WHEN A MINISTER MAY SMOKE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11544, 1 December 1900, Page 2 (Supplement)

WHEN A MINISTER MAY SMOKE.

CHICAGO METHODIST CONFERENCE SAYS WHEN A PHYSICIAN PRESCRIBES IT.

Chicago, October 6.—-Should a Methodist minister be permitted to use tobacco in any form under any circumstances? With this question the members of the Rock River Conference wrangled for more than an hour to-day. After much debate it was decided that an exception to the discipline of the Church prohibiting the use of the weed might be made when a reputable physician certified that tobacco was necessary to the health of a minister. While the conference did not directly endorse such a policy, the precedent was set by admitting a candidate for full membership who reserved the right in his pledge to use tobacco when his physician prescribed it. Some of the older brethren held that there was no excuse for a young man using narcotics, while there might be some leniency shown to the minister who had passed the age of 50 years. Others contended that a minister who was compelled to resort to the use of tobacco to stimulate him would better not enter the ministry. " I have heard that smoking was good for a man with the lockjaw, but I cannot see what a man suffering with lockjaw could do as a Methodist minister," was the way one of them expressed Ms views on the subject. The discussion of the tobacco habit was brought before the conference when the pledges of the Rev. George J. 0. Stwart and the Rev. Percy E. Thomas, candidates for full membership, were read. The latter reserved the privilege of using tobacco when his physician prescribed it to relieve him from the sufferings caused by asthma, while Mr. Stewart was accused of smoking within the last week. The Rev. S. C. Leavell made the accusation, saying that a classmate of Mr. Stewart had informed him that the young preacher had been seen smoking repeatedly in violation of his pledge, and that a brother had seen him smoking this week. Mr. Stewart was finally sentenced to another year of probation, while Mr. Thomas was admitted to full membership, although Mr. Linebarger, who led the opposition, declared that " a man who had asthma and was compelled to go through life with the smell of tobacco on him should not be admitted."