Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 35, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 September 1893 — Scriptural Sanction. [ARTICLE]

Scriptural Sanction.

Speaking of pipes recalls a story of Bishop Seabury, the first bishop of Connecticut. He was a great smoker, and when traveling always carried with him a good supply of his finest tobacco, and a wooden case made to hold three long clay pipes. He would no more have forgotten those than his books and vestments. An old lady of the die cese was an ardent admirer of the bishop, but the clouds of tobacco smoke surrounding his head like a halo troubled her. At last she mustered up courage and said: “Bishop, how can you smoke? Don’t you think it an ungodly habit and unbecoming to a minister?” “Well, my good woman, I thought you read your biblo,” said the bishop. “I do,” she replied, “but I never saw anything in it to countenance smoking.” "What,” said the bishop, “did you you never road the passage which exhorts us to praise God on the pipe? Impossible!" The old lady was satisfied, and afterwards told people who criticised the bishop for smoking that they didn’t rightly understand the Scriptures.