A Steadfastly & Severely Discouraged Cult

We pipe and cigar smokers know, ours is a steadfastly and severely discouraged cult. Perhaps one day soon there will be a let-up, yea, even a great deliverance once more. You know, as happened once before. In days of yore. Anybody want a peanut?

Here's a link to a wonderful London Telegraph article (via the New York Times) from 1895 in which the Telegraph applauds Tobacco Warmly Defended: English Clergymen No Longer Fear To Smoke, Even In Public. The good reverend Charles Spurgeon is probably the greatest hero of today's smoking Christian hipster/aesthete.

Picture from "Young & Reformed".

"The late Mr. Spurgeon, it may be remembered, took a very similar course. Being expostulated with for his habit of smoking, he boldly declared it to be harmless, and had the courage to say: 'I thank God for a good cigar.' It is a healthy sign of the times that ministers of religion should thus openly pay unstinted tribute of homage to the virtues of the fragrant weed, considering how steadfastly and severely its cult had been discouraged..."

Thanks to Scott B. for the link.