Tobacco | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 9, 1885

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 11, No. 15.

Tobacco.

REV. F. E. BOSTWICK, Sunday-school missionary for Dakota and Montana, gives in the Chicago Standard the following interesting account of his struggles against tobacco and his final victory over it. There are few who would be obliged to fight a harder battle to overcome the appetite:—

“The question of tobacco was a serious one to me, but other Christians used it, those who were active in church work, and so I stifled conscience and continued a slave to the habit. Ultimately I felt called to the gospel ministry. Again the question of the use of tobacco annoyed me. I realized that I was not fully consecrated to the blessed work into which a remarkable Providence had led me. But I resolved to stop using it. I tried. For a few months I succeeded, but the appetite had become a part of my life, and when the temptation came I was too weak to withstand it and fell. I resolved again and again to put it away. I prayed earnestly over it, but not until then did I realize what a firm hold it had upon my whole being. The more I tried to get rid of the appetite the firmer the hold seemed to be. I would wrestle with God in prayer that the temptation might be removed, but my will power upon this was gone. The sight or smell would make me desperate and determined to have it, and I would fall again. I would beg or buy a little, use part of it, throw the rest away, and go down upon my knees before God in penance and sorrow, and the victory would seem to be complete. But again, as I would come in contact with it in the business world, the old appetite would at times arise and overwhelm me.”

“No one but God and myself, or perhaps those who have passed through a similar experience, know the torture and suffering of those years. Finally with a full sense of the awful sinfulness of my life, I came to that point when I must give up the habit or the ministry. And that hour when I cast myself, for the last time, upon this question, at the foot of the cross, I could see the crowned brow, and under it the saddened face of Him who said to the poor stumbling Peter, ‘Wilt thou also go away?’ I felt the pulsation of that great heart of love against my own as never before. My cry was only this: ‘Save, Lord, or I perish.’ What new-born soul can describe its first hour of joy and perfect peace in its entrance into the kingdom of the Lord Jesus? Such were my feelings as I realized a complete deliverance from this awful bondage, saved, saved!”

“A long time has passed since then, and with each succeeding year I hate tobacco with a hundredfold more intensity than I ever loved it, and oh, how it helps me in my work to present a perfect Saviour, ‘able to save unto the uttermost all that come unto God by him.’”