1909 



CiLEANINGS IN BEE ( ULTURE. 



289 



I enjoy my nie.ils, prepared almost wholly of 

 ground beefsteak, more than any food I ever en- 

 joyed f efore in my life. Nature seems to call 

 for \t just no-iv, and for nothing else. May God 

 be praised for that noble animal that converts 

 the grass of the fields into wholesome food for a 

 world of people, especially for invalids ! It was 

 nearly forty years ago when I was so enthusiastic 

 in regard to the Salisbury treatment and the beef- 

 steak diet. I have wandered away from it many 

 times during the years that are past; but I have 

 generally come back to it sooner or later. May 

 God forgive me if I ever again lose faith in good 

 lean meat as food for mankind, especially ailim^ 

 mankind. During all this siege, of course I had 

 plenty of pure air The doctor directed having 

 tlie windows opened and kept open day and 

 night. At the same time I drank great quanti- 

 ties of pure soft waier. This cleanses the system 

 and washes out the poison. This grip fever is 

 certainly a contagious disease. I had a most em- 

 phatic illustration of it that I can not well men- 

 tion here. The patient should be put in a room 

 by himself. May God be praised that our State 

 of Ohio is not only making great progress in 

 fighting the great white plague, but also in fight- 

 ing fevers of every kind. A great emancipation 

 is coming to the world in the way of a-uoiding 

 sickness, pains, and untimely deaths. 



I am now ready to give you some of my spirit- 

 ual experiences during this fever. I kept asking 

 myself what lesson it was that God was striving 

 to teach me. I have told you several times that 

 my little prayer, "Lord, help," has never failed. 

 Either the help has come, or grace to bear it; and 

 the answers to my prayers for the past few months 

 in this way have been simply wonderful. Dur- 

 ing the torture of this grip fever, especially at the 

 first, I did more praying than ever before, or at 

 least for a long while back. But my prayers did 

 not seem to be answered. My spirituality seemed 

 to be dead. I called to mind God's precious 

 promises all through the scriptures, and I came 

 to him claiming those promises; but there did 

 not seem to be any answer So much of my 

 mind was occupied with delirium that I hardly 

 knew I had any existence at all, and I somehow 

 seemed to lose faith. I remembered thinking 

 once that I had not prayed at all for the past two 

 days, and I went over my past life. I thought 

 of these Home papers, of the hopeful and en- 

 couraging words I have given you, of the scrip- 

 ture texts I have quoted, of the instances in which 

 (Jod has lifted his children out of the Slough of 

 Despond, and in the agony of despair the words 

 came into my mind, "My God, my God, why 

 hast thou forsaken me.?" Then I thought of the 

 dear Savior; that it seemed to " please God " to 

 let him pass down through the valley of the 

 shadow of death. Then I thought of Job when 

 his wife said to him, "Curse God and die." 

 What did she mean by that? Could death help 

 matters.? While I was trying to take courage in 

 things such as Job expressed, I had an experience 

 that seemed to carry a moril with it. T felt as 

 if I had indeed gone down into the depths of 

 Hades; and not only that, but when God refused 

 to hear or answer, it seemed to me that Satan 

 took it on himself to answer. First let me illus- 

 trate how slowly and painfully the hours and 

 minutes seemed to drag along. 



By my bedside is an electric clock th;it I have 

 told you about. The three little batteries were 

 supposed to run it a year. When I went away 

 last fall the year was up, and I provided some 

 new batteries, but told them to let the old ones 

 remain as long as they kept the clock going. 

 Well, those three little batteries are running the 

 clock still. The clock has not run down nor 

 been touched for over one year and eight months. 

 A little electric light was fixed to shine on the 

 face of the clock so I could see how the time 

 passed. I looked up one night, and it was a 

 quarter past three. The hands of the clock were 

 together. I watched for quite a little while, but 

 they did not seem to separate. Said I, "Well, 

 that faithful little clock has stopped at last," and 

 I turned my face away. I looked back again a 

 little later, thinking I might have been mistaken 

 after all; but the hands had not separated I 

 turned away again with a kind of disappointed 

 feeling, thinking that, as those little batteries 

 had finally failed, so I was failing. Imagine my 

 surprise, a little later on, to see the hands ^were 

 moving after all. It really seemed as if the ma- 

 chinery of the whole universe was dragging — that 

 every minute so filled with torture and torment 

 was being spun out into a quarter of an hour. I 

 kept thinking of the wretched man who begged 

 that Lazarus might dip his finger in water and 

 cool his tongue, "for," as he says, "I am tor- 

 mented in this flame." I did not care, perhaps, 

 so much for the drop of ^water; but, oh how I 

 did long for one of neighbor Rood's Excelsior 

 strawberries, so tart and delicious, that we have 

 been enjoying more or less every day all the past 

 winter ! 



Well, while I was thinking of this parable of 

 the rich man and his suffering, Satan came to 

 give me some consolation. He said, " Mr. Root, 

 you have had but a little taste of suffering. Now, 

 you Christian people teach that this is to go on 

 forever, and that 'here is no respite. You saw 

 how one minute could be spun out until it seem- 

 ed to you like an hour; and yet you say a man 

 has no right to cut off his life Listen ! There 

 are- thousands and thousands who wish they had 

 never been born; and it would have been better 

 for them that they never had been born. What 

 is this existence worth, anyhow.? What is hu- 

 man life worth.? If all that these people teach 

 about everlasting punishment is true, there could 

 be no greater boon to humanity than some in- 

 vention whereby annihilation could be quickly 

 and easily secured. You used to have faith in 

 Bible promises; you have quoted them all your 

 life; but thousands, like yourself, have found 

 that they do not amount to any thing after all. 

 God's promises have gone into the scrap-heap," 

 and he waved his hand toward a heap of broken 

 and twisted irons that I had not noticed before. 

 " These were once God's promises, such as you 

 teach your Sunday-school children. The few 

 people that no-v keep saying them over know 

 they are lies while the words are on their lips, 

 only fit for that old 'scrap pile.' " As he point- 

 ed his thumb toward it I went up and gave the 

 "scrap pile" a more careful scrutiny, and, "lo 

 and behold," it was a pile of -chishy- bottles, and 

 not a heap of God's promises at all. While I 

 was looking for something to rebuke and con- 

 tradict him with, my eye caught on to one 



