p. 285 | Temperance

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 23, 1881

Temperance.

WRONG TO SELL TOBACCO.

The following resolutions by a store-keeper on selling tobacco are worth quoting as an example for others:—

1. I will not sell tobacco, because I consider the habit of using it degrading, selfish, sensual, indolent, and injurious, and feel it to be my duty to do all I can by example and precept to put an end to a practice pernicious and detestible.

2. Because smoking has been the means of ruining thousands of young men with bright prospects, who have received excellent and religious educations; but who, to imitate the fop, have, during a walk after the hours of business, taken the cigar or the pipe; the mouth has become dry, the tongue parched, and to allay which, they have resorted to the saloon; the glass has been called for, and emptied; another glass is taken, and thus the novice becomes a habitual smoker and drinker, and in time falls a prey to intemperance with its inevitable consequences—loss of character, health, property, body, and soul.

3. Because I believe it to be wrong to encourage a custom which necessarily occasions a sinful waste of property, when so many distressed families, benevolent societies, and the cause of the Redeemer, require pecuniary assistance, and are dying for it.

4. Because I believe that much valuable time is squandered upon the pipe by professing Christians, and even by ministers, which might and ought to be devoted to the distribution of tracts, the instruction of the young, visiting the sick, and doing good.

5. Because it is a well-ascertained fact that a large proportion of those who have been reclaimed from intemperance, and have returned to their former habits, have attributed their downfall to the continuance of the practice of smoking. The temperance cause cannot advance while tobacco hedges up its way.

6. Because experience has proved to me that I could not effectually induce the smoker to abandon his habit while I continue to sell, the usual reply being, “If it is wrong to buy, it is wrong to sell.”

7. Because I feel assured that though it may be a loss to me in a pecuniary view, still I shall be more than recompensed for the sacrifice made, by an inward satisfaction of having acted conscientiously, and with a sincere desire to promote the welfare of my fellow-men. A Christian woman says, “I and my husband have brought up eight children, and, as you say tobacco is injurious, if we give up the sale of it, I know that God will provide something else for us to sell instead of it. We will sell no more.”

“Set a mark,” said God to the man with the writer’s ink-horn by his side, “upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst of Jerusalem;” and will not he, the righteous God, observe those who forego the gains from tobacco for conscience sake? He will observe; yes, and observe, too, the callous venders of the pernicious drug which mars the visage, demoralizes the soul, and exchanges health and happiness for sickness and domestic sorrow. Let all who derive gain from selling tobacco, remember that theirs is a course in opposition to the command, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Tobacco tends to destroy both body and soul.—Christian Statesman.