Methodist Ministers and Tobacco
By S. S. Times
If the use of tobacco is a good and desirable thing, ministers would do well to chew or smoke as a godly example to their people. If it is undesirable, ministers would do well to be free from it. Evidently the recently held Methodist General Conference inclines to the latter opinion; for by a vote of two to one it adopted as a new question to be asked of all candidates for the ministry, "Will you wholly refrain from the use of tobacco?" And now the question is, Has the Methodist church raised or lowered its standard by this added restriction of the freedom of its intending ministers? Sure it is that an incoming Methodist clergyman will now be less likely than before to prove a stench in the nostrils of his invalid or delicate-nerved parishioners. The suggestion of one of our contemporaries, that, if the use of tobacco "may be left to the judgment of the older men, there is no consistent rule but to leave it also to that of the younger," has no force, unless it means that it is never right to change the standard of admission to any organization or official position, by an added requirement in the sphere of bodily, mental, or moral qualifications, without insisting that those persons who are already inside shall conform to the newly prescribed standard. The Methodist Conference did not say that it was a sin for a preacher to befoul himself with tobacco, but it did hold that there were already quite enough preachers of that order in its denomination.—S. S. Times.