MH page 365

The physical surroundings in the cities are often a peril to health. The constant liability to contact with disease, the prevalence of foul air, impure water, impure food, the crowded, dark, unhealthful dwellings, are some of the many evils to be met.

Urban physical environments present multiple hazards to health including disease contact, foul air, impure water, and crowded housing. This paragraph explicitly lists environmental and sanitary hazards in cities that affect physical health.

It was not God's purpose that people should be crowded into cities, huddled together in terraces and tenements. In the beginning He placed our first parents amidst the beautiful sights and sounds He desires us to rejoice in today. The more nearly we come into harmony with God's original plan, the more favorable will be our position to secure health of body, and mind, and soul.

Living in harmony with God's original plan of natural surroundings supports bodily, mental, and spiritual health. It combines a theological principle regarding God's original creation plan with an empirical claim linking natural living environments to physical and mental health.

An expensive dwelling, elaborate furnishings, display, luxury, and ease, do not furnish the conditions essential to a happy, useful life. Jesus came to this earth to accomplish the greatest work ever accomplished among men. He came as God's ambassador, to show us how to live so as to secure life's best results. What were the conditions chosen by the infinite Father for His Son? A secluded home in the Galilean hills; a household sustained by honest, self-respecting labor; a life of simplicity; daily conflict with difficulty and hardship; self-sacrifice, economy, and patient, gladsome service; the hour of study at His mother's side, with the open scroll of Scripture; the quiet of dawn or twilight in the green valley; the holy ministries of nature; the study of creation and providence; and the soul's communion with God—these were the conditions and opportunities of the early life of Jesus.

Jesus' early life of simplicity, manual labor, nature study, and communion with God illustrates the true conditions for a happy and useful life. The text offers a biographical and spiritual example of Jesus' upbringing to define the ideal conditions for human life.