Tobacco From A Moral Stand-point |


Go to our jails and penitentiaries and you will find their inmates,

almost to a man, tobacco-eaters and alcohol drinkers. As the chameleon

takes its color from the object it is attached to, so does the mind of

man, from the body it is attached to. No wonder, then, that a brain

poisoned, will suggest poisoned thoughts, criminal thoughts and acts.

O that preachers might know this, or, knowing it, might act on it in


their efforts to regenerate man's moral nature. Let them commence at

the root of evil to remove it. Evil, like a Cancer, while the root

remains the canker grows worse. Mind and body is united in every

effort, if the main spring is weakened so is the stroke. A bitter

fountain can not send forth a pleasant stream.



When we undertake to reform a man the first thing is to see that the

brain is healthy; not poisoned and diseased. For an unhealthy organ

can not perform healthy functions. You might as well try to improve

the sense of smell with the nose stuffed full of snuff, as to try to

improve the moral sense while it is poisoned with the essence of

snuff. Try to change a man's heart that is palpitating with poison and

lusting for more! If you wish to be a successful soul doctor, you must

commence at the seat of all moral diseases; a poisoned and disordered

mind. Take the poison out of him first, and keep it out for at least

thirty days, until the brain can begin to have its natural healthy

action, and then he will arise and walk in dry places seeking rest.



We affirm, and shall prove in the course of our lecture, that tobacco

obtudes and destroys the moral as well as every other sense of the

human intellect. Proof. When you see a habitual tobacco user in the

company of his friends you will see him either squirting his 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 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 disorders the brain and the mind, also the morals, then it

corrupts society, possibly for generations to come. You must also

perceive that Life and Death, Health and Disease, are alike

transmitted with the germ of the unborn being. That a diseased and

poisoned body can not transmit a healthy germ. You see that the seed

of an apple that grew on a hollow tree will never produce a sound

tree. Then why expect an affected and poisoned body and mind, to

produce those that are active and strong?



It is not on the external condition in which you find your self

placed, but on the part which you are to act, that your welfare or

unhappiness, your honor or dishonor, your health or diseases depends.





When beginning to act that part, what can be of greater interest to

you, than to throw off the poison chains of mental slavery, keeping

both mind and body free from such abject servitude. Freedom of mind

and body insures health, long life and happiness. When the whole of

the machinery, mental and physical, is clean, its strength and

elasticity is so much better, its retentiveness is much more vivid and

comprehensive that one is mostly spared the pain of irretrievable

errors.



If instead of exerting reflection in so critical a moment you deliver

yourselves up to levity, sloth and slavery of habit and poison, what

can you expect to follow? Will wisdom tread the path of folly? Can you

thus abuse both the mind and body, and call yourselves unspotted from

the world, or call yourselves the children of a pure God? O thou

spiritual blind guide! Where are you leading the people to by precept

and example? You have led and allowed the nations to walk into the

ditch.



Habit is harder to serve than a king, and its taxes are greater, for

they not only come yearly, but daily and hourly, on body, mind and

pocket. You are bound in her chains and must answer her calls.



O man of sorrow, whose life is interwoven with the ills of the earth!

Could I but speak to you in the language of the truth or had I but

room to draw the picture as it is, I think your reason would revolt at

its use, and break its chains, bidding defiance to the deadly grasp of

its seditious habits.



When you become satisfied that tobacco is injurious to you. If you

have not courage to divorce the habit at once and had rather steal

away from its grasp unconsciously and without the desire for tobacco,

or the use of medicine, just send 50 cts. in money or stamps to the

office of the GOSPEL MONITOR. HANNIBAL, MO. And we will send you the

RULINGS OF NATURE. A printed formula showing how nature in that case

restores her own equilibrium, and throws off the former poison and

prevents the craving of a fresh supply. In clubs of 20 or more, we

will send them for 25 cts. each. The rule is short and easily

understood.











The mind of man is the motive power of the body. There is great

sympathy existing between the mind and body, whatever affects the body

must of necessity affect the mind; versus. Whatever affects the mind

is sure to affect the body. The body is the house that the man lives

in, if the house is damaged in any way the man proper which is the

mind; through sympathy is sure to suffer from such injuries.



The power of the mind over the body both in disease and in health, is

utterly beyond all the modern scientific conceptions. The mind has so

long been clogged and hindered by narcotics and over stimulants, that

it yet remains in its infancy. Every hindrance prevents the growth and

development of the mind. The body may soon attain to its greatest

development, but the mind never reaches its perfection in this sphere.



Age and experience fortifies and strengthens the mind, they give it

greatness and power; every influence possible should be brought to

bear upon the intellect to improve the mind and advance it.--The ages

past have been more to hinder and to cramp the intellect, to hinder

reason and progress than to favor it. But it must be understood now

that mind is capable of getting and bringing information from the

ulter-etherial worlds. Or of mind conversing with mind, even in

separate continents.--Without Telephone, Telegraph, or _Witch-craft_.

(Spiritualism.)



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