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Chapter 5—The Power of Example
The Older Ones Set the Example
—How often do we see boys
not more than eight years old using tobacco! If you speak to them
about it, they say, “My father uses it, and if it does him good, it will
me.” They point to the minister or the Sunday school superintendent,
and say, “If such good men as they use it, surely I can.” How can
we expect anything else of the children, with their inherited tenden-
cies, while the older ones set them such an example?—
Christian
Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 18
.
Popularity of the Tobacco Habit
—So powerful is the habit
when once formed, that the use of tobacco becomes popular. An
example of sin is set before youth, whose minds should be disabused
of all thought that the use of the narcotic is not harmful. They are
not told of its injurious effects on the physical, mental, and moral
powers....
If a follower of Christ allows himself to be led astray by the
influence of others, and conforms to the fashionable dissipation
of the world, he is under Satan’s sway, and his sin is even greater
than is the sin of avowed unbelievers,—the ungodly,—because he is
standing under false colors. His life is inconsistent; professedly a
Christian, in practice he is yielding to unnatural, sinful propensities
that war against the purification and elevation necessary for spiritual
superiority....
Becoming conformed to the habit, in practice they are in fellow-
ship with the world. All such who claim to be Christians, have no
right to assume this name; for a Christian is one who is Christlike.
When the judgment sits and all are judged according to the deeds
done in the body, they will learn that they have misrepresented Christ
in practical life, and have not made themselves a savor of life unto
life, but a savor of death unto death. In fellowship with them will be
a numerous company who have conformed to lustful practices; but
numbers will neither excuse their iniquity, nor lessen their condem-
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nation for destroying the brain nerve power and the physical health.
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