“Spiritual Malnutrition”

American clergyman and religious writer Roy L. Smith has written about the spiritual food dispensed by Christendom’s churches: “A people that will sell principles for profits, barter character for pleasure, or sacrifice manhood for dividends must be prepared to face the disintegration that inevitably follows. The cause of this collapse is spiritual malnutrition. We have been feeding on much food, but it has not produced strength for the crisis. More than a generation ago Dr. Stephen M. Babcock, of the University of Wisconsin, made the amazing discovery that cattle might be eating prodigious amounts of food and at the same time be starving to death. Extended investigation revealed the fact that life-giving food contains a strange element called vitamins, which furnish the vitality necessary for maintaining life, and that the value of any food depends upon its vitamin content. The spiritual collapse of these last days makes evident the fact that we have been feeding on food that is lacking in spiritual vitamins. . . . We have been abundantly fed but not well fed.”—Treasury of the Christian Faith, p. 267.