Effect of Obedience to Prophetic Commands
The bearing on health of these commands relating to the simple life, hygiene, abstinence from alcohol and opium, etcetera, is too obvious to call for much comment, although their vital importance is apt to be greatly underestimated. Were they to be generally observed, most of the infectious diseases and a good many others would soon vanish from among men. The amount of illness caused by neglect of simple hygienic precautions and by indulgence in alcohol and opium is prodigious. Moreover, obedience to these commands would not only affect health, but would have an enormous effect for good on character and conduct. Alcohol and opium affect a man's conscience long before they affect his gait or cause obvious bodily disease, so that the moral spiritual gain from abstinence would be even greater than the physical. With regard to cleanliness, 'Abdu'l-Baha says: "External cleanliness, although it is but a physical thing, has great influence upon spirituality.. The fact of having a pure and spotless body exercises an influence upon the spirit of man." (70:1)

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