Such are the ravages of the demon we hunt. Its footsteps are marked with
blood. We glory in our liberties, and every fourth of July our bells
ring a merry peal, as if we were the happiest people on earth. But O,
our country, our country! She has a worm at her vitals, making fast a
wreck of her physical energies, her intellect, and her moral principle;
augmenting her pauperism and her crime; nullifying her elections--for a
drunkard is not fit for an elector--and preparing her for subjection to
the most merciless tyranny that ever scourged any nation under heaven.
We talk of our religion, and weep over the delusions of the false
prophet and the horrors of Juggernaut; but a more deceitful prophet is
in our churches than Mahomet, and a more bloody idol than Juggernaut
rolls through our land, crushing beneath its wheels our sons and our
daughters. Woe, woe, woe to Zion. Satan is in Eden. And if no check is
put to the ravages of the demon, our benevolent institutions must die,
our sanctuaries be forsaken, our beautiful fields be wastes, and the
church will read the history of her offspring in the third of Romans:
_Their throat is an open sepulchre; their mouth is full of cursing and
bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood_--all, blasting our
bright hope of the speedy approach of millennial glory.
There is cause, then, for the general alarm that has been excited in our
country; reason for this extensive and powerful combination to hunt and
destroy the monster. Much, by divine help, has been done. He has been
routed and brought to the light of day; the mischief he has done has
been exposed; his apologists have been confronted; he is driven into his
den, and now how can he be destroyed? That he must be destroyed there
can be no question. The man who does not wish for the suppression of
intemperance must have the heart of a fiend; especially, if he wishes to
grow rich on the miseries of his fellow-men. And he must be destroyed
now. It is now or never. Men may say enough has been done, and talk
about his being held where he is. He cannot be held there. He has the
cunning of a serpent, and he will escape through some fissure in the
rock. He is now in our power. The temperance movement, which has on it
the impress of the finger of God, has brought him within our grasp; and
if we let him escape, the curse of curses will be entailed upon our
children. How then can he be destroyed? I answer, and thousands answer,
by starvation. No weapon can reach him so long as you feed him. But who
has a heart so traitorous to humanity as to feed this monster? Every man
who now, in the face of the light that is shed upon this subject,
distils, or vends, or uses intoxicating liquor; every distillery, and
every dram-shop in the land, nourishes this foe to human peace; every
man who takes the alcoholic poison into his system, or imparts it to
others, except as he takes and imparts other poisons to check disease,
gives life to the beast. I need not stop to prove it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account