Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes | Page 8

in a social drink. It seems polite, clever,
the kindly thing to do. And the sad fact is, that the majority of
unchristian young people and many older ones do not decline. To prove
this we have but to look at the human wrecks along the shore. Two
young men lived near our home. Their parents were well-to-do. The
family grew tired of the farm and moved to town. The boys fell in with
bad company. They did not decline the social glass. Soon they
furnished other young men with drink from their own pocket. This was
fifteen years ago. To-day one of them is a hardened sinner, violent in
his passions and blasphemous against God. The other one, having spent
a term in our Illinois State University at Champaign, married a

beautiful neighbor girl and moved to Missouri. Here he lived off the
money of his father's estate, practicing his early-learned habits of
drinking, gambling, and loafing. He moved from State to State until,
finally left in poverty, he tended bar in a saloon. While visiting with
relatives in his old neighborhood a few years ago he stole a watch and
some money from his own nephew, and was tried in the courts, and
sentenced to the penitentiary for one year. His wife, having carried the
burden of disgrace and want through all these years, with the seven
unfortunate children were released from him to struggle alone. All this
we have seen with our own eyes as the years have come and gone. The
downfall and ruin of this young man, and the unsaved fate of his
brother, easily may be traceable to the "social glass" and the boon
companions of the social glass--tobacco and playing-cards. Last year I
met a man who had prided himself in the fact that he could drink or let
it alone, and thought that it was all right to take a "social glass"
occasionally. Election time came around; he fell in with his friends, and,
as one always will do sooner or later who tampers with it at all, went
too far. Before he knew it he was as low in the gutter as a beast. It was
three days before he was a sober man again. He work had ceased, he
had disgusted his fellow-workmen, disgraced his Christian family, and
had humiliated himself so that he was ashamed to look any man in the
face until he had repented of his sins before God, and had promised
Him, by His help, that he would never drink another glass. What a
pleasure it was to hear that old man, as he is close to sixty years of age,
to hear him tell in a spirited religious service of how he had strayed
from his path and had got lost in the woods, but thanked God that he
was out of the woods, and by His help would remain out. When we
become undone in Christ He lifts us up and starts us on our new way
rejoicing in His love. If Christ Himself were here in body, do you know
what He would advise on this point? He would say: "As it is written;"
"Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in
the cup, when it goeth down smoothly: at the last it biteth like a serpent
and stingeth like an adder." Beware of the social glass, my friend, for
though it promises pleasure, it gives but pain; it promises joy, it gives
but sorrow; it promises deliverance, it gives but eternal death!
III. STUDY THE DRINK EVIL.
We hear it said, "No use to picture the horrors of the drink evil; every

one knows them already." In part, this is true. All of us know more than
we wish it were possible to be true; and yet no one can ever realize its
horrors until caught, and torn, and mangled in its pinching, jagged,
griping meshes. It is one thing to know by a distant glance, it is another
thing to know by the pangs of a broken heart and of a wrecked life. For
those who are not thus caught in its meshes to realize its horrors so as
to seek its destruction but one course is possible; namely, To study the
evil. Let the teacher tell of its ravages; let the minister proclaim its
curses; let the poet sing it; the painter paint it; the editor report it; the
novelist portray it; the scientist describe it; the philosopher decry it; the
sisters and wives and mothers denounce it--until all shall unite in
smiting it to its death!
We should study the drink evil in its relation to disease. That strong
drink tends to produce disease is no longer questioned. "During the
cholera in New