Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes | Page 8

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 York City in 1832, of two hundred and four cases in the Park Hospital only six were temperate, and all of these recovered; while one hundred and twenty-two of the others died. In Great Britain in the same year five-sixths of all who perished were intemperate. In one or two villages every drunkard died, while not a single member of a temperance society lost his life." "In Paisley, England, in 1848, there were three hundred and thirty-seven cases of cholera, and every case except one was a dram-drinker. The cases of cholera were one for every one hundred and eighty-one inhabitants; but among the temperate portion there was only one case to each two thousand." "Of three hundred and eighty-six persons connected