Is the Edenic Life Practical? (1899)

AUTHOR: Clubb, Henry Stephens

In this article Clubb grounds veg*ism in Christianity as an eminently ethical practice. The article is based on a “Discourse Delivered at the Bible Christian Church” in Philadelphia in 1899. It is a short meditation on Daniel 1:12. Clubb's starting point is the “ideal life laid down in the first chapter of Genesis, or what we call the Edenic life” and the question whether it is “practical to enter this state in our present surroundings” (165). He then emphasizes that Daniel, “devoted to the Edenic Life,” as a captive in Babylon rejects the “King's meat” offered to him and, “already […] brought into favor and tender love with the prince of the Eunuchs” due to his “great personal and manly beauty” and “his high moral and spiritual development” (165-166). Daniel even requests of the prince that, as an experiment, all captives go without animal food for ten days, to be sustained only by pulse and water. The “Prince consented and the result, even in ten days, was that their countenances appeared fairer and fatter in flesh than the countenances of all the children that ate of the King's meat” (166).

Against other readings of “pulse” as a mere “worthless weed,” Clubb then specifies his understanding of the term, which he maintains “applies in botany to those seeds that grow in legumes or pods: hence peas, beans, lentils and locust seeds are known as pulse, and as all these were known in the East as common articles of food, they undoubtedly were provided for these captives in the place of the meat served to the other selected children” (166). Clubb stresses that given the palace's “indulgences in the luxurious living of Eastern monarchs,” this was “an entirely disinterested experiment resulting in a marked degree favorable to Edenic living” (166). “That Edenic living,” Clubb concludes, “is equal to any test that may be applied to it in its intellectual, moral and spiritual influence and effects, is shown conclusively by this record, so that it is perfectly consistent with the teachings of the Bible to make this Edenic life a religious principle in the life of every member of the Christian Church” (166-167).