LOST MANHOOD by Joseph Harvey Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 20, 1877

LOST MANHOOD.

By Joseph Harvey Waggoner

CONVERSING once with an intelligent man in Stockton, Cal., he said, “A man that uses tobacco is not half a man.”

“If you place such an estimate upon it, why, then,” I inquired, “do you not quit the use of it?”

“That,” said he “is the very reason, because I have not manhood enough left to quit it.”

The habit of using tobacco is a very slavish habit, more so than that of using ardent spirits. A lumberman of the Wisconsin pineries once told me that his men daily used both whisky and tobacco. Sometimes in cases of very deep snow their supplies would run short. If the whisky gave out, the men worked right along, but if the tobacco gave out his work stopped. There were very few men in the woods who were accustomed to use tobacco who could continue their work without it.

And yet with the evidence of its costliness, its filthiness, and its slavishness, men and women professing godliness wonder why we preach against its use. What reason can be given why it should be used? Why will professed Christian parents persist in setting an example before their children which, if followed, will deprive them of their manhood and make them slaves—bound slaves—to a filthy habit? The habit is disgusting to all who have refined tastes and sensibilities, and it is difficult to say which is the most disgusting, smoking, chewing, or snuffing. All filthy. See 2 Cor. 7:1. J. H. WAGGONER.