitherto?' ' I have a 

 pile of books lying in my lap. One of them 

 was written by Sinclair only about a year 

 ago. The title is, "Good Heath, and How 

 we Won it." At that time he had not quite 

 caught on to the fasting cure; but you will 

 notice he was drifting toward it. 



One of the other books is, "Perfect Health; 

 how to (iet it and how to Keep it. By One 

 who Has it." I made a notice of this' book 

 in one of our recent issues. It gives an ac- 

 count of the wonderful things" that have 

 been done by fasting. Perhaps a hundred 

 witnesses give their testimony. 



Another book is, "A Xew Era for Woman: 

 Health Without Drugs." This was written 

 in 1896. Like the other it is largely devoted 

 to simple diet and fasting. 



The fourth and largest book of all is " The 

 True Science of Living. The Xew Gospel 

 of Health." It was written by Edward H. 

 Dewey, and published in 1895. Dr. Dewey 

 was instrumental, perhaps more than any- 

 body else, in introducing fasting. The book 

 made quite a sensation twelve or fifteen 

 years ago. In fact, a good deal was said 

 about it in this journal; and I have wonder- 

 ed considerably that it seemed to drop out 

 of sight until Upton Sinclair and perhaps 

 some others recently revived interest in 

 Dewey. 



