Health and Temperance by Talmage

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 2, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 26.

Health and Temperance.

By Talmage

Preachers and Tobacco.

ONE reason why there are so many the victims of this habit is because there are so many ministers of religion who smoke and chew. They smoke until they get the bronchitis, and the dear people have to pay their expenses to Europe. They smoke until the nervous system breaks down. They smoke themselves to death. I could name three eminent clergymen who died of cancer in the mouth; and in every case the physician said it was tobacco. There has been many a clergyman whose tombstone was all covered up with eulogy, which ought to have had the honest epitaph: "Killed by Too Much Cavendish." Some of them smoke until the room is blue, and their spirits are blue, and the world is blue, and everything is blue. Time was when God passed by such sins; but it becomes now the duty of the American clergy who indulge in this narcotic to repent.

How can a man preach temperance to the people when he is himself indulging in an appetite like that? I have seen a cuspidor in a pulpit, where the minister should drop his quid before he gets up to read, "Blessed are the pure in heart," and to read about "rolling sin as a sweet morsel under the tongue," and in Leviticus to read about the unclean animals that chew the cud. I have known presbyteries and general assemblies and general synods where there was a room set apart for the ministers to smoke. Oh, it is a sorry spectacle, a consecrated man, a holy man of God, looking around for something which you take to be looking for a larger field of usefulness. He is not looking for that at all. He is only looking for some place where he can discharge a mouthful of tobacco juice.

I am glad the Methodist Church of the United States in nearly all of their conferences have passed resolutions against this habit; and it is time we had an anti-tobacco reform in the Presbyterian Church and the Episcopal Church and the Baptist Church and the Congregational Church. About sixty years ago, a young man graduated from Andover Theological Seminary into the ministry. He went straight to the front. He had an eloquence and personal magnetism before which nothing could stand; but he was soon thrown into the insane asylum for twenty years; and the doctor said it was tobacco that sent him there. According to the custom then in vogue, he was allowed a small portion of tobacco every day. After he had been there nearly twenty years, walking the floor one day, he had a sudden return of reason, and he realized what was the matter. He threw the plug of tobacco through the iron gates, and said: "What brought me here? What keeps me here? Why am I here? Tobacco! Tobacco! O God, help! Help, and I'll never use it again." He was restored. He was brought forth. For ten years more he successfully preached the gospel of Jesus Christ.

There are ministers of religion to-day indulging in narcotics, dying by inches; and they do not know what is the matter with them. I might, in a word, give my own experience. It took ten cigars to make a sermon. I got very nervous. One day I awakened to the outrage I was inflicting upon myself. I was about to change settlements, and a generous wholesale tobacconist in Philadelphia said if I would only come to Philadelphia he would all the rest of my life provide me with cigars free of charge. I said to myself: If, in these war times, when cigars are so costly and my salary is small, I smoke more than I ought to, what would I do if I had gratuitous and illimited supply? And then and there, twenty-four years ago, I quit once and forever. It made a new man of me; and though I have since then done as much hard work as any one, I think I have had the best health God ever blessed a man with. A minister of religion cannot afford to smoke. Put into my hand the moneys wasted in tobacco in Brooklyn, and I will support three orphan asylums as grand and as beautiful as those already established. Put into my hand the moneys wasted in tobacco in the United States of America, and I will clothe, feed, and shelter all the suffering poor on this continent. The American church gives $1,000,000 a year for the evangelization of the heathen, and American Christians spend $5,000,000 in tobacco.