Making Excuses by Joseph Harvey Waggoner

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 29, 1867

Making Excuses.

By Joseph Harvey Waggoner

WHEN the guests were called to the supper it is said, “They all with one consent began to make excuse.” Two things in the record are worthy of special notice: First, these excuses took the form of reasons, and were no doubt considered good and sufficient in the minds of those who gave them; but the Lord called them excuses. Second, the servants were not sent back to persuade them of the insufficiency of their excuses; they were left to their own way. Gratification stood before duty with them, and they were gratified by being left to themselves; and others were called who were more worthy. Let us all take warning. We have wondered at the blindness and temerity of many who are ever ready with reasons or excuses for not keeping the Sabbath of the Lord; and many of us stand on the same dangerous ground in regard to the temperance, or health question, like the Israelites, who well might have wondered at the blindness and hardness of Pharaoh in resisting the power of God as manifested in the plagues, and who were brought safely through the Red Sea, and saw the glory of God at Sinai, and were fed with bread from heaven day by day, yet lusted for the “flesh pots of Egypt,” and fell by thousands under the displeasure of the Lord. By this we learn that “patient continuance in well doing,” “growing in grace and in knowledge,” are necessary in order to receive the reward; and that God never had a people so dear to him that he would not punish them for disobedience or neglect of his word.

A good-intentioned sister says she “dare not quit drinking tea for fear of the neuralgia.” To understand whether this is an excuse or a valid reason, we must inquire, “What is neuralgia? and, What is the effect of tea? The first question is easily answered; it is a painful affection of the nerves. The second may be easily answered also, but not in so few words. The following, mostly from Dr. Alcott’s works on the effects of tea, give a sufficient answer.

“Among the indications that the system is suffering from the sedative, depressing, or secondary effects of tea, are headache, wakefulness, palpitation of the heart; trembling; loss of appetite; indigestion; nervous prostration; great susceptibility to fatigue; and chronic affections of the vital organs, accompanied often by emaciation, sallowness of the skin,” &c.

Dr. Graham said, “As early as 1767, Dr. Smith of Edinburgh, demonstrated by a system of careful experiments, that an infusion of green tea has the same effect as henbane, tobacco, cicuta, &c., on the living tissues of the animal body; in all cases first diminishing and finally destroying their vital properties. In 1772 Dr. Lettsom, of Ireland, made a series of similar experiments, with similar results. And still later, Dr. Beddoes, of England, by a series of experiments several times repeated, completely demonstrated that tea is as powerfully destructive to life as laurel water, opium, or digitalis. . . . Dr. Beddoes applied a strong decoction of tea to hearts just taken from living frogs, which extinguished their vitality almost instantly.”

Dr. Combe, in his work on Digestion and Dietetics, says: “It not only ruins the stomach, but very seriously deranges the health of the brain and nervous system.”

The Catechism of Health, attributed to Dr. Bell, says: “Tea, when drank strong and in large quantity, impairs the powers of the stomach, produces various nervous symptoms,” &c.

Prof. Sweetser, of N. Y., on Digestion and its Disorders, says, “It is stimulant to the nervous system.”

Dr. Hooper, in his Medical Dictionary, says, “When taken too copiously, it is apt to occasion weakness, tremor, palsies, and various other symptoms arising from narcotic plants.”

Dr. Burdell, of N. Y., says, “Not a case of sick headache has ever occurred within my knowledge except with the drinkers of narcotic drinks, and not a case has failed of cure on the entire renunciation of these drinks.”

Dr. Alcott says, “Dyspepsia, nervous or sick headache, heart disease, palsy, and sometimes epilepsy—in truth, every form of nervousness and nervous disease which can be named, may be, at times, the legitimate and certain fruit of tea drinking. In particular does tea drinking tend to paralytic affections and to nervous headache.”

In addition to such testimonies, many cases are cited in Dr. Alcott’s work of severe nervous diseases being entirely cured by abstinence from tea.

An article which I recently read entitled, “Early History of Tea,” says, “One per cent. of volatile oil, an ingredient of which the original leaf shows no trace, is imparted by the process of drying and roasting, and this oil is so potent, that the Chinese dare not use tea for a year after the leaf has been prepared, while the packers and unpackers of tea suffer much from paralysis in consequence of their inhaling this subtle element.” Again, “An ounce of good tea contains about ten grains of theine—an amount sufficient to produce a peculiar intoxication and many unpleasant symptoms, if taken in one day. From three to four grains of theine is a healthy amount for a day, so that three ounces of really good tea is more than an ordinary person should take in a week.”

The above article favors the use of tea, yet it gives severe testimony for a favorable witness. To take of a “healthy amount” for daily use of an article which produces “intoxication and many unpleasant symptoms,” great nervous derangement, &c., sounds strangely to those who do not believe in subsisting on poisons.

From this it is evident, without even the chance of a doubt, that tea causes neuralgia, as well as heart disease, &c., hence, to offer the fear of neuralgia as a reason for the use of tea, is a mere excuse for an abuse of the nervous system. But it is asked, If tea is so injurious, why do we feel so bad from abstaining, but feel no bad effect from its use? Answer. Because of its sedative or narcotic influence, it keeps the system stimulated to that point where its secondary effect is not realized; and so with dram-drinking. I was once in that condition in which I could not abstain from the use of tobacco twelve hours without the most disagreeable, and I may say, distressing sensations; but these sensations, though only felt when deprived of tobacco, were all induced by its use, for since freeing my system entirely from its influence, I have abstained more than twelve years without any recurrence of such sensations. True, self-denial is required to get the system free from such poisons; but who thinks to live a Christian life without self-denial? Who will be so self-deceived as to live a life of self-gratification, and expect the overcomer’s reward.

J. H. WAGGONER.