Tobacco by M. E. Cornell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 11, 1863

Tobacco.

By M. E. Cornell

A DISCOURSE on the subject of purity has produced quite a stir among the tobacco-mongers in Memphis. One man threw away his new box filled with fine-cut and made the firm resolve never to use any more. Several others have given up the filthy weed. Our statement that tobacco juice would kill a serpent almost instantly was discredited by some. But the experiment has been tried by different persons since our statement was made, and it is now universally acknowledged correct. One man said the snake was stone dead before he could crawl his length. Another hearing the statement, threw away his tobacco, saying he would not chew for common, anything that would kill snakes. A snake will show signs of life several hours after its head is cut off. But a little saliva from the tobacco-chewer's mouth will kill the most venomous reptile stone dead in three minutes.

The following test was made at a Water Cure. A man who used tobacco was put into a wet sheet pack for about one hour. When he was removed, a perfectly well and active snake was put into the same sheet and kept there just fifteen minutes by the watch, when it was found to be stone dead.

It is obnoxious to all animate creation except the tobacco worm, and human beings whose appetite has been entirely perverted. The noble elephant would kill a man that would offer him tobacco. The hog, one of the most filthy of animals will not eat tobacco. Cats and dogs would starve to death, before they would eat the flesh of a man that has used tobacco to excess.

Most that use tobacco, agree that it is a useless, hurtful, filthy practice. Why not then all give it up? Is it possible that Christians will continue its use? Is a body steeped in tobacco a holy and acceptable sacrifice in the sight of a pure and holy God? But, how about paying money for that which is not bread, or useful food? What account can be rendered for such waste of the Lord's goods? The poor complain of hard times, but still find means to buy tobacco.

Read the following from one of the secular papers: "A merchant of New York, lately on a visiting and collecting tour in Illinois, was disgusted and shocked at the enormous tobacco chewing and smoking, which he day by day witnessed. It seemed to him a practice almost universally indulged in by young and old, in every rank and condition in life. One day this same merchant, while traveling from one place to another, on the railroad, resolved to find out how many persons in the car in which he was seated used this filthy weed. There were twenty-two men and two women present, and eighteen men of the number admitted that they used tobacco, at a cost, in aggregate of $387 per annum. Each man made his own individual estimate, which was given and put down in a memorandum-book and the total footing was as we have stated. Now this would be an average of about $17 per individual. That would be too high an average estimate, of course, for the whole population of the State. At only $4 for each inhabitant, the total would be $3,000,000. Now, that enormous amount of money, distributed in Illinois, would make easy times."

"In the Baltimore Methodist Conference, Rev. R. Cadden stated that two hundred preachers of that body, chewed tobacco, and one hundred of them smoked cigars, all of them expending $6000, per year: which he said would support two missionaries to China."—Anti Tobacco Journal.

It is said that the number of pounds of tobacco consumed annually in the United States is 200,000,000, and that Christians use $5,000,000 worth annually. What a waste of the Lord's goods is this?

Do they not pray for prosperity that they may consume upon their lusts?

"Why will they waste on trifling cares That life which God's compassion spares, While in the various range of thought, The one thing needful is forgot."