p. 12 | How Governor Hughes’ Father Gave up Smoking

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 16, 1908

How Governor Hughes’ Father Gave up Smoking

REV. HUGHES is a Baptist minister. He acknowledges himself a reformed smoker. He began smoking at sixteen years of age, and indulged much during his college life. He became such a slave to the habit that he could hardly do without smoking long enough to remain through the students’ evening prayer-meeting. But he managed to do so by taking a long smoke just before and another just after the service.

After ordination to the ministry he saw the incongruity of setting such an example to the young. So he tried to quit smoking. He gave it up again and again, only to return to it each time, because he tried only in his own strength.

Of his experience he further says: “One day I sat down with my Bible open. While filling my pipe, my eye came on the verse, ‘Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.’ 1 Cor. 10:31. It came like a voice from heaven to me. I put my pipe back into the box and knelt down to pray. I said, ‘I don’t smoke for the glory of God.’ I had never realized that smoking was a sin. I know that it is a sin now. I vowed I would never touch tobacco again until I could do it to the glory of God, and I have never had the slightest desire for tobacco from that day to this.”—The Christian Advocate.