Good Health | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 14, 1879

Good Health.

A Clean Body.

CLEANLINESS is said to be next to godliness. And yet there are some men who profess godliness, who do not seem to understand what it is to be cleansed from "the filthiness of the flesh."

They will talk about religion with a pipe in their mouths, or the juice of tobacco oozing over their lips.

If they come near you, so that you are compelled to take in the perfume of their breath, you'll not think of roses and pinks, but of old carrion. If they occupy a seat in the railroad car, a pool of tobacco juice in all its loathsomeness defiles the floor so that no one else can occupy it thereafter without defilement until it is cleaned.

What would we think of a woman professing godliness, who would thus defile herself?

Now God has but one standard of purity, and however men may be disposed to excuse the filthiness of each other, God will no more excuse filthiness in men than in women, and women cannot afford to excuse it in themselves, or in men.

Think of the hundreds of clean, pure, sweet-breathed women, who are compelled to inhale the horrid fumes of tobacco-tainted breaths and old pipes for years, and the multitude of pure babies forced to kiss the tobacco-befouled lips.

No wonder so many of the delicate little creatures die. The only wonder is that any such live!

It may be the baby is sick in its cradle. The mother has watched over it all day with untiring devotion. But it is better now, and her heart dances with joy. The doctor thinks it will get through now without further dosing.

But the father comes home in the evening, and as soon as the supper is over sits down near the cradle with a pipe or a cigar. The air the sick baby breathes is soon impregnated with tobacco smoke. The mother is startled to see how pale and sick her child is.

"It gets worse about this time every evening," she tells the doctor, who comes in haste at her summons. The dosing is repeated, the smoking goes on, sickness, spasms, and death follow.

So, many a man has smoked his own child out of the world!

But this filthiness of the flesh interferes with home comforts. Many a man lives in a rented house who has smoked up enough tobacco to build and furnish a house of his own. Then wife must deny herself, because rents are so heavy. She and the children must drink hydrant water without ice, because it is extravagant for poor people to pay even five cents a day for ice, while the husband will walk off with a five or ten cent cigar in his mouth, which will be followed by others during the day.

And then the filth that is made in the house because of this vile habit—the extra work and worry—who can compute it?

No wonder women hate tobacco.

Let the same standard be lifted up for men as for women—the gospel standard, a pure soul in a clean body.

"Purity is safe and cheap."—The Christian Woman.