LECTURE IV – William Elbert Munsey
INTEMPERANCE.
” Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their naked- ness ! “— Habakkuk 2:15.
IF Satan by proclamation was to reassemble the famous council of Pandemonium, where all the thrones, principalities, and powers, of hell met in convention, to commission and dispatch a demon to earth, best qualified to arrest the progress of civilization, to palsy the arm of philanthropy, to retard the wheels of the chariot of the Gospel of the Son of God, to blight the tearful hopes of the fond mother’s heart, to blast with the mildew of death the aspirations of youth, to turn widows and orphans homeless and friendless out to die, and to swell the population of their own dreadful domain, they could not have sent a more potent fiend, to carry on and consummate every item in this black inventory, than the hideous monster intemperance. His successes have met hell’s most sanguine hopes. This moment, he has millions of our fellow-creatures chained to his burning car, and with wheels rolling in blood and tears, circumvolving upon their axes like lightning down the slippery highway of death, he is dragging them to the drunkard’s dreadful home.
Intemperance is the foe of mankind. He merits the defi- nite pre-eminence : the foe of mankind. Not a weak and feeble one, not one that may simply be held in contempt, and winked at. No : but a powerful enemy who goes wherever men go, and erects his throne wherever men live. Go to the very centre of civilization, and in sight of our churches, and in hearing of the calling bells which will soon toll out our funerals, may be seen a liquor shop ycleped ” Arctic, Pacific,” and other euphemisms, substituted for more offensive, disagreeable, and appropriate names, with its sparkling decanters and Venetian screen or something equivalent, in every block and upon every square. Go to the outposts of society, and nearly the first smoke of the pioneer settlement is the hateful fumes of a distillery curling up in horrid desecration above ” God’s first Temples,” the majestic forest. Go to the way- stations that spring up like magic along our railways, and before the first keen whistle of the locomotive, and the thunder of his running train are heard, a tippling shop is among the first buildings reared to welcome the iron horse, and mark the site of a future town.
Let us define our term. Intemperance, like all generic words, has a general meaning. But it is the purpose of the discourse at this hour to discuss it specifically in its application to intoxicating beverages. Within the specific bounds of such a limitation it means the excessive indulgence of the appetite in the use of liquors which inebriate. The opposition term is Temperance. This is also a generic word, but as the opposite of Intemperance in the specific application already given, it means the moderate and proper use of intoxicating liquors. But strictly, as the use of such as a beverage can never be deemed proper, it really implies then, with reference to them, total abstinence. A man can see that the use of nitric acid, corrosive sublimate, or any other poison the least possible portion of which is injurious and destructive of mind, health, and life, cannot be characterized by the word Temperance. Of the lexicographical terms used, I prefer abstinence to temperance, and abstemiousness to either. Temperance literally means the moderate use of intoxicating liquors, abstinence their entire disuse temporarily, abstemiousness their entire disuse habitually and forever.
Let us notice Intemperance in some of its beginnings, that we may arrive at a knowledge of its character, and the philosophy of its development. An idle boy stands among the shifting and rapidly developing events of the day. He sees mind industriously rivalling mind. He sees the kindled eye of aspiration, the rushing pinions of hope, the elevat- ing strides of science. He sees some chasing honor, some pursuing with unwearied activity the paths of learning, some following the plow, others with hell under their feet and the world at their back wending their way to heaven in search of riches which never perish. Standing upon the theatre of life he is astounded with the voluble din of three thousand nine hundred and forty-two languages, the clink of machinery, the hoarse whisper of ambition, the cheerful and earnest shouts of contestants, the thunder tread of civilization. His young heart beats with excitement, but nothing to do. Taught nothing useful he thinks of nothing useful. Anything which promises to relieve the dull monotony of his life he hails with pleasure ; and obeying the impulses of his nature so strangely inclined to wrong, he plunges into dissipation — the first dram is taken and he is ruined.
A youth is permitted by a sinful, parental indulgence to form his own associations. The imaginative and impulsive preponderating in his youthful constitution, he will in the majority of cases be attracted by the glitter and sparkle of society, and he will select the gay dissipationists as his bosom companions.
Assimilation of character is a law of association. The assimilation proceeds in the same ratio as the intimacy and congeniality of the association increases ; and by a tremendous, logical, converse action, the congeniality is intensified and precipitated in its approximation to an equilibrium and sameness of character, in the same ratio as the assimilation proceeds. The ratio of the assimilative procession is not therefore arithmetical, but accelerative. From a dissipated contracted association, the path to intemperance is easy. The youth may be a little wary at first, but according to the laws already stated he soon becomes like his companions, and growing familiar with evil he loses all fear of it, he tastes and is hurried away into the treacherous bogs of intemperance.
A son upon whose plastic and forming character a father’s habits and life are to a great degree pictured,, sees his parent daily take his morning dram. The son grows up into man- hood familiarized with the habit of dram-drinking, and that habit sanctified by a father’s example. And though in a few instances the father may be able from fixed moral principles to resist the growing influence of the habit, yet the son of tender years, with stronger passions, and less disciplined, may not, but may fall into a drunkard’s grave. It is a solemn truth that the groundwork of character is laid in youth ; and if the character be defective or faulty, it will remain so, more or less, forever. To the defective and faulty training of youth are traceable nearly all the obliquities of manhood. And one reason the poor drunkard so often fails when he at- tempts to reform, is, his parents failed to properly train his character in youth, and in manhood he has not the stamina upon which to build a system of reformation.
In such a case who is responsible ? The parents. It is the parents’ duty to fortify the character of their children against intemperance, by instruction, precept, and example. To do this, parents must strike at the root of the vice and fortify their children against dram-drinking. For parents to place before their children an irreproachable example, is but the beginning of their work. How far lost to all obligation is the parent, then, who drinks his dram, even if he does not drink to drunkenness. Father, desist — or call upon the spirits of woe to thicken your blood, to blockade every access to con- science, and to shroud every sensibility in your nature with a dense, chilly, starless night, that you may be impervious to all feeling or remorse ; for in old age, the ghost of your son sheeted with fire will stand by your bedside and startle your last moments with a shriek, which will ring through your ears and heart forever — “My murderer ! “
The young man attends the social and brilliant party. Joy thrills every heart, beams in every eye, radiates on every face. Laughter, the heart’s best and purest music, rings in the festal chamber. A lady presents the wine-glass. Her fair hands support the salver. Her face, countenance, manner, and voice, are earnest, charming and inviting. Who could refuse ? The fashionable bar, the professed liquor- shop, have no attractions for him. He cares not for the bev- erage, but he drinks — why ? His gallantry to woman seems to demand it. It is a part of his homage at the feet of what is to him, if he is a true man, the embodiment of all his ideas of the beautiful and good. He may have secret resolutions against it ; he may have an ungovernable appetite when it is excited ; he may have promised his mother and vowed to his God that he would never taste, touch, or handle anything which had a possible tendency to intemperance, but these are esteemed for the moment as nothing when weighed with the pleasure of pleasing woman. Such scenes repeated, a love for the stimulus is created, a habit is formed, and the young man becomes a confirmed drunkard. And long after the poor inebriate is dead, his thoughtless temptress may live, and laugh, and love.
Some authors and public speakers use ardent spirits to stimulate their physical and intellectual powers, and arouse their sensibilities, when they wish to make a great effort of mind or body, and produce a deep and controlling impression upon the public mind and heart. It does produce par- oxysms of physical and intellectual strength, and of enkindled sensibilities. But this superabundance of power, extorted from nature by a stimulus beyond its normal ability, is in proportion to the excess always followed by a weakness, a dulness of the sensibilities, and a physical prostration. By a constant repetition of such a process the healthy tone and power of man’s constitution, mentally and physically, are impaired and ruined while he lives. The gain realized by such authors and speakers is but temporary, and then the gain is chiefly to be found in extravagance of feeling, ex- travagance of sentiment, extravagance of metaphor, and ex- travagance of diction, not in the accuracy, completeness, and clearness of written and oral truth — in fact, with reference to these a loss is sustained which is permanent. By persisting in such a habit they create a constitutional necessity for the stimulus which precipitates them into the horrors of intemperance. This is the shortest of all roads to con- firmed inebriacy, and one upon which the quickest time is made.
Some form the habit of drunkenness by drinking the accursed beverage for their health. It has its place in ” Materia Medica,” and properly prescribed and properly used is beneficial. But it is one of the most insinuating and active poisons in the science of Toxicology. It is doubtless the active and exciting cause of many diseases for which it is administered and taken as a remedy. Anyway it creates a more terrible disease than any malady it is taken to cure — a disease which creates a constitutional necessity for its cause — a cause and effect ever aggravating each other by a reciprocal reflex action, till the victim is finally and eternally ruined. Hundreds and thousands of drunkards are made just by the use of it in the beginning as a remedy. A taste for it created, a habit is formed, till it becomes a constitu tional sine ^ua non, and the victim is engulfed in the fiery lake of intemperance, where all human agencies are powerless to save him.
Some men when they become unhappy — be the cause what it may, domestic, social, financial, or religious, family jars, disappointed hopes, ruined reputation, loss of property, remorse of conscience or conscious reprobacy — endeavor to forget their woes and lose themselves in the exhilarating effects and the sweet oblivion of the wine-cup and its long train of fiery beverages. In place of trying to remedy the evil, they endeavor to lull it to sleep by intoxication in the arms of unconsciousness — an unconsciousness which from its nature can be but temporary, and which will certainly be succeeded by a misery but complicated and augmented from the unfortunate means used to alleviate its pungency. Here many commence, and plunging headlong into depths ever deepening, wind up their career where incessant and unmitigated misery, proportioned to their highest capabilities for suffering, is their eternal destiny.
Some men commence the habit of drinking ardent spirits for their pleasurable effects. The sensation produced is of the most peculiar and agreeable kind. A strange kind of pleasure trembles along the excited nerves, and dances in the reeling brain. Every chord of sensation is touched with an influence which thrills it, and an exquisite delight stands tiptoe upon every quivering string. But these pleasurable sensations are but the fitful smiles upon the dark brow of hate in the moment of the opportunity of its revenge. They are but the pencillings of a few stray beams of sickly light upon a background of horror. They are but the lightning’s feeblest glimmerings upon the face of the storm cloud, which is rende.ed but the blacker for their occasional flash. They are but the ignes fatui which allure into the smothering swamp. They are but the precursors of coming misery travelling right upon their heels, which will tramp upon the heart-strings with feet of blistering fire.
I have given you a few illustrations of Intemperance in its beginnings, recognizing the inevitable tendency of its nature to progress to ampler and more criminal developments. In this progression and development a philosophy is involved — Intemperance is an insidious and subtle thing. It insinuates itself so gradually and slowly into the habits of men, corrupting their principles, detracting from all that is good in human nature, deadening and hardening the moral sensibilities, lessening the power of moral resistance, enlisting the passions in its favor, and habituating the physical system to its strange effects — implanting a necessity for its stimulus in the appetites, till it brings its victim completely within the circumference of its influence and under the hand of its power. It creates an unnatural and inordinate desire for the stimulus of intoxicating beverages. The organic functions of men accus- tomed to be stimulated to action are torpid without it ; and according to a law of nature they importunately and imperatively demand their habitual excitement or they will not act at all. It creates a raging, consuming thirst, which nothing can quench. Even the desired beverage only kindles the in- tensity of the desire. Every function of their body calls for drink — they drink, yet ever thirst for more.
In the beginning it so quietly weaves about its victims a web whose fibres are so frail and yielding, it excites no alarm. ” I become a drunkard ? preposterous ! I never take a dram because I love it, no, not I.” Yet here the career of every drunkard opens. The difficulty is to make men feel they are as liable to fall as other men.
” O for some power the gift to gie us
To see ourselves as others see us.”
But the net strengthens. With every repeated dram the fibres lengthen and link out, till before the man is aware of it he is bound hand and foot in chains of habit as inseverable as links of adamant. The habit once formed the mind becomes so besotted as actually to tax its energies with the invention of arguments and apologies for the indulgence of the appetite : ” My health is so feeble — my constitution needs a stimulus — my occupation exposes me to the inclemency of the weather — I necessarily lose so much sleep — I am so liable to take cold — the atmosphere is so damp and the pavements and ground so wet.” As a remedy when sick, as a preventive when well, wet or dry, cold or hot, sad or joyful, in every condition and circumstance in life, however in- consistent or contradictory, he finds a reason for the intoxicating draught.
The inchoative steps of drunkenness are found, in the illustrations before adduced, in dram-drinking. The first dram is inceptive drunkenness. From nature of the bever- age, and the nature of the man who takes it is the crisis of the drunkard’s life. The first little dram is the first little breeze which whiffles over the plain, the forerunner playing on the outposts of the simoon which is following with the roar of a thousand winged demons, lifting in its poisonous coils the burning sands of Death’s Sahara. The first dram is the easy pathway meandering awhile through flowery meadows and mossy lanes, then sinuously ascending the bleak mountain of Intemperance, that Limbus-land lying on the confines of hell, overhanging eternal horrors, pitchy darkness and fiery gorges, into which poor drunkards stumble to rise no more. Yet thousands are travelling this road. Look at the vast host of merry tipplers, but commencing their journey. Now, look away to those dim mountain spurs and dismal peaks, and see the stream* of bloated wretches winding amid the black and desolate rocks, till disappearing on the other side they descend rapidly to the burning lake.
True, hundreds are reeling over precipitous brinks, and are hurled down awful slopes and vertical cliffs into gaping abysms through which fiery rivers run and empty into the sulphurous lake beyond. But the others regard it not, but stupidly stagger along to a similar fate. In this dread land the ravens of hell build their nests and hatch their hideous progeny, and shave the murky gloom with their sombre wings, and fill the drowsy air with their lugubrious croakings. In this dread land, burning serpents sired by the serpent of the still, crawl, and hiss, and spurt their venom. In this dread land, phantoms ride on every breeze, and goblins crouch on every rock, and spectres dance on every hill, and wan and dusky ghosts pursued by demons armed with blistering scourges, and satyrs wielding thongs of forked flames, flit and scream till every black plume in horror’s crest stands erect and quivering in the jarring air freighted its every breath with their shrieking woe.
Oh, this dread land is the land of intemperance of which Bacchus is the vicegerent governor, and Satan is the king — and the first dram is the wicket gate, and dram-drinking the road to it. Enter not the gate at the head of the way — shun the first dram — make that the rule of your life and you are safe forever. The regular dram-drinker sooner or later becomes a drunkard. This is the rule — if he does not, it is the exception. Touch it not, taste it not, handle it not, lly from it. Young man, the glass you hold in your hand is the chalice of death. In the name of God, in the name of heaven, in the name of your gray-haired mother and aged sire, for the sake of yourself, body, soul, and mind, lift it not to your lips nor drink its accursed contents. The glass in your hand is the chalice of death — demons laugh in every sparkling bead, and dance in every drop. Oh, dash it down i Dash it down ! !
This is the only ground of safety. There is a platform upon which the enemy never ventured ; a citadel he never attacked ; an atmosphere whose healthy breezes never wafted the sickening fumes of inebriation ; a community never disgraced by a drunkard’s swagger, or a liquor vender’s curse. Would you know where? It is in the beautiful land of Temperance, where the healthful balm tree waves its living foliage, where the tree of life drops full and ripe the luscious fruit of immortality. In that happy land fountains limpid and pure as heaven are bursting up from every sequestered glen and mountain foot. Bright rivers rushing like liquid diamonds, embanked in emerald, sweep throughout its extended landscapes ; and on both sides of the river, from source to mouth, from the parent spring till they pour their pellucid waters into the unruffled sea of heaven, stand the sons and daughters of Temperance, who quaff as their most delicious beverage the sweet and cooling draught, then looking up to God work out a destiny little less than Divine.
Let us examine the evils of Intemperance. it destroys man.
Intemperance destroys his body. Man’s body is the most complete chemical compound in existence. It is the magnificent and symmetric aggregation of material elements, embodied in the most intricate and complicate of all organisms. In its parts, its structure, its form, and its various phenomena, it is the king of the mammals, the highest order of all animated and organized being. It is indeed heaven’s material master* piece. God has adapted all surrounding nature to develop,, sustain, and prolong, its organized existence. Nature is a grand laboratory where the pabulum for the sustentation of its life is prepared — and in which, and for this purpose, the mighty kingdoms of animals, vegetables, and minerals, together with all elements, substances, and gases pour their contributions.
To promote the healthy action of the organs and functions of the body, nature furnishes the necessary stimuli. On the healthy and uniform action of these organs and functions, the life of the body depends. Impair their action, and disturb the equilibrium of the physical constitution, by the introduction of an artificial stimulus, and the beauty of the body is marred, and it hastens to a premature decay. Ardent spirit is the greatest of all stimuli. The stimulating properties of healthy cereals and fruits, proportioned by nature to the strength, tone, and necessities of the organic functions, are chemically separated from all nutritious and conservative elements by distillation, and concreted into a fiery liquid called alcohol — from forty-five to fifty per cent, of which is contained in the various kinds of brandy, rum, gin, and whiskey.
It is one of the most active and destructive of poisons. It insinuates itself into the whole physical organism — affecting every nerve, every muscle, every bone — the brain, the heart, the liver, the viscera, the fluids, destroying their vitality by stimulating them too powerfully. From its nature it strikes right at the life of every function. It runs the machine so rapidly that the slow process of physical reproduction is impossible j and the premature death of the body is inevitable — and that death fraught with unspeakable horror.
All respectable physicians and chemists pronounce ardent spirits poisonous and detrimental to life. ” Intemperance,” says Addison, is the ” Prime Minister ■ of ” Death, the king of Terrors.” It produces disease ; but it does more — it renders its victims subject to every endemic and epidemic. Statistical tables reveal some startling facts. There are one million drunkards in these United States. One hundred and fifty thousand of these die annually. That is one person every five minutes. What a vast host to be driven annually from the land of churches to perdition, for one cause. They die prematurely ; they die in the prime of life ; they die of Intemperance ; and go to eternity self-murderers, and no self murderer hath eternal life.
Did you ever see a drunkard die ? I knew one who died upon his chair. I knew one who froze to death with his bottle by his side. I knew one who was drowned. They die on the pavement, they die in the gutter, they die on their horses, they die along the roadside, they die in the quagmire, they die away from home, and when they die at home their friends often wish they had died away. They die unconscious, they die asleep, they die weeping, they die groan- ing, they die screaming, they die raving, they die cursing. But oh ! when with Delirium Tremens he dies, the scene is one of horror. No painter can paint the terrors of that hour. If he attempt it, however, he must have background of awful shades. If he pencils a few arrowed gleams of red lightning upon the margin, it will be an improvement. Then every character he limns upon the canvas must have a fiendish, fiery shape. And every shape must be girted with a band of twisted and writhing serpents. The painting must be so natural that you can see a sting in every tail, and a crooked fang in every gaping mouth. If he paint a scaly dragon with eyes of rolling fire, and nostrils of wheezing flame, with enormous wings of laminated bone fringed with jagged barbs tipped with venom, with a monstrous tail of hideous windings — and in whose sulphurous wake an army of hobgoblins hover — the picture is but the truer. Then the painter must have power to give his characters life, and fling them from the canvas all over the room — his fiends hanging upon the walls, dropping from the ceilings, and dancing in air — his serpents crawling upon the floor and horridly hissing — and his dragon with its fearful train hanging over the dying drunkard’s pillow. Drunkards die, but who desires to be the witness? We might fall into the blushing funeral train, and follow him to his burial ; and stand around his grave ; and there hear the broken-hearted widow weep, and the ragged children cry — but let us now turn away, and forget him if we can.
Intemperance destroys his mind. It injures and destroys the powers of the mind, because it injures and destroys the powers of the body which are the organs of the mind, and in virtue of its incarnation the instrument of its manifestation. It injures and destroys the powers of the mind, be- cause of the intimate and sympathetic relations between the incarnated mind and the powers of the body ; injury to the body is per se injury to the mind. Mind is a generic word, and includes intellect, sensibilities, and will. It injures and destroys the powers of the intellect. It manacles every faculty, pollutes the fountains of thought, overthrows the altars of wisdom, extinguishes the fires of aspiration, dethrones the reason, corrupts the judgment, destroys the memory, infuriates the imagination, and man stalks forth a maniac. Reliable computists say that of nine-tenths of the insane in our asylums their insanity was caused by intemper- ance. Does it produce insanity ?
Look at the haggard, marred, and shameless drunkard — ■ is he sane ? Sane men in that condition would hide from the public eye, and hide forever. Hear him in his ravings — ■ as he laughs, and sings, and curses, and oh, tell me is he sane ? See him lift the rugged club or cursed whip, and la- cerate and bruise the frail and tender back of her whom he swore to love and protect, and who is his noblest, his best, his truest earthly friend, and is he sane f See him steal the earnings wrung from the nerves of his weeping wife to buy the accursed beverage, and turn his naked children out to beg or die — and is he sane ? He is mad — mania a potu, madness from drinking. He is miserably and wretchedly mad — a self-made madness which can claim no exemption from law or penalty — a madness which takes hold upon the pit. Poor man ! better for him if he had not been born.
It works fearful ruin in the field of the sensibilities. It subverts men’s propensities, destroys their individual normal powers, and chains them to the wheels of appetite. The desire for knowledge, esteem, and happiness, in fact all the higher propensities it destroys entirely. It corrupts the affections. In its last stages it utterly destroys the superior class of the affections — parental, filial, conjugal, fraternal, social, theistical ; and engenders and develops their oppo- sites. It disorganizes the whole system of the sensibilities, and arrays them in antagonism to each other, till man’s mind is a Pandemonium of conflicting powers, which finally destroy each other and leave a desolated waste inhabited only by coarse passions, detestable hates, frightful monsters, and a few flitting shapes and spectral shades which dolefully howl among the ruins. It impairs the power of the will — until finally that power is destroyed and the man cannot will to reform. His case is then utterly hopeless, for all schemes of reformation must begin in the will. How often does the will of the drunkard feebly assent to a reformation, but weakened by intemperance, his will succumbs to appetite in the first following temptation. Let every dram-drinker and drunkard turn back while they can do it.
Intemperance damns the soul. This is a feature of the subject not usually discussed in Temperance lectures ; and was not the lecture of this hour intended to be a grave exposition of the gravest of subjects, its discussion would not be attempted now. The presentation of such a feature as a motive of reform is appropriate now, because the speaker is a minister ; because this is God’s temple ; because the subject is a moral one ; because it is a part of the Gospel ; because such is the fact—” Drunkards shall ” not ” inherit the kingdom of God,” says the Bible. I believe that the cause of Temperance has been weakened and shorn of its strength in this country by Temperance meetings being converted into a means of coarse and vulgar entertainment ; which in consideration of the immense importance of the questions involved — which questions comprehend principles of vital, social, and eternal reform, embracing in the wide field of their discussion the ruin and misery of thousands here and hereafter — have brought them under the censure of the intelligent and refined. Surely it would be as appropriate to jest on the field of battle at the expense of the dying and the dead, as to make the chief attractions of a meeting, organized for the reformation of poor drunkards, and to the exercises of which a thousand broken-hearted wives and hungry children look with awful interest, consist in low jests at the expense of the erring and suffering.
But to return to the proposition : Intemperance involves the eternal loss of the soul. It sends the soul to hell because it vitiates the affections, sears and silences the con- science, and corrupts the character. Its natural tendency is to produce sin. Men are led by it to commit sins which they scorn to do when they are not under its influence. Who are the swearers ? Who are the incendiaries ? Who are the robbers ? Who are the murderers ? Who are the criminals and inmates of our jails and penitentiaries ? Had I time to exhibit the record, I would show you that again nine-tenths of them are drunkards. It drowns the soul in perdition. if destroys the man, body, mind, and soul.
But not with standing, I fear drunkenness is on the increase. Go to the stupendous temple of Bacchus. Look at its lofty columns of parched and arid skulls. Behold its infernal altars drenched with human blood. Cast your eyes athwart its long and gloomy halls, where demons hold their midnight revelry, and reeking bacchanalians whirl in the drunken dance to the licentious strains of Terpsichore’s maddened harp. Go and see its dark, dismal vaults and dungeons where lost spirits weep. Here Intemperance sits crowned and sceptred on a black and terrible throne. Thousands crowd to worship at his shrine, and sacrifice upon his altars. Sacrifice what ? The infatuated debauchee lays upon that altar his character, probably the only patrimony bequeathed him by his sainted father — that character woven in its struc- ture and frame by a mother’s counsels, example, and prayers — that character he ought to leave untarnished as a rich legacy to his children. His health and life, precious to him- self and family, are also freely offered up. His undying soul, bought by the precious blood of an incarnated God, he sur- renders with an eagerness which savors of madness. It is here the dram-drinker seeks a panacea for his woes. It is here he flies for happiness when sorrow comes. It is here the confirmed inebriate flies to worship because he loves it. Was there ever a love demanded more sacrifices, and a love for which more are made ?
It is also a communicative evil. Nations with their every interest imperilled have been crushed and overthrown because of the drunken imbecility of their rulers. Armies in battle, upon the issue of which hung the fate of a nation, have been discomfited and slain, and extended territories of country have been surrendered to the ravages of an aggressive foe, through the inebriation of military officers. A nation weeps when drunkenness sits in high places.
See the temperance home. How lovely ! Prosperity, plenty, harmony, and love, sweet angels with bright wings, preside at their family board. Spirits of heaven when passing up and down through the earth often turn in as they did of old when they came to Abraham’s tent. But let Intemperance look that way— flowers wither, angels depart, the old family altar crumbles, luxuries leave, necessities follow, health and happiness flee, tattered penury comes, hollow- eyed and hollow-hearted famine comes, disease and misery come. The drunkard not only suffers, but others suffer. He is not disgraced, but he disgraces others. Let the son die in battle, and the mother and sister are proud. Let him fall a victim to intemperance, and both are ashamed.
The young man loves some noble girl. He wooes, he pledges eternal fidelity, he calls heaven and earth to witness his truth. His sincerity is believed, his honor is trusted, his love is returned ; and the confiding woman bids farewell to father, mother, home, to all the world besides ; risks his fortune, embraces his destiny, gives her hand and heart, gives her all. For the future he is her only hope, her only protection. If he fails, she is ruined. He leads her blushing to the altar, and that most solemn of all obligations is mutually administered, and they are one in name, one in life, one in interest, by all law, human and divine. How sweet their first home ! Time flies rapidly, yet every moment is freighted with a blessing for them. How the heart of the young bride throbs with joy, sending blushes and happiness to her bright cheeks, as she hears a familiar step in the dewy evening along the garden walk, or up the avenue, and upon the threshold of her happy home. Here we bid them farewell for a while.
Years roll on. He has learned to love his dram, and from one step to another he has become a confirmed drunkard. We will pass over their gradual decline from luxury to want, and present ourselves on some cold winter night at the same cottage. It is midnight. We have no gate to open, no gravel walks to tread — these are gone long ago. The winter wind sighs mournfully in the neighboring mountains and comes down upon us in squalls laden with snow and ice, and groans around the corners, and whistles through the crevices of what is now a miserable hovel.
Let us look through a yawning scissure. A few smouldering coals are upon the hearth, which, ever stirred, cast but a dull and sullen light about the room. The wife is attenuated, her face is pale, her eyes hollow with grief and famine, her garments thin and tattered. She starts and listens at every gust. Soon a heavy tramp and muttered curse are heard without; she takes the prop from the door and lets the drunken fiend in. Now mingled oaths and smothered shrieks greet the ear sick in heart we turn away and leave a feeble frame, beaten and bruised, yet hovering over her starving babes to shield them with her own poor body from a father’s blows.
But the evils of Intemperance stop not here. The drunkard’s children inherit his intellectual and physical imperfections, created by the habitual use of the fiery draught, and often the constitutional tastes and tendencies to intemperance. They -also inherit the stigma “a drunkards child:’ It is estimated that the orphans produced by Intemperance, if standing hand in hand, would reach around this earth three times— seventy-five thousand miles. Stretch out this long line of woe, and the world would be belted with a wail almost sufficient to melt the rocks and awake the dead.
You all remember the fabulous monster, the Hydra, which dwelt in the lake or marsh of Lerna, in Peloponnesus, which had a multitude of heads, which spread terror and destruction through the land. It was assaulted many times, yet never conquered, for as quickly as one head was severed another would immediately succeed unless the wound was cauterized. Hercules finally killed the mon- strous serpent by applying firebrands to the wounded necks as he cut off the heads. Intemperance is a serpent of more fearful form and power ; though it may wear at times an epidermis of glittering beauty, it is a serpent still— a serpent of many a foul and snaky coil. Its heads are multiplied— so that there is a crowned head with poisonous fangs, and flashing eyes, and forked tongue, and deadly breath for every land. Its huge form bathes in every sea, and its heads pro- trude on every shore.
Often has he been attacked by sainted Philanthropists of earth and as often have they failed, for when their glittering sabres descended and a head bit the dust — marvellous power of reproduction ! — another with twofold fury reared its dreadful crest, and bid defiance to all human effort. Such a monster is at our very doors, and spits his foul slime upon the purity of our family altars and the escutcheons of our religion, and threatens to crash in his deathly coils the institutions of our country.
Is there no remedy ? There is only one available human remedy : and that is an organized body backed by the power of God, and fighting upon the principles of Total Abstinence. The prohibition of wine and cider, and drinks which can possibly awaken the appetite for stronger and more dangerous beverages, is the cauterizing process which prevents, and which only can prevent, the reproduction of the heads of the monster, and result in his death. The organization I represent embodies all the elements of a final success ; and if it will but do its duty, it will by and by rear its strongholds upon the ruined ramparts of fortressed Intemperance, and surrounded by a wilderness of ghastly decapitated heads, place its foot upon the mutilated body of the beast, and wave its banner of blue, white, and red, amid the orchestral thunders of angelic applause.
I have presented you some of the evils of Intemperance. But who is the cause? The vender of ardent spirits. It is no use for the gray-haired mother to kneel, hold up her hands, and pray for the reformation of a fallen son ; or the broken-hearted wife and trembling children to plead and cry with a drunken husband and father, so long as the liquor- seller, against all entreaties and requests, will sell them the fiery beverage, and hold out his sparkling decanters, and even follow them to the very doors of their homes, and stimulate them to break any vow that may have been extorted from them — and all for what ? It certainly seems that foi paltry gold he would stand amid the shouts of hell, upon the widow’s crushed and bleeding heart, and wave the banner of death over the orphan’s home.
The selling of ardent spirits is disreputable. I need no further witness than the seller himself. Stand by him on the street and point out the first drunkard you see — with swollen eyes, his bloated face, his crushed hat, his ragged coat, if coat he has any, reeling and muttering, while parotid, sub- maxillary, and sublingual glands pour out their viscid fluid — running from the mouth, and foully adhering to and dripping from the unkempt beard — and say, ”Sir, there is your work, and you have done it well ; ” and shame will hang out its ruddy livery upon his face, or growing angry he will dis- own his work, and declare you mean to insult him. No other workman blushes at a well-done job. He knows that it is disreputable.
It is dishonest. The vender of ardent spirits violates the principle of equality in merchandise : he does not return an equivalent value for what he receives. He knows that he sells what is of no benefit to the drunkard or his family, but that which is actually injurious to them. If what he sells is of no benefit, it is worth nothing ; if it is actually injurious it is worth less than nothing, yet he receives something. Were he to sell a horse on the same principle, the world would say he was dishonest. Again, the liquor-vender sells that to his customer which he knows will incapacitate his customer for making further purchases. Yet in that state he will trade with him still, knowing that if his customer were sober he would not buy so largely. Is not this dishonest ? Let any other man trade with the drunkard in such a state as this, and sell him anything else than that which made him drunk, and he would instantly be branded as a villain. Let the merchant do it if he dare.
It is inhuman. The liquor-seller is the instrument of the entailment of all the evils upon mankind whose nature and enumeration have constituted a large portion of this lecture. But he has his reasons — yes, he is as full of apologies as the Sphinx of riddles. He says if he does not sell the infernal poison some one else will. I have good reason to believe a band of men have conspired against the life of my neighbor, and that from circumstances and opportunities they will certainly kill him, therefore I go and kill him myself. Is not this the very logic of humanity ?
He says that he does not force men to buy — they buy of him willingly. If my neighbor is willing, and asks me to burn his house, dishonor his family, and murder him, am I justifiable in doing them ? If I ask the druggist to sell me some arsenic that I might destroy my life, dare he do it ? But he says it is lawful. It was once lawful to burn heretics and witches, but was it right ? Suppose it is lawful, is it human ? It might have been lawful for Shylock to cut the pound of flesh from the breast of Antonio, but was it human ? — was it kind?
Ah ! it is for money. He kills for money — so does the assassin. He is a murderer. He will sell his beverages, be the consequences what they may. The vender of ardent spirits is professionally an injurer of mankind — this is his occupation. He is a curse to society, a curse to our families, a curse to our children. His death would be a blessing, and he knows it. That he should be tolerated anywhere is a mystery to me. Yet I am sorry for him. He is injuring himself and will have a fearful account to render. ” Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that putteth thy bottle to him, and maketh him drunken also.” My feelings toward him are not of unkindness.
Women : In times of national peril, when the sterner sex must go to battle with carnal weapons, then we ask you to stay at home and guard well the purity of our family altars, and in your closets pray for us, our cause, and our safe re- turn ; or, hovering like a convoy of angels upon the rear ot our march, nurse the wounded and the dying soldier for his mother far away. But, in this warfare, where flashing steel and roaring cannon avail nothing, we want you by our side. Departing from our side originally when our progenitor slept and dreamt of you, we want you back as our helpmeet indeed, to engage in a work in which your interest also is in- volved, and which from your nature you are almost omnipotent to perform.
Brethren : Be encouraged. True, our powerful enemy has effectually resisted, so far, the power of heaven and earth combined. True, he is backed by hell and wicked men, and that our cause is assailed by ” whited sepulchres ” on the street and in the pulpit, but God is for us. Fight on till our war cry shall shake into dust every citadel of a conquered foe, and our banner wave over a land redeemed and saved — till ” cold water,” pure, crystal, limpid, and bright, shall be the universal beverage of the world.