p. 10 | AN EVIL WEED by Wm. Harker

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 27, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 35.

AN EVIL WEED.

By Wm. Harker

[An open letter to the Ministerial Association, Barrie, Ont.]

It has given me much grief to learn from one of your members that a number of those who compose your body are habitual smokers; but lest you should think that some minister who does not smoke has been informing on those who do, I may say that the assurance came from one who is most deeply in the practice.

It was a great disappointment to me to learn this fact; and now for the good of my fellow-workmen on the railway, for the helping of those who are young and weak, and for the better progress of righteousness in our midst, I have taken upon me to write you this letter.

For a number of years I have been earnestly fighting this evil, always believing that the appointed servants of Christ were my allies in the battle. Though it now appears that such is not the case, yet I would not be discouraged, but will turn my disappointment into an appeal, that if possible you may be induced, both by example and precept, to come to the help of the Lord against this mighty foe. Therefore hear these few words.

Science classes tobacco as a poisonous weed, and proves it to be hurtful in every way when taken into the human system in any quantity. Investigation also proves that the tobacco-user transmits to his offspring a liking for this same poisonous weed, so that the taste and choice of the child are prejudiced in favor of tobacco on its entrance into the world. Are not these truths sufficient to make us think deeply upon this subject?

It is alarming the hold which this narcotic has upon men in general. Many among our railway men are almost slaves to it; scores to whom I have spoken on the matter have said promptly that they could not live without it. When we consider that this drug works continuous and increasing injury, robbing these men of the clearness of vision, the strength of nerve, and the steadiness of hand so necessary in their hazardous calling, such an admission is full of fearful meaning; for very often a little shortness of sight has resulted in one of those frightful railway accidents that send a tremor over our whole continent. These are the men to whom we commit (humanly speaking) ourselves, or our loved ones, each time we go by rail; for the time being they are in charge of our lives; and considering the swift speed at which trains are now run, how needful that these public servants have the best mental and physical equipment for their service. Not long ago a number of engineers on the New York Central were examined on the powers of their sight, and a number of them were disqualified for further service on account of color-blindness. Each one of them was found to be addicted to smoking, the medical decision being that the smoke, coming in contact with the fine structure of the eye, had caused the permanent loss of the ability to distinguish colors.

Come with me, if you still regard smoking as a harmless pastime, and I will take you to homes in our village where the income is $1.10 and $1.25 per day. A hard-worked wife and little children are here, poorly clad, and with scarcely sufficient to eat and to keep out the cold; and yet the one whom they

call husband and father is either burning up or chewing tobacco almost constantly during waking hours, thus robbing his dependent children of many a helpful book and useful tool that would go far to educate them for the battle of life. One such mother as I have mentioned showed my wife her almost shoeless feet, saying with tears those shoes were the best she had; her husband spends $12.00 a year on tobacco. But the loss does not end in the home; for the storekeeper who supplies these homes, as a rule finds them very hard to get money from, and often has to recount a long list of unpaid and longstanding bills against these families.

Surely, brethren, you will not hereafter pitch the key-note for such a tune as this. Surely these men will not have your leading and example in such wilful and selfish waste. I know these men are weak, but God’s charge to us is, “Make even paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.” Heb. 12:13, margin. No doubt things are much the same outside of railway circles, tho’ I am not so conversant with the facts.

Some time ago I was asked to help audit the accounts of a certain church. Three church officers and myself made up the company, and each one of them smoked his pipe until the air in the room was almost stifling, and thus the finances of the Lord’s house (He is the Lord of glory) were gone over. Something that General Moses was once told to write down came to my mind, viz., “I will be sanctified in all them who bear the vessels of the Lord’s house.” I remember now the deliverance of a certain young Presbyterian minister, who, having been asked for his judgment on the tobacco question, spoke out from the pulpit on a Sunday morning. “Brethren,” he said, “I am persuaded that the Holy Spirit, who is represented to us by the pure white dove, will not do much of His best work in a smoke-stack.”

Right around us are mothers who grieve and weep because their boys are being caught in this trap of Satan, and there are loving, watchful sisters who are made sad as they see brother and friend yielding to this seductive wrong. I shall never forget the sorrow of my own mother when the belongings of a dead son were brought home from a distant city, and opened. Pipes and tobacco were found in abundance, but no Bible. To say the least, this was no evidence of a God-led life. Sirs, would it not be in keeping with the Spirit and life of the spotless Son of God to join heart and hands with these mothers and sisters I have mentioned, and help the youth of our fair Dominion to a life of holiness and victory?

Let me now close this letter with that grand appeal from the scarred old veteran of the cross, which has come ringing down through the ages ever since Paul lived so nobly, and wrought so mightily, and in whose inspired lips we could scarcely conceive of a pipe being placed: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

Wm. Harker,

Signalman, Allandale, Ontario.