Tobacco Use Among Advent Preachers Rebuked
What a shame that any Advent preachers, while teaching that the end of all things is at hand, and that we must cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh if we would enter the kingdom of God, should still be guilty themselves of the gross habit of using tobacco! Such is the case with many first-day Adventists. That such moral obliquity should attract the notice of a scrutinizing world is no more than could be expected; nor is it strange that it should be the object, as it is no doubt, in some places, one great occasion, of the ridicule heaped upon Adventism. A writer in the Portland Transcript gives a burlesque on the advent doctrine. He must bear his own responsibility for ranging himself among those who scoff at the great truth of the Lord’s soon coming. But tobacco-using Advent preachers, deserve to be rebuked; and they come in for the following share of the article:— “They delight in unkempt hair and very long beard, and tobacco juice is used by them as was ‘the precious ointment that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard, that went down to the skirts of his garment.’ Injustice and oppression are not matters of concern to them. Rum is good for medicine, and as for tobacco, the juice of that delectable weed glistens on the beard of the prophet who travels the platform ‘like the dew of Hermon that descended upon the mountains of Zion.’ * Hoping the saints will find something in the New Jerusalem that will afford them as much genuine comfort as the ‘chawing of terbarker’ does in this world, I subscribe myself,” &c.