A Slave to Appetite

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 15, 1857

A Slave to Appetite

In alluding to those who are slaves to appetite, George Trask speaks thus:

My Brother! I wish to show you that your habit is at war with religion, name and thing.

1. Religion bids you be cleanly and gentlemanly in demeanor.

But, tell me, is the common use of Tobacco a cleanly and becoming practice? Snuff it, and it makes your nose a mere dust-pan; chew it, and it soils your lips and teeth, and makes your mouth a nauseous distillery; smoke it, and it pollutes flesh and breath, earth and air; makes the chest a sort of volcano, and the mouth a crater venting smoke and fire. Is this gentlemanly or decent? When Gouverneur Morris returned from France, a Doctor of Divinity, notorious as a smoker, said to him:— "Mr. Morris, do gentlemen smoke in Paris?"—"Gentlemen," said Mr. Morris, "Gentlemen, Doctor, smoke nowhere."

2. Religion bids you crucify fleshly lusts, and exercise self-denial.

Is not this a hurtful lust, a vile appetite, an unreasonable self-indulgence, totally at war with purity and self-denial? Says Dr. Harris, "Tobacco is a lust of the flesh, an agent of Satan, by which he is now destroying more bodies and souls than by any other agent." Said a good man, "My Tobacco is a lust, which is getting the mastery of me; I will drop it, if it takes the flesh from my bones." He did so. Brother, I pray you do likewise.

3. Religion bids you, as a steward of God, to make a proper use of money.

Your habit is expensive, and worse than useless. If you are well, this poison can do you no good; hence every cent you spend for it is waste which dishonors God; it is "money for that which is not bread." If you have used it for some time, a child can show you that you have squandered an enormous amount of money—money needed to raise drooping hearts, and fill the world with light and love.

4. Religion bids you to use time, strength, and life to the best purpose.

The Earl of Stanhope maintains that the victims of this narcotic spend one twentieth part of their time—two years of forty—in its indulgence. What right have you, my brother, to waste years or months in this manner? Is this "redeeming the time?" What right have you to enfeeble your body by this emasculating drug, when its energies, in full force, should be given to God, and the good of a perishing race? What right have you to use a drug whose tendency is completely anti-vital, and which may cut short your life ten years or twenty?

5. Religion bids you give the world a good example. It has been said that ninety-nine victims in a hundred acquire this habit from infectious example.