Part 8 (2/2)
And his family. I can never look at it but with feelings of deepest anguish.
”Domestic happiness, thou only bliss Of paradise that hast escaped the fall,”
thou art s.h.i.+pwrecked here. Sorrow, woe, wounds, poverty, babblings, and contention, have entered in and dwell here. Yet we have 300,000 such families in the land; and if each family consists of four individuals, more than a million persons are here made wretched by this curse of curses.
And his death. O, to die in our houses, amid our friends, and with the consolations of religion, strips not death of its character as the king of terrors. But to die as the drunkard dies, an outcast from society, in some hovel or almshouse, on a bed of straw, or in some ditch, or pond, or frozen in a storm; to die of the _brain-fever_, conscience upbraiding, h.e.l.l opening, and foul spirits pa.s.sing quick before his vision to seize him before his time--this, this is woe; this is the triumph of sin and Satan. Yet, in the last ten years, 300,000 have died in our land the death of the drunkard; rus.h.i.+ng, where?--”Drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of G.o.d”--rus.h.i.+ng into h.e.l.l, where their worm dieth not, and their fire can never be quenched. And if the demon is suffered to continue his ravages, 300,000 more of our existing population will, in the same way, rush into eternal burnings.
And his funeral. Have you ever been at a drunkard's funeral? I do not ask, did you look at his corpse? It was cadaverous before he died. But did you look at his father as he bent over the grave and exclaimed in agony, ”O, my son, my son, would to G.o.d I had died for thee, my son.”
Did you look at his widow, pale with grief, and at his ragged, hunger-bitten children at her side, and see them turn away to share the world's cold pity, or, perhaps, rejected and forlorn, follow the same path to death and h.e.l.l?
Such are the ravages of the demon we hunt. Its footsteps are marked with blood. We glory in our liberties, and every fourth of July our bells ring a merry peal, as if we were the happiest people on earth. But O, our country, our country! She has a worm at her vitals, making fast a wreck of her physical energies, her intellect, and her moral principle; augmenting her pauperism and her crime; nullifying her elections--for a drunkard is not fit for an elector--and preparing her for subjection to the most merciless tyranny that ever scourged any nation under heaven.
We talk of our religion, and weep over the delusions of the false prophet and the horrors of Juggernaut; but a more deceitful prophet is in our churches than Mahomet, and a more b.l.o.o.d.y idol than Juggernaut rolls through our land, crus.h.i.+ng beneath its wheels our sons and our daughters. Woe, woe, woe to Zion. Satan is in Eden. And if no check is put to the ravages of the demon, our benevolent inst.i.tutions must die, our sanctuaries be forsaken, our beautiful fields be wastes, and the church will read the history of her offspring in the third of Romans: _Their throat is an open sepulchre; their mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood_--all, blasting our bright hope of the speedy approach of millennial glory.
There is cause, then, for the general alarm that has been excited in our country; reason for this extensive and powerful combination to hunt and destroy the monster. Much, by divine help, has been done. He has been routed and brought to the light of day; the mischief he has done has been exposed; his apologists have been confronted; he is driven into his den, and now how can he be destroyed? That he must be destroyed there can be no question. The man who does not wish for the suppression of intemperance must have the heart of a fiend; especially, if he wishes to grow rich on the miseries of his fellow-men. And he must be destroyed now. It is now or never. Men may say enough has been done, and talk about his being held where he is. He cannot be held there. He has the cunning of a serpent, and he will escape through some fissure in the rock. He is now in our power. The temperance movement, which has on it the impress of the finger of G.o.d, has brought him within our grasp; and if we let him escape, the curse of curses will be entailed upon our children. How then can he be destroyed? I answer, and thousands answer, by starvation. No weapon can reach him so long as you feed him. But who has a heart so traitorous to humanity as to feed this monster? Every man who now, in the face of the light that is shed upon this subject, distils, or vends, or uses intoxicating liquor; every distillery, and every dram-shop in the land, nourishes this foe to human peace; every man who takes the alcoholic poison into his system, or imparts it to others, except as he takes and imparts other poisons to check disease, gives life to the beast. I need not stop to prove it. It is manifest to the child. Let every distillery in the land cease, and every dram-shop be closed, and total abstinence become the principle of every individual, and the demon will be dead; yes, take away from him his wine, his brandy, and his whiskey, and he will perish for ever. But here is the very brunt of the battle. We have hunted the monster through the land, and driven him into his den; and now we must stand at the very mouth of the cavern, and contend with our fellow-men and fellow-sufferers--yes, and fellow-Christians too--who are either afraid to attack the monster, or are determined he shall live.
And first, we are met by a body of men who tell us that alcohol is useful. And what if it is? What if every benefit that the moderate and immoderate drinker can think of, flows from it? What will this do to compensate for its giant evils which are desolating our land? Is man so bent on self-gratification that he will have every sweet, though it be mingled with poison? Will he exercise no reason; make no discrimination between unmixed good and good followed by desolating woes? Tea was good.
But, said our fathers, if with it we must have all the horrors of British tyranny, away with it from our dwellings. My countrymen, ”the voice of your fathers' blood cries to you from the ground, 'My sons, scorn to be slaves!'” Away with the shameful plea that you cannot do without an article which subjects you to an evil ten thousand times worse than all the horrors of British tyranny. You kindle the fires of liberty by pointing to the woes of the prison-s.h.i.+p, and the bones of your countrymen whitening on the sh.o.r.es of New Jersey. O, crouch not to a tyrant who binds a million in his chains, and demands thirty thousand annually for his victims. I blush for the imbecility of the man who must have an article on his farm which eats up his substance and his vitals, and may turn his son into an idiot and a brute. Better have no farm.
Better go at once, with his family, into the poor-house, and be supported by public charity.
Next comes canting Hypocrisy, with his Bible in his hand, telling us that ”every creature of G.o.d is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving.” What does he mean; that ardent spirit is the gift of G.o.d? Pray, in what stream of his bounty, from what mountain and hill does it flow down to man? O, it is in the rye, and the apple, and the sugar, and the Mussulman has taught us Christians how to distil it. And so the poet tells us Satan taught his legions how to make gunpowder. ”There are,” said he,
”Deep under ground, materials dark and crude, Of spirituous and fiery spume.
These, in their dark nativity, the deep Shall yield us, pregnant with internal flame; Which, into hollow engines, long and round, Thick ramm'd, at th' other bore with touch of fire Dilated and infuriate, shall send forth From far, with thundering noise, among our foes Such implements of mischief as shall dash To pieces and o'erwhelm whatever stands Adverse.
Th' invention all admired; up they turn'd Wide the celestial soil; sulphurous and nitrous foam They found, they mingled; and, with subtle art Concocted and adjusted, they reduced To blackest grain.”
And now, to carry out the argument, gunpowder, and guns, and swords, are the gift of G.o.d, and men must needs use them, and kill one another as fast as possible.
But nothing, it is plead, was made in vain. Spirit is good for something, and to banish it from use, and promise that we will ”touch not, taste not, handle not,” is contempt of the works of G.o.d. I should like to have seen what the Pomfret hero would have done with a man who should have stood before him, and said, Don't you destroy that wolf; G.o.d made it, and it may be good for something.
Next, we are checked in our principle of starvation by a set of thoughtless youth and presumptuous men, who say there is no danger from the demon if we keep him low. All his ravages have been occasioned by his being full fed. Let him sip but little, feed him _prudently_, and he will do no harm.
”Good,” says the demon, growling in his den; ”that is all I want. The doctrine of prudent use is the basis of my kingdom. Temperate drinking has made all the drunkards in the land, and keep it up in all your towns and villages, and I shall be satisfied.”
O the delusion! Prudent use! What is the testimony of every chemist and physician in the land? Alcohol is a _poison_.
”Not a bloodvessel,” says Dr. Mussey, ”however minute, not a thread of nerve in the whole animal machine escapes its influence. It disturbs the functions of life; it increases for a time the action of the living organs, but lessens the power of that action; hence the deep depression and collapse which follow preternatural excitement. By habitual use it renders the living fibre less and less susceptible to the healthy operation of unstimulating food and drink, its exciting influences soon become incorporated with all the living actions of the body, and the diurnal sensations of hunger, thirst, and exhaustion, are strongly a.s.sociated with the recollection of its exhilarating effects, and thus bring along with them the resistless desire for its repet.i.tion.” More than fifty per cent. of common spirits are alcohol, this deadly substance, holding rank with henbane, hemlock, prussic acid, foxglove, poison sumach. Nausea, vertigo, vomiting, exhilaration of spirits for a time, and subsequent stupor, and even total insensibility and death, are their accompaniments. Broussais remarks, ”A single portion of ardent spirit taken into the stomach produces a temporary phlogosis.” Now, I submit it to every considerate man, whether there can be any prudent use of a poison, a single portion of which produces the same disease of which the drunkard dies, and a disease which brings along with it a resistless desire for a repet.i.tion of the draught.
Thoughtless, self-sufficient men say, they can control this desire, can govern their appet.i.te, can enjoy the exhilaration of strong drink, and yet be temperate. Let them look at the poor inebriate wallowing in his pollution. He once stood just where they stand; boasted just as they boast; had as fair character, and as kind friends, and as precious a soul and bright hopes of heaven as they have. Let them tell why he does not control his appet.i.te. Perhaps they say, he is a fool. Ah, what made him a fool? Or, his reason is gone. And what took away his reason? Or, he has lost his character. And what took away his character? Or, his sense of shame is departed. And what took away his sense of shame? Ah, here is the dreadful secret, which it may be well for all, boasting of their power of self-control, to know. At the very moment when the man thinks he stands firm, and reason can control appet.i.te, his moral sense departs, his shame is gone, and he turns, through the power of his morning bitters and oft-repeated drams, into the brute and the maniac.
With the moral sensibilities laid waste, reason here has only the power of the helmsman before the whirlwind. ”Twenty years ago,” says Nott, ”a respectable householder came in the morning with a gla.s.s of bitters in his hand, and offered it to his guest, saying, 'Take it; it will do you good. I have taken it for some years, and I think it does me good; and I never want any more.' Time pa.s.sed on, and presently the bottle of bitters in the closet was exchanged for the barrel of whiskey in the cellar; and the poor man was often at the tap for just as much as would do him good, and he never wanted any more. Time pa.s.sed on, and a hogshead was needful; and its contents were exhausted with the same intent, and the same self-deceivings. At length the home of his family was relinquished to his creditors; his polluted body was lodged in a jail, from which he presently issued a drunken vagabond, and wandered a wretched being, until he found a drunkard's grave.” It is but the history of thousands. No laws of nature act with more uniformity than the laws of intemperance. No inoculation sends with more certainty disease into the system than drinking strong drink. Hundreds have made an agonizing struggle to escape from perdition. They have seen their sin and danger; they have walked the streets in agony; they have gone to their homes and looked at their wives and children, and into the pit of despair. But their feverish stomach has cried, Give, give! and they have drank often and often, with the solemn promise that it should be the last time; until they have exclaimed, with a once interesting youth, ”I know I am a ruined man, but I cannot stop.”
Some, indeed, through much care and strength of const.i.tution, may escape; but the plague, if it appear not in their skin and their bone, may break out in their children. ”I will drink some,” said an aged deacon of a church of Christ; ”for it does me good.” G.o.d was merciful, though he tempted Heaven, and it is said that he died with his character untarnished; but six loathsome sons drank up his substance, with the leprosy in their foreheads. What a meeting must there be between that deacon and his sons on the judgment-day! The doctrine of prudent use must be abandoned. It can have no standard. Every man thinks he drinks prudently, whether he takes one gla.s.s a day or five, and is just as much excited and just as liable to drunkenness as all drunkards were when they stood where he now stands. He only that entirely abstains can properly be called a temperate man. And he only is clear from the guilt of spreading intemperance through the land. Moderate drinkers are the life of this b.l.o.o.d.y system which is wringing with agony the hearts of thousands. Did all at once drink to excess, alcohol would be viewed with dread, as is laudanum and a.r.s.enic. Better that all who tasted it were at once made drunkards; then, drunkards would be as scarce as suicides.
But men now sip moderately and are reputable; they think themselves safe, but one in every forty sinks to drunkenness; and thus, among twelve millions of people, drinking moderately, the demon has perpetually 300,000 victims. And for these, while all are thus paying homage to the bottle, what is the hope? The lost wretch may wake from his brutality and crime, and resolve that he will reform, and his broken-hearted wife may hope that the storms of life are over, and his babes may smile at his strange kindness and care; but the universal presence of the intoxicating fluid, and the example of the wise and the good around him, will thwart all his resolutions, and he will go back, like the dog to his vomit. All the drunkenness, then, that shall pollute our land, must be traced to moderate drinkers. They feed the monster.
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