p. 16 | His Idol by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Jun 7, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 23.

His Idol

By Editor

His Idol.—A New York paper tells of an old man dying of smoker's cancer on the lip. He was told that he would die unless he gave up his pipe, but he preferred pipe and death to life. When near death he continued to beg for his pipe, it was given to him filled with tobacco. The old man calmly smoked the pipe until the tobacco gave out and then he lay back to wait for the end. It came in a very little while. The deadly poison of tobacco destroys reason and judgment, and fine moral discrimination. He alone knows this by experience who has broken by the power of grace the bondage of the tobacco habit. But any man may know it by faith in God's Word and the use of the reason God has given him. Tobacco using—smoking, chewing, or snuffing—is evil and only evil. It is narcotizing, benumbing to the finer faculties of soul and mind and body, enslaving to the will, and filthy generally. That good men use it is true; but they would be better, grander men without it; and God is able and willing to set them free.