Vanity, All Is Vanity | Page 4

poison
fluid over his friend's hearth, house, floor, and stove, and breathing his
loathsome poisonous breath into the face of his friend, or pouring his
poison smoke into the eyes, nose, and lungs of all present. When all
present are coughing strangling and almost out of breath; they 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