earth;"[1] and that "the earth was filled with violence through them:" and God said: "Yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years,"[2]
20. When the Deluge had swept away the first generations of man, permission appears to have been granted to him to eat flesh-meat; as we learn from the following words: "Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you; even as the green herb have I given you all things. But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat."[3] I am aware that certain advocates of a vegetable diet take a different view of this, and some other passages of Scripture, and believe that the flesh of animals for human food is still prohibited. I am inclined, however, to admit the full force of such passages; and to acknowledge that man is not, since the Flood, restricted by the law of God from partaking of animal food.[4] It was, doubtless, foreseen by the Omniscient, that mankind would, in obedience to his command, "be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth:"[5] that they would, in consequence of emigration and various other causes, frequently be placed in such circumstances that fruits, roots, rice, wheat, and other grains, could not be procured. Man, however, is so admirably organized as to be capable of inhabiting every clime: he is not only to "replenish the earth," but to "subdue it;" to bring it into a state of universal cultivation, and to "have dominion over every thing that moveth upon the earth." In accomplishing these divine purposes, he would frequently be exposed to great privations; for as grass, and other inferior herbage, affording support to herbivorous animals only, are the sole productions of cold climates, man would be under the necessity of becoming carnivorous, until art and industry have rendered the soil of any newly inhabited part of the earth fruitful and productive. Plutarch, in reference to this, observes: "And truly, as for those people who first ventured upon the eating of flesh, it is very probable that the sole reason of their doing so was scarcity and want of other food." If, then, the original restriction as to food had not been relaxed, man, in obeying the impulses of nature to preserve his own life, would have broken the law of God; but the moral
- ↑ Genesis vi. 12, 13.
- ↑ Genesis vi. 3.
- ↑ Genesis ix. 3, 4.
- ↑ Some of my reviewers have adduced Peter's vision and other passages of Scripture, in vindication of the use of animal diet; but as I have fully acknowledged that the use of animals for food was permitted after the Flood, I think it unnecessary to answer any such objections. I deprecate, as much as any one can do, all appeals to Scripture upon points which science is fully competent to decide, and have only referred to the historical portions for the purpose of showing what was the original food of man, and of marking the period when further latitude was granted him. If it can be shown that a fruit and farinaceous diet is most consistent with the physical, mental, and moral nature of man, and that it is nowhere forbidden in Scripture, this is all the sanction the vegetarian requires.
- ↑ Genesis i. 28, and ix. 1.
