Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear | Page 9

our hearts. Let us cultivate it and nurture it until it
blooms forth into friendship for everyone who may be helped by the
love of Christ through us."

THE KEY TO FAILURE --Temperance Day --Appetite
Strong Drink Opens the Gate to Destruction and Bars the Way to
Success.
THE LESSON--That strong drink robs its victims of the ability to solve
the problems of life.
This temperance lesson deals with the curse of strong drink in especial
reference to its connection with the material success of the individual.
Specific opinions of several well-known representative men are quoted.
~~The Talk.~~
"Nearly every man carries in his pocket a bunch of keys. [Write the
word 'Key,' completing Fig. 11.] When a professional man, for instance,
reaches his office in the morning, he may unlock his office door with
one key; with another key he may unlock his desk; with another he may
unlock a drawer in the desk; and then, having opened his safe, he may
use still another key to unlock his strong box. At night he may look
carefully to see that each of these things is again carefully locked
before he goes home. And so, we see, keys are for two purposes--to
unlock and to lock.

[Illustration: Fig. 11]
"Most keys are made of metal and are in our own keeping and subject
to our own will, but there is another key of which I shall speak, which
goes before many a man, working entirely independent of him. And as
it goes, it locks the doors which he wishes to enter, and it unlocks many
another door which he does not want to enter and forces him to go
through it. I will draw the picture of this key. [Starting at the final
stroke of the letter Y, continue the line, and ending with the letters
W-H-I-S. Then add the lines to complete Fig. 12.]
[Illustration: Fig. 12]
"Let us see for a moment what this key does. It locks the door to health
and opens the door to disease. Sir Andrew Clark, one of England's
greatest physicians, says: 'I am speaking solemnly and carefully in the
presence of truth, and I will tell you that I am considerably within the
mark when I say to you that, going the round of my hospital wards
today, seven out of every ten owed their ill-health to strong drink.'
"And again: This key bars and locks the way to good positions, where
men may earn the money needed to keep themselves and their families
provided with the necessities of life. Many of the great corporations are
refusing to hire men who drink. Whiskey has locked the door to
opportunity for them. The Pennsylvania Railroad Company, operating
one of the greatest systems in the world, has issued a statement to the
men who run the trains on its lines which includes these words: 'Taking
one drink of intoxicating liquor is like running passed the red light. It is
unsafe. The possible line between safety and danger in the use of
alcoholic drink is dangerously unstable. Safety lies back of total
abstinence. The normal man has no legitimate use for alcohol as a
beverage, and he has no right to render himself abnormal by its use
when lives are dependent upon his efficiency. None but normal men
should run railway trains. The traveling public has unqualified right to
demand and expect none less safe.' This statement deals, not with the
moral side, but with the fact that a man who drinks unfits himself for
any position of responsibility, especially if entrusted with human life.

"This key also locks and bars the way to a life of purity and honor. Says
the chaplain of the Ohio penitentiary, Dr. Starr: "The records show that
1,250 persons have been received into this institution during eighteen
months; of these, 930 acknowledged themselves to have been
intemperate.' And the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor adds the
statement that of 27,000 crimes committed in that state, eight out of
every ten were due to intemperate habits, or occurred while the
criminal was under the influence of liquor.
"We need not go further to show that this key is truly the key to
failure--failure in the attempt to attain to anything pure, right and
honorable.
"No one knows this better than the manufacturer of strong drink. 'The
handwriting is on the wall,' says T.M. Gilmore, president of the Model
License League. 'Our trade today is on trial before the bar of public
sentiment, and unless it can be successfully defended before that bar, I
want to see it go down forever.'
"In no better way can we help to bring this victorious end than by
lending our every influence to cause the world to turn to the true
Christian life, for then follows