MORPHIA is a blessing from God for the relief of pain, but it was never intended to be prolonged for years.
Statistics show that there are opium eaters in this country exceeding a million. With some hydrate of chloral is taking the place of opium.
BARON LIEBIG knows that one chemist in Germany makes half a ton of hydrate of chloral a week. There are multitudes taken down with this drug. Look out for hydrate of chloral! You never heard a sermon against opium, but it seems to me there ought to be ten thousand pulpits turned into a quickening flame, thundering Zion’s warning against this black narcotic.
You all know what botanists describe as NICOTIANA. You know it as the inspiring, elevating, emparadising, nerve-shattering, dyspepsia-breeding, health-destroying tobacco. I shall not be offensively personal on this subject, for you nearly all use it. You say that God made it, and it is good. Yes, it is good to kill moths, to kill ticks on sheep, to strangle all kinds of vermin, to fumigate pestiferous places. You say God created it for some particular use. Yes, so He did henbane, and nux vomica, and copperas, and belladona, and all those poisons.
You say men live to be old who use it. Yes, in the sense that the man lasted well who was pickled. Smokers are turned into smoked livers. You should advise your children to abstain from it, because the whole medical fraternity of the United States and Great Britain pronounced it the cause of wide-spread ill-health. Drs. Agnew, Hamilton, Woodward—the whole medical fraternity, Allopathic, Homeopathic, Hydropathic and Eclectic denounce it. The use of tobacco tends to drunkenness. It creates unnatural thirst. The way that leads down to a drunkard’s grave and a drunkard’s hell is strewn thick with tobacco leaves. That man is not thoroughly converted who has not only got his heart clean, but got his mouth clean also.
BEN. FRANKLIN said he never saw a well man in the exercise of common sense who would say that tobacco did him any good.
THOMAS JEFFERSON argued against the culture of tobacco.
HORACE GREELEY said: “It is a burning stench.”
DANIEL WEBSTER said: “Let those men who smoke go to the horse shed.”
One reason why there are so many victims to the tobacco habit is because so many ministers smoke and chew. They smoke until they have bronchitis, and then the dear people must send them to Europe. I can name three eminent clergymen who died of cancer in the mouth, an evil caused by their tobacco. There has been many a clergyman whose tombstone was covered up with eulogy, who ought to have had an inscription, “Killed by too much Cavendish.” Some smoke until the room is blue, their spirits are blue, the world is blue. The American clergymen who are indulging in the habit should repent. How can a man preach repentance when he indulges in such a habit. I have known Presbyteries and General Assemblies and General Synods where there was a room set apart for ministers to smoke in.