“KNOW ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? for ye are bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.” 1 Cor. 6, 19, 20.
We are not our own. We do not belong to ourselves. But we have been purchased with a dear price. We have cost an immense sum, even the suffering and death of the Son of God. If we can understand this, and fully realize it, then shall we feel great responsibility resting upon us to keep ourselves in the very best condition of health, that we may render to God perfect service.
But when we take any course which decreases our strength, expends our vitality, beclouds the intellect, and destroys the powers of the mind, we sin against God. In pursuing this course we are not glorifying him in our bodies and spirits which are his; but are committing a great wrong in his sight.
Has Jesus given himself for us? Has this dear price been paid to redeem us? And is it so, that we are not our own? Is it true that all the powers of our being, our bodies, our spirits, all that we have, and all we are, belong to God? Is this so? It certainly is. And when we realize this, what obligation does it lay us under to God to preserve ourselves in that condition that we may honor him upon the earth in our bodies and in our spirits which are the Lord’s.
We believe without a doubt that Christ is soon coming. This is not a fable to us. It is a reality. We have no doubt, neither have we had a doubt for years, that the doctrines we hold to-day are present truth, and that we are preparing for the Judgment. We are preparing to meet Him who is to appear in the clouds of heaven with the holy retinue of angels, to escort Him on his way, to give the faithful and the just the finishing touch of immortality. When he comes he is not to cleanse us of our sins. He is not then to remove from us the defects in our characters. He will not then cure us of the infirmities of our tempers and dispositions. He will not do this work then. Before that time this work will all be accomplished, if wrought for us at all. Then those who are holy will be holy still. They are not to be made holy when the Lord comes. Those who have preserved their bodies, and their spirits, in holiness, and in sanctification, and honor, will then receive the finishing touch of immortality. And when he comes, those who are unjust, and unsanctified, and filthy, will remain so forever. There is then no work to be done for them which shall remove their defects, and give them holy characters. The Refiner does not then sit to pursue his refining process, and remove their sins, and their corruption. This is all to be done in these hours of probation. It is now that this work is to be accomplished for us.
We embrace the truth of God with our different organizations, and as we come under the influence of truth, it will accomplish the work for us which is necessary to be accomplished, and give us a moral fitness for the kingdom of glory, and for the society of the heavenly angels. We are now in God’s work-shop. We are, many of us rough stone from the quarry. As we lay hold upon the truth of God, its influence must affect us. It must elevate us. It must remove from us every imperfection. It must remove from us sins of whatever nature. And it must fit us, that we may be prepared to see the king in his beauty, and finally to unite with the pure and heavenly angels in the kingdom of glory. This work is to be accomplished for us here. Here we are, with these bodies and spirits, which are to be fitted for immortality.
We are in a world that is in opposition to righteousness, holiness, a growth in grace, and to purity of character. Everywhere we look we see deformity and sin. We see corruption. We see defilement on every hand. And what is the work that we are to undertake here just previous to immortality? It is to preserve our bodies holy, our spirits pure, that we may stand forth unstained amid the corruptions teeming around us in these last days. And if this work is to be performed for us, we need to engage in it heartily, and engage in it at once. We want to take hold of the work now. We want to understand it just as it is. Selfishness should not come in here to control us. We want the Spirit of God to have perfect control of us. It should influence us in all our actions. And if we have a right hold on Heaven, a right hold of the power that is from above, we shall feel the sanctifying influence of the Spirit of God upon our hearts.
When we have tried to present to the people the health reform, and have spoken of the importance of their eating, and drinking, and in all that they do, to do it to the glory of God, many, by their actions, have said, “It is nobody’s business whether I eat this or that. Whatever we do we are to bear the consequences ourselves.” Dear friends, you are greatly mistaken. You are not the only sufferers from a wrong course. The society you are in bears the consequences of your wrongs, in a great degree, as well as yourselves. If you are suffering from your intemperance in eating or in drinking, we that are around you, or associated with you, are affected by your infirmities. We have to suffer on account of the course you pursue, which is wrong. If it has an influence to lessen your powers of mind or body, we are affected by it. We have to feel it. When in your society, instead of your having a buoyancy of spirit, you are gloomy, and cast a shadow upon the spirits of all around you. If we are sad, and depressed, and in trouble, you could, if in right conditions of health, have a clear brain to show us the way out, and speak a comforting word to us. If your brain is so benumbed by your wrong course of living that you cannot give us the right counsel, do we not meet with a loss? Does not your influence seriously affect us? We may have a good degree of confidence in our own judgment, yet we want to have counsellors; for in many counsellors there is safety. We desire that our course should look consistent and proper to those we love, and we wish to seek their counsel, and have them able to give it with a clear brain. But what care we for your judgment, if your brain nerve power has been taxed to the utmost to take care of improper food, or an enormous quantity of even healthful food placed in your stomachs, and the vitality withdrawn from the brain? What care we for the judgment of such persons? They see through a mass of undigested food. Therefore your course of living affects us. It is impossible for you to pursue any wrong course without others suffering beside yourself.
“Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air; but I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.” In running the race, in order to obtain that laurel which was considered a special honor, those who engaged in running were temperate in all things. They were temperate, that their muscles, and their brains, and every part of them, should be in the very best condition to run. If they were not temperate, they would not have that elasticity that they would have if they were temperate in all things. If temperate, they could run that race successfully. They were more sure of receiving the crown. But notwithstanding all their efforts in the direction of temperance, and to subject themselves to a careful diet, in order to be in the best condition, yet they only ran at a venture. They might do the very best they could, and yet after all not receive the token of honor; for another might be a little in advance of them, and take the prize. One only received the prize. But we can all run in the heavenly race, and all receive the prize. It is not an uncertainty. It is not to run at a risk. We must put on the heavenly graces, with the eye directed upward to the crown of immortality, keeping the Pattern ever before us. He was a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. The self-denying life of our divine Lord we are to keep constantly in view. His life of poverty, humbleness, and self-denial, we must not forget. And then as we seek to imitate him, keeping our eye upon the mark of the prize, we can run this race with certainty, knowing that if we do the very best we can we shall certainly secure the prize. Men ran to obtain a corruptible crown, one that would perish in a day. All this self-denial practiced by those who ran these races was to obtain a corruptible crown, which was only a token of honor from mortals here.
But we are to run the race, at the end of which is a crown of immortality and everlasting life. Yes, a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory will be awarded to us as the prize when the race is run. “We,” says the apostle, “an incorruptible.” And if they could be temperate in all things, who engaged in this race here upon earth for a temporal crown, cannot we be temperate in all things, who have in view an incorruptible crown, an eternal weight of glory, and a life which measures with the life of God? When we have this great inducement before us, cannot we run, with patience, this race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith? He has pointed out the way for us. He has marked it for us by his own footsteps all the way along. It is the path that he traveled. You may, with Christ, experience the self-denial, and the suffering, and walk in this pathway imprinted by his own blood.
“I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air. But I keep under my my body, and bring it into subjection.” There is work to do here, for every man, woman, and child. Satan is constantly at work, that he may have control of your bodies and spirits. But Christ has bought you, and you are his property. And now it is for you to work in union with Christ, in union with the holy angels that minister unto you. It is for you to keep the body under, and bring it into subjection. Unless you do this, you will certainly lose everlasting life, and the crown of immortality.
And yet some will say, “What business is it to anybody what I eat? or what I drink?” I have shown you what relation your course has to others. You have seen that it has much to do with the influence you exert in your families. It has much to do with your manner of acting. It has much to do with moulding the characters of your children.
As I said before, it is a corrupted age in which we live. It is a time when Satan seems to have almost complete control of minds that are not fully consecrated to God. Therefore there is a very great responsibility resting upon parents and guardians who have children to bring up. Parents have taken the responsibility of bringing these children into existence. And what now is their duty? Is it to let them come up just as they may? and just as they will? Let me tell you, a weight of responsibility rests upon these parents. Whether you eat, or whether you drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God. Do you do this when you are preparing food for the table, and when you place it upon your tables, and call your family to partake of it? Are you placing only the food before these children that you know will make the very best blood? Is it that food that will preserve their systems in the least feverish condition? Is it that which will place them in the very best relation to life and health? Is this the food that you are studying to place before your children? Or are you careless and reckless of their future good? and provide for them unhealthful, stimulating, irritating food? Let me tell you that the children from their very birth are born to evil. Satan seems to have control of them. He seems to take possession of their young minds, and they are corrupted. Why do fathers and mothers act as though a lethargy was upon them? They do not mistrust that Satan is sowing evil seed in their families. They are as blind, and careless, and reckless, in regard to these things as it is possible for them to be. Why do they not awake, and study these things? Why are they not reading up? Says the apostle, “Add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience,” etc. Here is work resting upon every one who professes to follow Jesus Christ.—From Report of an Address.
Earliest Ideas of the Soul
The Immortality of the Soul.—History of the Doctrine.
(Continued.)
EARLIEST IDEAS OF THE SOUL.
If the reader supposes that the first ideas which the ancients had of the soul were the same as those popular among us now, he needs to be undeceived. The idea that after the body dies, the soul, as an immortal, immaterial, conscious, and active personality, goes immediately to Heaven or hell, was not arrived at immediately, but grew out of the imagination, the poetry, the philosophy, and the laws of many ages. It is interesting to trace its gradual development.
The first idea that the ancients conceived of the soul, or spirit, as existing separately from the body after death, was that of a shadow or shade, resembling the body in shape, but larger. This shade was supposed to be a very thin, misty, aerial, material substance. At first the shades of all, both good and bad, were said to be gathered together under ground in hades, or sheol. They were not permitted to visit the upper world among the living. They were said to be in a dreamy, sleeping condition. Gradually, by poetic imagination, they were invested with more life and intelligence, and were assigned employments in hades like those they had led on earth. Then a few were said to come up from their dreary abode, and appear to the living. They represented hades to be a damp, chilly, dismal place. They sighed to return to earth. The scene gradually changed, and they were invested with still more activity, power, and intelligence, and placed in a region of greater light, till a few privileged ones were raised to dwell on the surface of the earth, then higher in the air, and at last to Heaven. They then began to be invested with mighty power as demons, demi-gods, and gods, and were supposed to rule over the living. At last, after long ages, all the good were supposed to go to Heaven at death.
They had similar ideas in regard to the punishment of the wicked in hades. At first only a very few were punished, then certain crimes in all, and at length all the wicked were punished there at death. But this change in the minds of the people was very slow, and many ages passed before it was effected. Many testimonies could be presented on these points; but I can offer only a few here. The origin of many of these ideas is thus stated by Alger:—
“The origin of many notions touching a future state found in literature, is to be traced to those rambling thoughts and poetic reveries with which even the most philosophic minds, in certain moods, indulged themselves.” “Two general sources have now been described of the barbarian conceptions in relation to a future state. First, the natural operation of an earnest recollection of the dead; sympathy, regret, and reverence for them, leading the thoughts and heart to grope after them, to brood over the possibilities of their fate, and to express themselves in rites and emblems. Secondly, the mythological or arbitrary creations of the imagination, when it is set strongly at work, as it must be by the solemn phenomena associated by death. But beyond these two comprehensive statements, there is, directly related to the matter and worthy of separate illustration, a curious action of the mind, which has been very extensively experienced, and fertile of results. It is a peculiar example of the unconscious imputation of objective existence to mental ideas. With the death of the body, the man does not cease to live in the remembrance, imagination, and heart of his surviving friends. By an unphilosophical confusion, this internal image is credited as an external existence. The dead pass from their customary haunts in our society to the emperishable domain of ideas.” “Fancy and reason, thus set to work, speedily construct a thousand theories filled with details. Desire fathers thought, and then thought woos belief.” (Future Life, part ii, chap. i, p. 81; and part i, chap. iii, p. 38.)
This was the real origin of the notion that the soul lives after the body dies—imagination and desire.
Dr. Knapp, in accounting for this doctrine among the ancients, says: “They often had dreams, in which the dead appeared to them, speaking and acting; and in this way they found their wishes, and the traditions they had received from their fathers, confirmed anew.” (Christian Theology, p. 519.)
Even now, wishes, dreams, death-bed scenes, etc., etc., are the best proof which many have of the immortality of the soul.
With regard to the first conception of the abode and condition of the departed spirits, Dr. Knapp remarks: “Far more general was the opinion among the ancient nations that the abode of departed spirits is under the earth; because the dead are laid beneath the ground, and their bodies return to the dust. The souls, there separated from their bodies, were regarded as a sort of aerial beings or shades. Taken as a whole, the ancient Eastern nations and the Greeks agreed on this point.” (Ibid., p. 524.)
HOMER’S ILIAD.
Turning to Homer, the oldest of the heathen poets, who wrote about nine hundred years before Christ, we find that the ideas then entertained of death were that it was a sleep, and of hades, or the state of the dead, that it was a dark, gloomy, cold place under ground, where the mere powerless shadows of the dead existed in a half-unconscious state. Read a few quotations:—
“Silent they slept, and heard of wars no more.”
“And death in lasting slumber seals his eyes.”
“The soul, indignant, seeks the realms of night.”
“Oppress’d had sunk to death’s eternal shade.”
“Add one more ghost to Pluto’s gloomy reign.”
“Thy Hector, wrapt in everlasting sleep,
Shall neither hear thee sigh, nor see thee weep.”
“And seeks the cave of Death’s half-brother, sleep.”
(Pope’s Homer’s Iliad, pp. 58, 85, 91, 101, 123, 259, 306.)
Such expressions are frequent all through the Iliad.
Homer always describes hades as a dreary, gloomy place, thus:—
“When to grim Pluto’s gloomy gates he went.”
“Go, guide thy darksome steps to Pluto’s dreary hall.”
“By thy black waves, tremendous Styx! that flow
Through the drear realms of gliding ghosts below.”
(Pope’s Homer’s Iliad, pp. 151, 265, 269.)
The souls there are described as feeble, shadowy, and voiceless.
“Then the wan shades and feeble ghosts implore.”
“To all the phantom nations of the dead.”
(Pope’s Homer’s Odyssey, p. 601.)
Finally Homer, in his Odyssey, relates the descent of Ulysses into hades, and his interview with the souls of the dead. We give a few quotations:—
“Now the wan shades we hail,
When lo! appeared along the dusky coasts,
Thin, airy shoals of visionary ghosts.”
Of the soul of his mother he says:—
“Now a thin form is all Anticlea was.
Still in the dark abodes of death I stood,
When near Anticlea, moved and drank the blood.
Straight all the mother in her soul awakes,
And owning her Ulysses, thus she speaks:
Comest thou, my son, alive, to realms beneath,
The dolesome realms of darkness and of death?
Comest thou alive from pure ethereal day?
Dire is the region, dismal is the way.”
“Thrice in my arms I strove her shade to bind,
Thrice through my arms she slipp’d like empty wind.”
(Ibid., pp. 605, 606, 608, 609.)
Ulysses complaining of this, his mother replies:—
“All, all are such when life the body leaves;
No more the substance of the man remains;
While the impassive soul reluctant flies,
Like a vain dream, to these infernal skies.
But from the dark dominion speed thy way,
And climb the steep ascent to upper day;
To thy chaste bride the wondrous story tell,
The woes, the horrors, and the laws of hell.”
(Ibid., p. 609.)
Of a great king now dead he says:—
“His substance vanish’d, and his strength decay’d;
Now all Atrides is an empty shade.”
(Ibid., p. 614.)
The soul of the mighty Achilles says:—
“Talk not of ruling in this dolorous gloom,
Nor think vain words (he cried) can ease my doom.
Rather I’d choose laboriously to bear
A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air;
A slave to some poor hind that toils for bread,
Than reign the sceptered monarch of the dead.”
(Ibid., p. 616.)
He would rather be a slave and live on earth than be a king in the land of spirits! How different, how exactly the reverse, of the modern ideas of the spirit land!
The following gives a good general idea of ancient opinion with regard to the state of the dead. It will be noticed that they all considered the soul material: “The disembodied soul, as conceived by the Greeks, and after them by the Romans, is material, but of so thin a contexture that it cannot be felt with the hands. It is exhaled with the dying breath, or issues through a warrior’s wounds. The sword passes through its uninjured form as through the air. It is to the body what a dream is to waking action. Retaining the shape, lineaments, and motion the man had in life, it is immediately recognized upon appearing. It quits the body with much reluctance, leaving that warm and vigorous investiture for a chill and forceless existence. It glides along without noise, and very swiftly, like a shadow. It is unable to enter the lower kingdom and be at peace until its deserted body has been buried with sacred rites; meanwhile, naked and sad, it flits restlessly about the gates, uttering doleful moans.” (Doctrine of a Future Life, pp. 175, 176.)
Thus the happiness of the soul was intimately connected with that of the body.
With regard to the gradual development of their ideas of hell, ghosts, etc., Alger says:—
“First, then, from a study of the Greek mythology, we find all the dead a dull populace of ghosts, fluttering through the neutral melancholy of hades without discrimination. And finally we discern, in the world of the dead, a sad middle region, with a paradise on the right hand, and a hell on the left, the whole presided over by three incorruptible judges, who appoint the new-comers their places in accordance with their deserts.” (Ibid., p. 179.)
“The native Hebrew conception of the state of the dead was that of the voiceless gloom and dismal slumber of sheol, whither all alike went.” (Ibid., p. 261.) “But, after a time, these places in the lower world were divided, and the residences of the righteous and the wicked were conceived of as separate.” (Knapp’s Theol., sec. 150, p. 524.)
We cannot fail to observe that the ancients, instead of having a clear and well-defined doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the conscious state of the dead, gradually developed these ideas, not from an early and clear tradition, but from the causes already given, and from others yet to be named. This is an important fact in our investigation, and it should be well weighed.
INFLUENCE OF THE POETS.
The influence of the poets and poetry aided greatly in the development of early conceptions concerning the state of the dead. The poets have always had a great influence in shaping the ideas and traditions of rude nations. No subject ever furnished a better theme for poetic fiction and imagination than that of the place and condition of men after death; and in none has greater liberty of fancy been taken than in this. Whoever wishes proof of this, may look into the pages of Homer, Virgil, Dante, etc. These poets have given loose reins to their warm imaginations, to revel in the most horrid scenes. Their productions have been eagerly listened to by the people, and the effect has been marked and lasting. These poets were the ones who first taught the ancient heathen their religious tenets.
Thus writes Herodotus: “For I am of opinion that Hesiod and Homer [poets] lived four hundred years before my time, and not more, and these were they who framed atheogony for the Greeks, and gave names to the gods, and assigned to them honors and arts, and declared their several forms.” (Herod. Euterpe ii, 53, p. 116.)
History abundantly shows that the fancy of poets has done more than anything else to build up this visionary doctrine of a hell and heaven of departed ghosts. Says Enfield: “Every poet enlarged and moulded the ancient fables according to the fertility or luxuriancy of his own fancy; so that they were not only increased from time to time without limit, but in many particulars so materially altered that their original features could scarcely be perceived.” (Hist. Philo., p. 63.) Says another: “It is a common saying that the license of the poets caused greater injury to the ancient theology than all other things put together.” (Cudworth’s Int. System, vol. i, p. 619, note.)
The learned Mosheim thus candidly states the poetic origin of the popular pagan notions of hell:—
“It is notorious that those who embodied the dogmas of antiquity in verse, borrowed the coloring and embellishments by which they sought to gain for them a readier access into the popular mind from ancient history, and formed a certain discipline called in the present day mythology, compounded of the precepts of ancient philosophers and the legends of their own country. Hence they also obscured with the same ornaments and fictions the most simple doctrine of the state of souls after death, in order to beguile and conciliate the ears of the multitude who held in firm remembrance the affairs and exploits of bygone ages as handed down from their ancestors. First of all, the subterranean place itself, in which disembodied souls were supposed to be confined, was depicted by them in such a way as accorded with Grecian conceptions, and the manners of the times in which they lived. In the next place, being aware that that incredible multitude of souls could not possibly dispense with a leader and king, they selected Pluto out of ancient tradition, a certain king, probably of Epirus or some other province, well known to the common people for his severity, and assigned to him the sovereignty of the shades. On him they bestowed all the concomitants with which the kings of their own times were accustomed to be surrounded,—a palace, servants, wife, counselors, lictors, executioners, porters, and the like. But as they had founded so dreadful, dismal a community, in order to express all these, they were obliged to have recourse to the most hideous and horrible imagery. This is well known to the reader of Homer, Virgil, and the other poets.
“That in the remotest ages dogs were chained to the doors of the rich and powerful for the purpose of deterring the approach of mendicants and thieves, is a fact which has long ago been demonstrated by learned men. The poets, therefore, considered it incumbent upon themselves to commit the custody of hell in like manner to a great and savage dog, which, to produce a more powerful impression upon the minds of the vulgar, they feigned to be triple-headed. For as the infernal dominions were divided into three parts, namely, Tartarus, Elysian Fields, and the abode of souls not yet purged and proved, and consequently the door and entrance of this gloomy realm was threefold, it was reasonable that the dog placed at the threshold of hell should be endowed with a threefold head, in order to be able to guard all the inlets. In Homer’s time, kings had already departed from the ancient simplicity, and no longer adjudicated on the causes of their subjects, but had delegated this office to others. It was therefore proper to exempt the king of hell also from this labor. Hence they selected from the ancient history of their country those men that had formerly enjoyed a high reputation for justice and rigor, and were commonly regarded as the first examples of most upright, just judges, namely, Rhodamanthus, Minos, and Æacus, whom they installed in that awful tribunal, and appointed as inquisitors of souls. And with respect to these judges they used the same expressions as though they perfectly resembled those whom they saw administering justice in their own times, either as regards the form of trial or any other characteristic by which a judge is usually distinguished from the rest of the people.
“As this region was believed to be situated underneath the earth, the road which led to it was necessarily described as rugged, dark, dreary, and unknown to mortals. Disembodied souls, therefore, would probably have missed their way, unless they had been furnished with a guide; probably, also, some of those who were weighed down with consciousness of crime would have chosen to wander about on the earth forever, rather than descend into a place which they foresaw was about to be the most dreadful and fatal to themselves. Even this inconvenience was provided against by the poets; for they assigned Mercury as the guide and conductor of the dead, and taught the people that he not only pointed out the way to errant souls, but compelled the reluctant to enter it. The rest I pass over; for I have no intention here of explaining the fables of the poets, or of trespassing upon the province of the philologer.” (Cudworth’s Intell. Sys., vol. iii, pp. 293, 294, note.)
This is a truthful and candid statement of the real origin of the heathen doctrine concerning the place and condition of the dead. Yet much of this is retained to-day in the Christian creeds as Bible truth!
—Christian
ENOUGH.
By Frances Ridley Havergal
I AM so weak, dear Lord! I cannot stand
One moment without Thee.
But Oh, the tenderness of Thine enfolding,
And Oh, the faithfulness of Thine upholding,
And Oh, the strength of Thy right hand!
That strength is enough for me.
I am so needy, Lord! But well I know
All fullness dwells in Thee;
And hour by hour that never-failing treasure
Supplies and fills in overflowing measure
My least, my greatest need. And so
Thy grace is enough for me.
It is so sweet to trust Thy word alone;
I do not ask to see
The unveiling of Thy purpose, or the shining
Of future light on mysteries entwining;
Thy promise-roll is all my own,—
Thy word is enough for me.
The human heart asks love. But now I know
That my heart hath from Thee
All real and full and marvellous affection,
So near, so human! Yet Divine perfection
Thrills gloriously the mighty glow!
Thy love is enough for me.
There were strange soul-depths, restless, vast and broad,
Unfathomed as the sea,—
An infinite craving for some infinite stilling;
But now Thy perfect peace is perfect filling;
Lord Jesus Christ, my Lord, my God,
Thou, Thou art enough for me!
—Frances Ridley Havergal.
The Rights of Others.
THE use of tobacco by any person, is a persistent and flagrant transgression of the rights of others. Persons claim the privilege of doing as they please; but no principle of law, gospel, or common sense allows any man to please himself by displeasing or annoying others. If a man had neither father, nor mother, nor wife, nor child, nor friend; if he lived as a hermit in a hole on some desert island, untrodden by any human foot, he might perhaps claim the natural right to do as he pleased, provided there was no God and he was without moral responsibility. But it is impossible for society to exist unless men consent to the abridgment of their personal rights or privileges, and learn to consider and respect the rights and inclinations of others. All law is based upon the principle that the inclinations of the individual must yield to the good of the community. He who refuses to accept this principle of action, speedily finds himself an outlaw. He arrays himself against society, and society avenges itself upon him by compelling him to submit to wholesome authority. No man moving in society has a right to make himself a nuisance or an occasion of offense to others. He is bound to observe the proprieties and decencies of life. As a member of society he must do nothing by which society itself would be subverted. No man living has a right to defile the water I drink. No man living has the right to poison the air I breathe. Every man who uses tobacco is continually doing this thing. He burns his filthy cigar or nauseous pipe, drawing smoke into his mouth and then puffing it out for me to inhale. What right has he to poison the air I breathe? What right has he to give me the headache, or in any way deprive me of the privilege of breathing the vital air which God has made necessary to my very life? If he could get away beyond all human fellowship, where no one could see him, hear him, or be in any way affected by his conduct, the case would be different; but he intrudes himself upon others, he poisons the air I breathe, and seems to imagine that he has a perfect right to do this; and that I have no right whatever to object to his doing it. He is mistaken. It is not only my right, but my duty to protest against his impudence and selfishness. No man has a right to poison his wife, or make his children sick, by the use of tobacco. Thousands are, nevertheless, doing it from day to day. Helpless women, little children, feeble and sensitive, suffer headache, nausea, and untold disgust, because some selfish and uncourteous man claims the privilege of doing as he pleases in regard to personal habits, without respect to the rights of those around him. Such men have mistaken their position. They may be able, under the law of brute force, to do as they please, but under the higher law of right and propriety they are unquestionably condemned.
One marked effect of the use of narcotics seems to be to blunt the conscience and render the mind insensible to delicate moral and equitable distinction, consequently men, without the slightest apparent sense of impropriety, commit the greatest breaches of public courtesy. A man has no more right to smoke in my face than he has to spit in my face; and yet I can hardly go on the street, without being sickened by the nauseous puffing of some smoker who seems to have no more idea that he is making a nuisance of himself than a Fejee Islander has of the indecency of going naked. If these men who do this could know the loathing which they cause in the minds of men and women whom they meet from day to day, it is certain that unless their consciences and sensibilities were thoroughly calloused they would rid themselves of a habit so uncourteous to others and so unjust to themselves.
—Christian Statesman.
Christian Statemannt
THE tongue does large business on a small capital; it raises a mighty storm on the most trivial occasions. There is not a family, or school, or single village in all the land, which is fire-proof; they are all in momentary danger of this little member.