How This Looks
"I WANT you to stop my paper, for I am not able to pay. I like the paper, but am too poor to pay for it."
Let me inquire, Do you use tea, coffee and tobacco?
"Yes, we have used these things a long time, and the habit has become strong; and I don't think it is a sin to use these daily comforts which taste so well."
But how do you get them? You are poor, too poor to pay $2.00 for fifty-two visits from the Review.
"Well, we think we must have tobacco, tea and coffee, so we try to raise the money some way."
This is the condition of many professed children of our long-suffering God, in whom is the perfection of greatness and purity. They are such slaves to appetite and lust, that they have but little time, means or disposition to serve God in the beauty and highway of holiness; so they plod along in the ditch of morbid appetite and lust, now and then faintly raising a desire and casting a look heavenward. Prayers faint and seldom if ever; tobacco, tea and coffee abound daily. The family altar perhaps broken down and the closet forsaken. Yet with what care is the pipe laid in its accustomed place, and how often visited. And how careful are the parcels of tobacco, and kindred poisons laid away, and with what fervent devotion are they visited. O how this looks! My soul sickens and I turn from the sight.
J. W. -June 12, 1856 UrSe, ARSH 53
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Paying for the Poor
BRO. John Byington writes from Buck's Bridge, N. Y.: "I hope the thought will be constantly in the Review that it is inconsistent to pay for the paper for those that use tobacco."
Certainly. We had not supposed that any church having the poor in their midst, whose wants they feel it duty to look after, would take it upon themselves to furnish those individuals with tobacco. This certainly is not distributing unto every man according as he has need. Acts iv, 35. With the poor who are in bondage to the weed, the case stands thus: they want their tobacco, they also want the paper; and from their own means they cannot meet the expense of both. Now it matters not to them in what department of their wants the church aids them; for if the church buys their tobacco for them, they will then have means to pay for the paper themselves; or, if the church pays for their paper, they will have means of their own to buy their tobacco. Therefore in whatever light we look at it, it is evident that if the church aids any persons who are indulging, at the same time, in an expensive and injurious habit, it upholds them in that habit; and this, of course, no church will feel free to do.
We may add further that the Publishing Committee will not feel it their duty if they know the facts in the case, to consider any as belonging to the poor or free list, who are sacrificing their means and health by the use of a noxious plant to satisfy the demands of an imperious and unnatural appetite.
December 11, 1856 UrSe, ARSH 48
