1 Timothy 5:23

1 Timothy 5:23. Drink no longer water. The interpretation thus given of the previous counsel seems to me to afford the only natural and tenable answer to the question why a matter apparently so irrelevant is thus abruptly introduced. All experience shows that it is the weakened bloodless brain that can least control its thoughts, and is most open to the assaults of impure imaginations. One who was necessarily brought face to face with the danger, or who needed promptness and decision to guard against it, would find it his wisdom to keep body and brain in a state of healthy equilibrium; and St. Paul, with whom all bodily discipline was a means and not an end, saw (not improbably under St. Luke's guidance) that what Timothy needed for that equilibrium was a moderate use of the stimulant which he had hitherto (possibly following St. Paul's example) denied himself. The special reason given, ‘for thy stomach's sake,' savours of the medical adviser, and as if it were added lest the disciple should draw a wrong inference from the previous words and plunge into more rigorous austerities. So an Abernethy might have said, in his rough way, of a like case, ‘If be must deal with such things, don't let him go into the filth on an empty stomach.'