p. 47 | A Smoking Minister by D. F. Newton

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 25, 1871

A Smoking Minister.

By D. F. Newton

SMOKE? Yes, he does—in his study—in his family, in the streets. I see him day after day in a bookstore, in Park Row, N. Y., with a cigar or dingy pipe in his mouth. Awful! shameful! Need we marvel that young men in the church and out of it—little urchins and rag-a-muffins—are seen in the streets, chewing and smoking the vile “Indian weed,” when ministers of the gospel, elders, deacons, and class-leaders, set the example? Example kills, example cures.

Need we marvel that there are in New York City, as Dr. W. Parker says, 235,000 smokers; and that allowing each of these smokers only two cigars per day, at the low price of ten cents, $47,000 is puffed away daily, making an expenditure annually of $17,155,000—aside from drinks which are almost sure to accompany, for tobacco and rum are twins, and go hand in hand?

But to return to this smoking minister: his breath is repulsive, intolerably offensive. The whole atmosphere around him is a stench, even the sacred emblems of bleeding love at the communion table seem more or less impregnated! “The cup of blessing!” And when reproved for this sensual gratification—this unnatural and worse than beastly appetite, what is his apology? “What the harm?” says he, “tobacco like strong drink, is one of God’s ‘good creatures,’ to be used in moderation, with thanksgiving. Smoking and chewing tobacco make a man neither better nor worse in the sight of God. Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the mouth this defileth a man. Matt. 15.”

Thus this man in sacerdotal garb goes smoking on, searing his conscience, gratifying his fleshly appetite, a slave to habit! When the leaders of our worshiping assemblies hold these views, what hope of reform! The evil goes on increasingly.

“Dearly beloved, I beseech you,” says the apostle, “as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.” 1 Pet. 2: 11. If one member in our churches is allowed in this filthy, degrading habit, why not another and another—till we have a whole assembly of smokers, chewers, and snuffers? One sinner destroyeth much good. “Behold how great a matter a little fire kindleth.” . . .

The excuses for using the dirty tyrant are numerous and frequent. One uses it for his teeth; another, for his general health; a third, for his corpulency; a fourth, for his leanness; a fifth, for a watery stomach; a sixth, to help digestion; another because some ignorant sottish, wine-bibbing, tobacco-chewing or smoking doctor recommended it—thus and thus, till the catalogue of excuses and subterfuges is filled out.

It is a matter of devout and hearty thanksgiving to God that the most respectable, learned, and eminently successful, of the medical faculty, with united voice, veto “the accursed thing,” and warn their patients to lay it aside forever.

As Paul said to Timothy, so say we to you, reader, “Keep thyself pure.” Be clean in your person, and be clean in your heart. But depend upon it, you can be neither if you use tobacco. No tobacco-user is fit for a bed companion. He is giving forth pestilential vapors from all the pores of the skin. He is an embodiment of perpetual miasm. The immediate atmosphere surrounding him is inevitably impregnated and polluted with the constant effluvia which emanates from his whole surface. He becomes a perfect walking distillery of the deadly essence, sending forth its fumes and vapors into the surrounding atmosphere. His mouth is the mill which grinds out the weed, and his whole body the distillery for the essence. Put a chewer or smoker into a vapor bath with no tobacco in the room, and in a short time the whole room will be strongly scented with tobacco effluvia that emanated from his body. Put him into a warm bath and get up a perspiration; then put that water upon flies, or vermin, or plants, and it will destroy them.—D. F. Newton.