ignorance, and crime, and suffering, withering comfort and hope, shall
go hand in hand, until we can be purified only by a rain of fire and
brimstone from heaven? O for shame, for shame! Let the Christian,
pleading for a little intoxicating liquor, be alarmed; let him escape
as for his life from the kingdom of darkness. "Come out of her, my
people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of
her plagues."
Next to diseased appetite, the love of money is the most potent
principle in the breast of depraved man. Thirty-six thousand distillers,
and eighty-five thousand venders of ardent spirits in our land, form a
tremendous host in opposition to our enterprise. They live everywhere.
"Pass where we may, through city or through town,
Village or hamlet, of this merry land,
* * * * every twentieth pace
Conducts the unguarded nose to such a whiff
Of stale debauch, forth issuing from the sties
That law has licensed, as makes Temperance REEL."
They live wherever the demon has his haunts. Or rather, he lives where
they live; for they feed him. And while he fattens on the article they
make and vend, they receive in return the silver and gold of his deluded
victims. Now, how can this formidable host, who cry out, Our craft is in
danger, by this demon we have our wealth--how can they be met? Can they
be met at all? Yes, they can--for they are men; generally reputable men;
in cases not a few, pious men; and all have consciences, and may be made
to feel their accountableness to God. Now let them be told that they
keep this monster alive; that to their distilleries and shops may be
traced all the poverty, and contention, and tears, and blood, which
drunkenness produces; that their occupation is to poison the young and
the old; and by dealing out gallons, and quarts, and pints, and gills,
they fill up, with drunkards, the highway to hell; that they do all this
to get the money of the wretched victims; that the tears of
broken-hearted widows and orphan children are entering into the ears of
the Lord of Sabaoth, and that neither God nor their consciences will
hold them guiltless in this thing, and sure I am that they will be
filled with horror at their own doings, and quit their business.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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