The Abominations of Modern SocietyTalmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Religion
The Abominations of Modern Society
Talmage, T. De Witt (Thomas De Witt)
Conduct of life
Could the muster-roll of this great army be called, and they could
come up from the dead, what eye could endure the reeking, festering
putrefaction and beastliness! What heart could endure the groans of
agony!
Drunkenness: Does it not jingle the burglar's key? Does it not whet
the assassin's knife? Does it not cock the highwayman's pistol? Does
it not wave the incendiary's torch? Has it not sent the physician
reeling into the sick-room; and the minister, with his tongue thick,
into the pulpit? Did not an exquisite poet, from the very height of
reputation, fall, a gibbering sot, into the gutter, on his way to be
married to one of the fairest daughters of New England, and at the
very hour when the bride was decking herself for the altar; and did he
not die of delirium tremens, almost unattended, in a New York hotel?
Tamerlane asked for one hundred and sixty thousand skulls, with which
to build a pyramid to his own honor. He got the skulls, and built the
pyramid. But if the bones of all those who have fallen as a prey to
dissipation could be piled up, it would make a monster pyramid. Talk
not of Waterloo and Austerlitz, for they were not fields of blood
compared with this great Golgotha.
Who will gird himself for the journey, and try with me to scale this
mountain of the dead--going up miles high on human carcasses, to find
still other peaks far above, mountain above mountain, white with the
bleached bones of drunkards!
Hang not your head or shut your eyes until we have seen it. We must
get a sight at the monster before we can shoot him.
I will begin at our national and State capitals. Like government,
like people. Henry VIII. blasts all England with his example of
uncleanness. Catharine of Russia drags down a whole empire with her
nefarious behavior. No Christian man can be indifferent to what
every hour of every day goes on at Washington. While the Presidential
Impeachment trial advanced, some of the men who were to render their
solemn verdict on the subject were reeling in and out of the Senate
chamber,--the intoxicated representatives of a free Christian people.
It was a great question whether several members of that high court
could be got sober in time to vote.
Only recently a Senator from New England rises up with tongue so
thick, and with utterance so nonsensical, that he is led into the
anteroom. He was a good "Republican."
One of the Middle States has a representative who very rarely appears
in his seat, for the reason that he is so great an inebriate that he
can neither walk nor ride. He is a good Democrat.
As God looks down on our State and national legislatures, he holds us
responsible. We cast the votes. We lift up the legislators.
Will the time never come when this nation shall rise up higher than
partisanship, and cast its suffrage for sober men?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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