Vanity, All Is Vanity | Page 4

say please don't smoke any more in the house. Then comes the oft' repeated "Excuse me I did not think." Can a moral man so far intrude upon the health, happiness and peace, even of a race of cannibals? "I did not think," is an acknowledgment that his thinking faculties are not in order. That is what we know.
Now, it is no use to tell me that a man who can't think, what he is doing in small moral and social points of good breeding, with which he is every day familiar. How much less qualified is he for deep moral and intellectual reasoning which he is entirely unacquainted with?
Furthermore. If he does think, his refined and gentle humane feelings are so benumbed as to cause him not to care, it shows his spiritual nature is too much deadened to teach the spirit of a pure and undefiled religion which teach kindness love and attention to all men.
A poisoned body, especially when chronic, deadens the nerves and clogs the intellect, darkens the mind, smokes and blackens the soul to such an extent he can neither teach or understand as a man ought to do by nature.
What think you of a preacher of Christ with a cud in his mouth squirting poison at the souls he is trying to save? Is the thing possible? Talk of distilling the essence of Christianity through a poison worm of tobacco! O, thou tobacco-eating hypocrite! Can a body that is defiled with poison and polluted with the sin of self-abuse be a fit dwelling place for the Holy Ghost? How can a man who stinks like a rank tobacco-pipe, call himself a fit vessel to stand before the Lord to represent God and the Souls of men, to proclaim the word of God while his tongue is reeking in deadly poison and his brain befuddled with its influence? O, thou worse than Baalam! Would that every ass might rebuke thee.
It is a common thing for temperance lecturers to denounce alcohol on the strength of tobacco, that is, lecture with a cud in their mouths. Now this is mean. There should be honor among thieves. Don't laugh at and taunt your brother, wallowing there in the mud, while your own mouth is full of a thousand times filthier filth. Don't grow poetical on the "drunkard's aspen hand," when your own poisoned nerves will quiver worse than his if you should abstain from your quid three hours. You have yet to learn that tobacco produces delirium tremens, which you so much love to picture to the drunkard, with all the glowing colors of pandemonium.
Dr. Mussey says he was acquainted with a gentleman in Vermont who conscientiously abstained from all intoxicating drinks and yet died of delirium tremens. Dr. Lauren and many other medical writers speak of similar cases within their knowledge. Many of our best physicians concur the opinion in that many of the cases of delirium tremens imputed to alcohol are mostly due to the use of tobacco.
You ought never listen to a self styled temperance-man who lectures a drinker, with his mouth full of tobacco juice. The drinker if he uses no tobacco is the most temperate man of the two. It is a gross insult to an audience to eject on them alcoholic vituperation and nicotianic expectoration at the same time. That audience should say; first go reform thy-self thou intemperate SLAVE of poison!
We have no room for the introduction of proof of our assertions on the evils of tobacco. But if you wish to have an abundance of evidence that tobacco produces the diseases which we herein mention you will just please to consult Dr. Lizars, he will furnish you with cases and proof. Read Dr. Mussey's 'Essay on Tobacco,' published by the American Tract Society. And here let me ask all who have the good of humanity at heart, to place this lecture in the hands of every one of your tobacconized neighbors. The circulation of anti-tobacco and anti-alcohol tracts will do more good than all other tracts besides. For those are the root and foundation of almost every disorder of mind and body, even upon those who never used it: for it is written: "I will visit the sins and iniquities of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children, unto the third and fourth generation," of them that violate the laws of nature and their own being.
A wise man hath said look not on the wine when it is red. But a wiser than he hath decreed that they only who seek after wisdom shall find it, that fools shall be afflicted because of their transgressions, and that whosoever refuseth instruction shall destroy his own soul.
He that is capable of reflection must perceive that whatever disorders the nerves