p. 151 | Tobacco an Idol

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 16, 1878

Tobacco an Idol.

THAT the use of tobacco is really an idol with many people, which they love more than all other gods, we often see proofs of wherever we go. Two gentlemen related to me their cases, which well illustrate it. Many years ago, when Minnesota was a new country, and prices of everything high, flour being twenty dollars per barrel, and the people very poor, one man went to Hutchinson with twenty cents in his pocket. His family was out of flour. He expected to receive more money in town, but upon arriving there did not succeed in obtaining it, so he laid out ten cents for tobacco, which left him ten cents with which to buy flour for his family. The other one went to town with fifty cents in his pocket to buy seed corn. It was all the money he had. He had been without tobacco for several days. When he reached town, he debated a long time which to buy, seed for his field, or tobacco for his mouth. Appetite prevailed, and he laid out his money for tobacco, and started home without his corn. These cases illustrate what a mighty hold this habit will get on a man, and how he will sacrifice everything else for it.

Can this habit be overcome? Most certainly, it can. I see good examples to prove this almost every week. In this vicinity, not less than a score have given it up within the past few weeks. Some of these persons, who had used it long years, had tried many times to abandon it, and had always failed and settled down satisfied that they must always be slaves to it. Now they have given it up and readily conquered it. What is the reason? There are just two. And now, if the reader is a slave to this filthy habit, please listen, and I will tell you how surely to overcome it without a failure.

1. Make it a matter of conscience toward God. Look at it in the light of a sin against yourself physically, mentally, morally, a sin against your family, a sin against society, and a sin against God. Viewed in this light, which is the only correct light, ask God to help you to conquer it.

2. Then resolve that you will abandon the habit immediately, once and forever, without any provisions to the contrary. Do this, and you will surely conquer it. If you start out with the idea that you will try to overcome it, but if the pressure is too hard you will take a little now and then, or that you will taper off, you will never overcome. I have seen hundreds of people, young and old, abandon it, many of these long, and most inveterate, users of it, and yet I never saw any one injured by its discontinuance. It does them good, and only good.