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The Ministry of Healing
No human being needs tobacco, but multitudes are perishing for
want of the means that by its use is worse than wasted. Have you not
been misappropriating the Lord’s goods? Have you not been guilty
of robbery toward God and your fellow men? “Know ye not that
... ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore
glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”
1
Corinthians 6:19, 20
.
Intoxicating Drinks
“Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging:
And whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.”
“Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions?
who hath babbling? who hath wounds
without cause?
Who hath redness of eyes?
They that tarry long at the wine;
They that go to seek mixed wine.
Look not thou upon the wine when it is red,
When it giveth his color in the cup,
When it moveth itself aright.
At the last it biteth like a serpent,
And stingeth like an adder.”
Proverbs 20:1; 23:29-32.
Never was traced by human hand a more vivid picture of the
debasement and the slavery of the victim of intoxicating drink. En-
thralled, degraded, even when awakened to a sense of his misery,
he has no power to break from the snare; he “will seek it yet again.”
Verse 35
.
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No argument is needed to show the evil effects of intoxicants on
the drunkard. The bleared, besotted wrecks of humanity—souls for
whom Christ died, and over whom angels weep—are everywhere.
They are a blot on our boasted civilization. They are the shame and
curse and peril of every land.
And who can picture the wretchedness, the agony, the despair,
that are hidden in the drunkard’s home? Think of the wife, often