The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. NationNation, Carry Amelia
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The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation
Nation, Carry Amelia
Nation, Carry Amelia, 1846-1911; Social reformers -- United States -- Biography; Temperance -- United States
There are but a handful comparatively that try to obey the commands
of Jesus: "A remnant shall be saved." Caleb and Joshua were only two
in six hundred thousand but they alone of this great multitude lived to
see and inherit the promised land. Christ said. "Go out into the highways
and hedges and compel them to come in that my home may be full."
Where are the highways and hedges: They are places where men and
women are the most lost. How can they be compelled to come in? Love
is the only compelling influence. If no one goes with love, how are these
lost ones to know they are loved. Christ brought love down to us; He
came down to do it. We must take His love to the low places--"Condescend
to men of low estate." I praise my God for opening a door to
me never opened to anyone else. I find the theatre stocked with boys
of our country. They are not found in churches. I have not sought to
get into the so-called "respectable set" but I have told my managers to
get me into the worst class. They need me most. They are as brands
snatched from the burning.
I am not only a reformer on the line of the licensed or unlicensed
saloon, but on other evils. I believe that, on the whole, tobacco has done
more harm than intoxicating drinks. The tobacco habit is followed by
thirst for drink. The face of the smoker has lost the scintillations of
intellect and soul it would have had if not marred by this vice. The odor
of his person is vile, his blood is poisoned, his intellect is dulled.
A smoker is never a healthy man, either in body or mind, for nicotine
is a poison. Prussic acid is the only poison that is worse. Nicotine
poisons the blood, dulls the brain, and is the cause of disease. The lungs
of the tobacco user are black from poison, his heart action is weak, and
the worst thing to contemplate in the whole matter is that these tobacco
users transmit nervous diseases, epilepsy, weakened constitutions, depraved
appetites and deformities of all kinds to their offspring.
Deterioration of the race is upon us, and unless there is some reform,
idiocy, imbecility and extinction will be the legacy of the future
generations.
A man that uses tobacco cannot have the nice moral perceptions on
any point that he should have. I find him to be dulled and sluggish. The
Bible says: "If thine eye be single, thy whole body is full of light. If
thine eye be evil, thy whole body is full of darkness." The use of tobacco
is a vice, and to the extent of that one vice, it degrades a mail. It opens
the gate for other vices, for it is the gratification for one form of lust.
It is a filthy habit, and I care not how often the smoker changes his
clothes or washes his person, he is filthy. The stench from his breath
indicates that his body repudiates such uncleanliness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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