Temperance by J. D. B.

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 2, 1880

Temperance.

By J. D. B.

REFORM CRUSADE NEEDED.

WHAT, another? you ask. We have had a great temperance reform crusade, and you declare the need of another. Pray on what matter do we need a reform crusade?

We answer on the use of tobacco. This habit is getting to be a universal, national nuisance and SIN, and it needs to be made a subject of earnest opposition as much as alcoholic intemperance. It is a sin of the same order, or class—the sin of the habitual use of a stimulating drug, which injures the mind and the health, debases the spiritual nature, and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, makes the man a slave beyond the power of liberation, to its disgusting impurities. It should be combated by all true Christians because it is an inebriacy, and its victims are under the enslavement of a narcotic intoxication, besotting, and God and humanity-dishonoring.

And again, it should be opposed because it is dwarfing, or destroying that benevolent faculty which manifests itself in care for the comfort of others, and leaving in its stead only a drunken selfishness. Twenty years ago a man would never smoke in a stage-coach, boat, car, room, or by your side on the street in the open air, without first inquiring if it were disagreeable to you, and not then if he learned that it was. Now there is not a thought of the comfort of those who are sickened by it, nor even a saying, "by your leave," except in a very few individual cases.

Again, it is pushing itself everywhere, to the discomfort of those who have too much self-respect to be enslaved by it. You have read of Rev. Joseph Cook's encounter with smokers on the railroad train west. The encounter—except as far as the decided and triumphant assertion of his rights which Mr. Cook made—is not uncommon. In fact, there are getting to be few places where a man or woman not a smoker or chewer can ride, or even live with comfort. Our streets, hotels, public conveyances, and places of interesting natural scenery, are full of the sickening smoke of burnt tobacco. We sought, this fall, to enjoy with a few friends a ride from Alton Bay, N. H., across Lake Winnipiseogee to Center Harbor, but, at Wolf-borough a fire company from Newburyport, Mass., and a brass-band numbering together some 70 men came on board, and from that time, the whole three hours till we landed at the Bay again was one pandemonium of tobacco smoke and sick-headache. There was no escaping it anywhere. The vile and disgusting practice is crowding itself everywhere. Will not Christian men and women release themselves from the habit, if they have it, and give their influence consistently and boldly to oppose its growth? It is not enough that men should be drunken with narcotic nicotine, but, as though to enslave them in the very toils of Satan, dealers are drugging their tobacco with opium, and, as though to hasten the victims to ruin, are rolling it in the deadly poison of arsenicated paper.

The Methodist Episcopal General Conference touched the sin just hard enough at Cincinnati, to subject themselves to a laugh. They required all persons who hereafter enter the ministry to be free from the tobacco habit. If tobacco-using is not a sin, if it is in any sense God-given food or drink or medicine so habitually used, they had no business to deny it to any soul of their ministry; if it is a ruinous sin, then the quitting of it should be required of every member of their communion and ministry, as well as of young ministers. If it is a thing that gets such an idolatrous place in the hearts of ministers who have grown old in its use, that Christian good sense and sanctified will-power cannot conquer it, then all the more plainly is it a dangerous and sinful lust of the flesh, and they ought to be required to test what they preach of Jesus' being able to save to the uttermost from the reign of sin, and become free from it, or else leave the Christian profession and ministry, and not publicly disgrace the ministry or Christian profession, by retaining a filthy, health-destroying, soul-degrading habit, which they declare that neither Christian common sense, nor divine saving power is able to overcome.

But this sin must be opposed likewise because it is burning into smoke and ashes tens of thousands of dollars of the Lord's money every year. Money that should be used in the holy war of Christ against sin and ignorance which are drowning men in destruction and perdition, is literally "consumed upon your lusts" by multitudes of men who profess to be "taking up their cross," and "denying themselves" daily, and following Christ. Yes, it is "consumed upon lust," and a lust, too, that is both degrading to themselves and injurious to their neighbors.

How many tobacco-users among our readers are ready to strike for liberty in Christ, and purity, and devote the trophies of their victory to the glory of Christ and the good of men? Who will join the crusade?—J. D. B., in Bible Banner.