Your ShelfYour Projects

A GOOD SUGGESTION

25%

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Jan 6, 1881

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 7, No. 1.

Read the full edition

A GOOD SUGGESTION.

By James White

UNDER this head the Christian Union publishes the following letter and note on a very important subject. We have many times wondered that ministers care so little for their influence, and have so little regard for the power of their example as to smoke in the sight of their people, and especially before the children of their congregations. We commend the following to the candid consideration of all smoking ministers:—
"Editor of the Christian Union: "DEAR SIR: I superintend a Sunday-school. Many of the young men who attend come down to the school with cigars in their mouths. Some of the good ladies in the church have requested me to forbid this conduct on the part of our scholars. I desire to respect their wishes, but am not sure that the young men are doing anything out of the way. I do not smoke myself, but many better men do, and seem to think it a good thing. Last year I went on an excursion with a ministerial party. They were representative men in their various denominations, and it is within the truth to say that one-half of them smoked. They did this openly, and in sight of all the men and boys who congregated to see them pass. This occurrence led me to reconsider my former opinions, and to question, after all, which are right, the good women of the church or the smoking boys of the Sunday-school. Now, this question ought to be settled one way or the other by our moral teachers. If smoking is a good thing, they ought, by word as well as example, to encourage the boys in their congregation to learn the habit. If it is a bad thing, and the Christian reformers of our time are right in trying to dissuade men from the habit, then, I say, it is a burning shame that they have not only the evil itself to contend with, but the example of so many of our leading clergymen working continually against them."
"This is a good suggestion. The Christian Union advises all smoking clergymen to prepare a sermon on the beauty and wisdom of the cigar or pipe, and preach it to their congregations; and until this sermon is prepared and preached to stop smoking themselves."