Health and Temperance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 6, 1888

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 14, No. 14.

Health and Temperance.

FIVE REASONS AGAINST USING TOBACCO.

1. CHEWING, snuffing, or smoking is uncleanly. Those who are not wholly besotted, confess it. "I love my pipe, but I despise myself for using it," said a man of influence. Your breath smells bad; your clothes, your books, and apartments are offensive. Smokers and chewers are almost invariably spitters, and so are repulsive to all persons of cleanly habits.

2. The habit is injurious, tending to "insanity, paralysis, and cancerous affections," as an eminent surgeon shows by official statistics. One of the ablest Connecticut pastors gave up the ministry, and went to Vineland, N. J. He confessed that he could not give up tobacco. His nerves were shattered. He had no will power left. He was warned by a physician that he must stop or die of paralysis. He had no power to stop, and in a few months expired, body and mind wrecked. Besides the narcotic effects of the poison, there is a large amount of creosote in the fumes, such as eats through the pipe of a furnace or kills the nerve of a tooth. It stupefies and poisons. It renders the voice husky. Tobacco creates a thirst for alcoholic drink. Its influence on youth and on those of sedentary habits is particularly destructive.

3. It is a costly indulgence. Government statistics have shown that three hundred and fifty millions of dollars are wasted on this vice in a year, far more than what is spent for bread! Yet every loafer, tramp, and beggar must have the poison, though he lacks food. Millions of money have also been lost by the fires kindled by smokers, whose burning matches and flying sparks have caused fearful conflagrations and numerous fatal burnings. That the abomination of street smoking is allowed, is a marvel of modern civilization.

4. It is a sin against conscience. You know it to be useless, harmful to yourself and others, and so a sin. You know that God enjoins cleanliness of body as well as purity of heart. He forbids the wicked waste of money. He forbids you to inflict a physical taint on your unborn offspring by indulgences, the immediate evils of which you may escape. Your conscience says, Don't do it.

5. The example is bad. I have known of a smoker who threatened to horse-whip his boy if he ever dared to touch tobacco. Many of those who are loudest in condemning tobacco are slaves to it, sometimes helpless. But the grace of God, which commands us to cleanse ourselves "from all filthiness of the flesh," and to give our bodies to Christ, "a sweet-smelling sacrifice," is able to extinguish the deadly appetite. For your sake and for the sake of others whom you influence, ask God's help to abandon a habit which is uncleanly, injurious, costly, insulting to conscience, and which is harmful to others.—Christian Secretary.