I LEFT my native country (Holland) when I was twenty-five years old, and, like very nearly all of my countrymen, I smoked a great deal of tobacco. It seriously affected my nervous system, but I did not know it. Well did I know that my arm was unsteady and my hand trembling, but the cause of it I did not understand. About two or three years after coming to this country, and while I was engaged as janitor in the public schoolhouse in Montague, Mich., I chanced to pick out of a waste-box a piece of the SIGNS OF THE TIMES. The main article in it was an exposition of the effects of tobacco on the human system. I was told my nervousness was caused by the use of tobacco, and that unless I gave it up at once I would soon be a physical wreck. I at once saw the force of the argument and realized the danger I was in. At once I resolved to give the matter a trial, and see whether the writer knew whereof he was affirming.
I smashed my pipe, and threw my idol in the furnace. Results: I am now almost fifty years old, my arm is steady, my hand is firm, my nerves are restored to their normal condition. And, altho I threw away the filthy weed in my own strength, without ever praying God to deliver me from the power and influence of the stuff which is most esteemed among men, and is an abomination to the Lord, I feel grateful to him for the strength to keep it from me all these years. And I also feel grateful to our Adventist brethren for publishing said article, through which, and by which, I was made a man once more.