SULTRY PHILIPPICS.

Patea Mail, Volume IV, Issue 315, 24 April 1878, Page 4

SULTRY PHILIPPICS.

Si’kakikg of the fragrant weed, tobacco, the celebrated J. G. S. Grant gives vent to more social crucifixions in this wise: — u Intellectually it makes the consumer more idiotic than an Otago professor : spiritually it benumbs the soul; and religiously, it excludes the offender from the realms of glory, for thereunto nothing that is polluted can enter. God Almighty will plunge the souls of such characters into the lowest depths of eternal perdition. Smoking is infinitely worse than drinking. The drunkard only injures his own soul, but the tobacco smoker, wherever lie is. whether in a carriage, house, or public place, sickens with bis offensive breath and smoking chimney, the pure seals of those with whom chance or business brings him into personal contact. Everything he touches is contaminated. The book, the paper, the chair, the table, &c., become saturated with rank poison. His breath is noisome, and no pure-minded woman would ever kiss such a base wretch. The Good Templar fraternity I despise heartily, but I could wish that we had an active organization in our midst to put down, this damnably noisome practice, and to excommunicate the votaries of this odious weed from beyond the pale of our civilisation. They are beneath the beasts of the field, more depraved than swine and more offensive to well regulated minds than the prostitutes, usurers, and muck worms of our colonial villages. The consumers and the vendors of this vile poison are damned—and doubly damned, as Luther , would say —and they ought not to he prayed for. They ought to bo kicked out of society and consigned over to some public penitentiary. Truly, as holy writ asserts, God made man upright, but he lias sought out many inventions, of which by far the most wicked is the damnable device of converting the glorious’ mouth —created to praise God and bless men—into a walking chimney. Hot less vile, but equally malicious, is that other abominable and astounding iniquity, to wit, the transformation of the human nostrils into actual ash pits. A way with such base and vile productions, and may those who indulge in them be finally turned into hell.”