The Cost of It by Uriah Smith

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 11, 1875

The Cost of It.

By Uriah Smith

WHAT? The practice of an unnatural, soul-and-body-destroying habit, the use of tobacco. And what does it cost? A brother in a church but twelve miles from this place gave us the figures. He had used tobacco for fifty years, consuming about $10 worth each year. This certainly is as small an amount as is consumed by the average tobacco-user. And this brother, having now discarded the practice, looked back over the ground to see what his sin in this respect had cost him. He figured it up for the entire 50 years, adding the legitimate interest each year, and found that the figures footed up to eleven thousand four hundred and forty-eight dollars and sixty-two cents ($11,448.62). This snug little fortune, which has thus gone through his lips only to defile and benumb, would now be very acceptable to him, if he only had it in dollars and cents. And how many use double this amount. And what have they in the end to show for this enormous outlay? Verily the devil has produced in this thing a first-class swindle. U. S.