There is another law of God which has an important bearing on this
subject. It is that golden rule of the New Testament, which commends
itself to the conscience of all men, to do to others as you would wish
them to do to you. You may easily conceive of your having a son, who was
in danger of becoming a drunkard. Your hope might centre in him. He
might be the stay of your age. He may be inclined to dissipation; and it
may have required all your vigilance, and prayers, and tears, and
authority, to keep him in the ways of soberness. The simple question now
is, what would you wish a neighbor to do in such a case? Would it be the
desire of your heart, that he should open a fountain of poison at your
next door; that he should, for gain, be willing to put a cup into the
hands of your son, and entice him to the ways of intemperance? Would you
be pleased if he would listen to no remonstrance of yours, if he should
even disregard your entreaties and your tears, and coolly see, for the
love of gold, ruin coming into your family, and your prop taken from
beneath you, and your gray hairs coming down with sorrow to the grave?
And yet to many such a son may you sell the poison; to many a father
whose children are clothed in rags; to many a man whose wife sits
weeping amidst poverty and want, and dreading to hear the tread and the
voice of the husband of her youth, once her protector, who now comes to
convert his own habitation into a hell. And there are not a few men of
fair standing in society who are engaged in this; and not a few--O tell
it not in Gath--who claim the honored name of Christian, and who profess
to bear the image of Him who went about doing good. Can such be a
_moral_ business?
6. The traffic is _a violation of that law which requires a man to honor
God_. Whether ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory
of God. And yet is this a business which was ever engaged in, or ever
pursued, with a desire to honor God? Is it an employment over which a
man will pray? Can he ask the God of heaven to give him success? Let
him, then, in imagination, follow what he sells to its direct result;
let him attend it to its final distribution of poverty, and woes, and
crimes, and death, and then kneel before heaven's eternal King, and
render thanksgiving for this success? Alas, it cannot be. Man pursues it
not from a desire to honor God. And can the man who is engaged in a
business on which he cannot implore the blessing of heaven; who is
obliged to conceal all thoughts of it if he ever prays; who never
engaged in it with a desire to glorify God, or to meet his approbation,
can _he_ be engaged in a business which is lawful and right?
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