Convenient Food
‘When thou sittest to eat with a ruler, consider diligently what is before thee: and put p knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite. Be not desirous of his dainties: for they are deceitful meat.”- xxiii. 1-3.
FORTY years ago, on the banks of the river Earn, five or six miles above its confluence with the Tay, an elderly countryman, the tenant of a small farm, sat on a mossy bank beneath the shade of a beech-tree, and ate from his own knee the dinner which his boy, then playing beside him, had brought at the appointed hour to the field of labour. A gentle breeze fanned gratefully the branches of the sheltering tree, and the grizzled locks on the bared head of the labourer. Fleecy clouds were flying slowly over a background of blue sky, and answering shadows flitting across the waving fields of hay and corn. At that moment the lord of the manor passed by. Too kind-hearted to turn aside, and too polite to interrupt the meal of his tenant friend, he said without stopping as he passed, in tones as gentle as a mother’s when she soothes her child to sleep, — “Well, Robert, you are dining.” “Yes, my lord,” replied Robert, elevating the hand in token of respect, and glancing upward through the beechen boughs to the glorious canopy beyond, — “Yes, my lord, and I have an elegant dining-room.” A suppressed smile could be seen playing about his lordship’s lips, as he stalked forward with stately step in his wonted solitary, silent roam. I was there the only witness. My memory faithfully records the scene and recalls the laconic colloquy. The facts were deeply planted in my mind at the time, but the philosophy did not begin to bud till long afterward. The only effect which the great man’s approach produced on me was to make me leave the chased butterfly uncaught, and the coveted wild flower unplucked, and creep close to my protector, holding in my breath till “my lord” was out of sight. Since that period, and especially since both the interlocutors have passed away from the stage, I have often recalled that and similar interviews that passed under my observation, and thought with a sigh, how happy this country would be in its domestic condition, and how mighty in its foreign relations, if the several classes of society through all its borders were knit to each other by bonds as soft and strong as these. Two and thirty years these two lived in the relation of landlord and tenant. During that period the rent was never changed, and never in arrear. In their intercourse the superior was never haughty, the inferior never presuming. The one maintained all the dignity of the noble, the other all the self-respect of the man. When the tenant died in a good old age, the landlord, himself by that time advanced in years, mourned for the loss of a friend, and said with tears that his patrimonial fields were growing less lovely as the old occupiers were, one by one, departing.*
The dining-room was such as nature only could provide, and the dinner was all that nature needed. When an appetite such as hay-making begets in a healthful frame turns the plainest fare into a luxury, the maximum of both pleasure and utility in eating is attained. An ignoble warfare is waged, an ignoble race is run, when people strive to make up for the failing appetite of the indolent eater by elaborate refinements in the ingredients and preparation of the food. Luxury makes the senses dull, and then intenser luxury is needed to penetrate into the quick of these dull senses. On either side men strive to produce and maintain a right relation between the appetite and the food. On this side, rich fools strive by culinary art to raise the savour of the viands to such a point of pungency that they shall produce lively sensations of pleasure on a worn and weary palate: on that side, the wise, whether rich or poor, by exercise and temperance easily bring healthful hunger up to such a pitch that it finds sweetest luxury in the hardest fare. In this matter the multitude are not left to their own judgment: they are in better hands. Labour and open air are imposed upon them whether they will or not, for their good. Our Father in heaven cares for them as for children. Delicate
* As the facts are narrated with the most rigid accuracy, without either exaggeration or addition, and the persons have both been removed by death, there seems no longer any reason for Telling the name of that amiable and honoured proprietor, the late Lord Ruthven, of Freeland, Perthshire.
dishes, fitted to provoke into .activity the languid desire, cannot be provided for the majority of men: the other alternative is the better of the two. Where there is not wealth to season the food, there is labour to invigorate the appetite. Here is yet another point at which the rich and the poor meet together; setting aside exceptional cases from both classes, it will probably be conceded by all dispassionate observers, that the poor on the whole enjoy as much pleasure through the sense of taste from their food as the rich.
The first specific warning on the subject which the proverbs contain, is given in these three verses. The case supposed is that of a ruler — a man of wealth and luxurious habits — who prepares a feast and invites his friends. The guests are enjoined to consider well the delicacies that are set before them, and beware of excess. The- two elements which constitute the danger are both taken into account; these are, the weakness of the tempted and the strength of the temptation. Coarse fare tends to check the excesses of an inordinate appetite: and a subdued appetite makes you safe with the most luxurious food. The danger is doubled when both the elements meet — when a ruler spreads a tempting feast, and the guest is a man given to appetite.
It is of the Lord that hunger is painful, and food gives pleasure: between these two lines of defence the Creator has placed life, with a view to its preservation. If eating had been as painful as it is pleasant to our nature, the disagreeable duty would have been frequently forgotten or neglected, and the world, if peopled at all, would have been peopled by tribes of walking skeletons. The arrangement which provides that the necessary reception of aliment into the system gives pleasure to the senses, is wise and good; it is an ungrateful return for our Maker’s kindness when the creature turns his bounty into licentiousness. The due sustenance of the body is the Creator’s end; the pleasantness of food the means of attaining it. When men prosecute and cultivate that pleasure as an end, they thwart the very purposes of providence. When the pleasure is pursued as an object, it ceases to serve effectually as a means of healthfully maintaining the living frame.
When the appetite is strong, and the food enticing, the danger of sinning and suffering is great, — greater than most of us care to observe, and acknowledge to ourselves. The warning here is strongly expressed, and all its strength is needed. “Put a knife to thy throat,” is in form similar to the injunctions of the Great Teacher, to pluck out the offending right eye, and cut off the offending right hand. “Be not desirous of his dainties, for they are deceitful meat.” They are of set purpose made deceitful: they are prepared by an artist of skill, whose whole life is devoted to the study. Resisting virtue in the guests must be strong indeed, for the temptation is as powerful as wealth and experience can make it.
Although there is much poverty in the community there is also much wealth. Wherever there is much wealth there is much luxury. Some forms of luxury are much more dignified and ‘safe than others. We speak here of one form only, one that lies near the bottom of the scale. Great feasts are a ready outlet for great riches; and in this way, accordingly, those who have much money and little refinement relieve themselves of their surplus. I am well aware that in this matter much depends on circumstances, and an absolute rule is not possible. I shall not, by descending into the details of the kitchen and the dining-room, give the culprit an opportunity of laughing down the reproof. I cannot come down to dispute with epicures about the number of dishes and the ingredients of each: with my footing firm on the higher platform, I can deal a more effective blow. “Whether ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” “Put a knife to thy throat, if thou be a man given to appetite.” This is the authority on which we stand: these are the rules which we prescribe. Let these rules be applied to our feasts, and their dimensions will, in many instances, be curtailed.
In this department of practical duty, as in many others, innocence and guilt are not divided from each other by a visible partition-wall rising sheer up between them: they meet on each other’s margin as the colours of the rainbow meet. In all cases it is a matter of degrees. The point of optimism is not fixed; it moves from side to side with the internal constitution of the individual, and the condition of society around him. If it were not so, there would be a defect in the moral discipline of men. The dividing line is not such as to force itself on the notice of those who do not look for it. They who seek shall find it; they who do not seek shall miss it. The law of the greatest good in the sustenance of our bodies is, like God its author, the rewarder of them that diligently seek it.
To sit two dreary hours, as if pinioned to your chair and your neighbour, in a room kept steaming with hot viands, chasing each other out and in, — to have so many dishes of diverse flavours placed under your nostrils in quick succession, that unless your gastric stability be above the average, you cannot comfortably partake of any one, — to have your ears filled meantime with matter not much more ethereal than that which occupies your other senses, — all this I would be disposed to shun as an endurance, rather than accept as a favour. The money is not well laid out: the time is not profitably spent. Unnecessary cares are laid on the heads of the house, and unnecessary labour on the servants. Worst of all, the mind is clogged by all that goes beyond the sufficient supply of nature’s need. In greater or less measure, the dipping into these manifold and artfully-prepared meats impedes the soul in its flight, as when the feet of a winged insect are immersed in mud. We have need for all our mental power always. The soul needs all its buoyancy to. bear home the precious freight, and should not be willingly weighed down by such vile ballast. Simplicity in these things both imparts the highest pleasure and brings in the richest profit. Simplicity is both godly and manly. Religion prescribes, philosophy approves simplicity.
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