p. 762 | MY LAST CIGAR by H. C. Morrison

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Oct 9, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 48.

MY LAST CIGAR.

By H. C. Morrison

BY H. C. MORRISON.

I CAME to manhood and entered the ministry without learning "the use of the weed." But soon after I became a preacher I was led into its use by association with preachers who enjoyed their cigars. Once under the habit, it grew upon me, and soon I was smoking to excess. If the pipe was used, it was reloaded from half a dozen to a dozen times at a sitting. If cigars were used, it required from ten to fifteen per day. My love for tobacco became almost a passion, and seven years of my ministerial life had upon them the strong smell of tobacco. But I became conscious of my bondage and determined to be free. I had the idea that God would help me to get gradually out of a habit into which I had gradually fallen. Hence I went to God for help. On my knees I promised to give up the habit, and asked him for strength. I broke that promise within two days. Again and again I promised, vowed and broke my vows, until I was ashamed to go back to God with the matter. Meantime the appetite increased and absolutely possessed me.

I have found myself, while laboring with penitents at the altar of prayer, wishing for the meeting to close that I might enjoy my cigar, which I had brought with me to the church. My friends, in mistaken kindness, kept me supplied with the best cigars, the finest pipes, and the best brands of smoking tobacco. I have sometimes thrown away pipes, cigars, tobacco, everything, and resolved in desperation, "I will go through one night without tobacco," and then have found myself at midnight, when all were sleeping, in the third story of my dwelling searching through trunks and boxes for tobacco that had been placed there as a safeguard against moths. This I would roll into cigarettes and smoke them. Indeed, it seemed I must have tobacco or die. No poor inebriate had ever more completely surrendered to the bottle than had I to the cigar. After months of struggle and humiliation I gave up the conflict, and concluded to live and die under the power of a habit which I could not master. This seemed to me no worse than to struggle and suffer and fail and fall, as I was constantly doing. For a time I had rest—the rest of a prisoner in passive submission to his fetters, and yet conscious of his right to be free.

While in this condition I was providentially brought to know that I might be free in an instant. Instantaneous freedom! I had thought and prayed only for a gradual deliverance, but the thought of being free in a moment had not occurred to my mind. It was on this wise: One morning during my pastorate at one of the churches in the city of Louisville, Ky., there was thrown at my door a small tract or pamphlet, entitled "The Wonders of Grace," in the instantaneous deliverance from the opium habit, the whisky habit, the morphine habit, the tobacco habit, etc. When I picked it up and read the title, I became indignant. I felt it an insult that such a document should be sent to me, as the pastor of a respectable church. But as no one knew I had it, like Moses, "I looked this

way and that way," and then thrust it into my pocket. The day passed—the morning in the study, the afternoon in the pastoral field. Returning in the evening, I called at the drug store of a friend, and, sitting aside, I drew the pamphlet from my pocket and began to peruse it with the same incredulity and semi-contempt with which I would examine any other fanatical production. There was no effort at argument, only simple statements, with names, dates, and places, followed, perhaps, with a Scripture quotation apropos.

One under the opium habit for twenty years, set free in an instant in answer to prayer. Name and residence given. Another thus delivered from the whisky habit, the morphine or tobacco habit. While thus reading, I fell into this kind of mental soliloquy: "Do you believe the gospel you preach every Sabbath?—Yes, I believe it with all my heart. Do you not teach that if a sinner will repent of his sins and come to Christ, asking and believing, God will instantaneously pardon the sins of his life?—I do, and I know experimentally that this is true. Then, if he will instantaneously pardon the sins of a whole lifetime, can he not instantaneously remove an appetite which you have been but a few years forming?—Yes, I believe he can. Do you not further preach and teach that ‘whatsoever ye shall ask, that is consistent with the divine will, and believe, ye shall receive’?—This is what the Book authorizes me to teach. Then do you think it consistent with the divine will that you should be free from an appetite that is making you a slave?—Yes, I think He is willing. Now the hard question, Are you willing—willing to give up this luxury (for it was the luxury of my life) if you may only be free from the appetite? I had then about the tenth cigar for that day partly consumed. But I had suffered so much, and was so anxious to be free, that my whole being responded. Yes! Yes! I am willing. Then, if God be willing, and you are willing, shall not this appetite go out now and forever? And with this thought the half-consumed cigar passed from my fingers into a receptacle for cigar stumps and other trash which sat near by. The appetite went out of me. I knew when the chain broke. I felt I was free. Rising from my seat, I stepped out on the pavement under a strange and peculiar sense of freedom. There was no emotion, no prayer that I remember save "the soul’s sincere desire." It was a mental process in which I brought myself up to the point that I must confess I was not sincere in what I preached, or I must accept the simple truth that God is true to his word, and thus know the truth of my own gospel.

I walked home under the happy consciousness that God had done what I once asked him to help me do. But I said nothing to the family. They knew my weakness on this line. It has now been well nigh twenty years since that last cigar passed, half smoked, from my hands; and from that instant to the present I have had no more sense of desire for tobacco than the little child that never knew its subtle power. I felt no stupor, no nervousness, no unrest, no sleeplessness. I was as though I had never known the habit. I am thus to-day.—The Soldier.