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?
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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.