It is the duty of every married couple to studiously avoid marring the feelings of each other. They should control every look and expression of fretfulness and passion. They should study each other's happiness, in small matters as well as in large, manifesting a tender thoughtfulness in acknowledging kind acts and little courtesies of each other. These small things should not be neglected, for they are just as important to the happiness of man and wife as food is necessary to sustain physical strength. The father should encourage the wife and mother to lean upon his large affections, kind, cheerful, encouraging words from him with whom she has entrusted her life happiness will be beneficial to her than any medicine, and cheerful rays of light which such sympathizing words will bring to the heart of the wife and mother will reflect back their own cheering beams upon the heart of the father.
"A temperate father will not complain if he has no great variety upon his table. If parents had lived healthfully, being satisfied with simple diet, much expense would have been saved. The father would not have been obliged to labour beyond his strength in order to supply the wants of his family. “Before the Christian father leaves his home to go to his labour, he will gather his family around him and bowing before God will commit them to the care of the chief Shepherd. He will then go forth to his labour with the love and blessing of his wife and the love of his children, to make his heart cheerful through his labouring hours. And that mother who is aroused to her duty will realize the obligations resting upon her to her children in the absence of the father. She will feel that she lives for her husband and children.
Men and women, by indulging the appetite with rich and highly- seasoned foods, especially flesh meat and gravies and by using stimulating drinks, as tea and coffee, create unnatural appetites. The system becomes fevered, the organs of digestion become injured, and the mental faculties are beclouded. The appetite becomes more unnatural and more difficult to restraint. The circulation is not equalized and the blood becomes impure. The whole system is deranged, and demands of appetite become more unreasonable, craving exciting, hurtful things, until it is thoroughly depraved. The indulgence of the appetite in first eating food highly seasoned created a morbid appetite, and prepared the way for every kind of indulgences, until health and intellect were sacrificed to lust.
Extracted from "Solemn Appeal" written by Ellen G. White.
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