Temperance | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 1, 1882

Temperance.

The Power of Strong Drink.

IN the Michigan City prison there is a sorrowful old man—a life man. "Poor old Mose," said one of the officers to me, "there is a life blighted by drink." He once had a beautiful family and a thriving farm, and until he became the slave of drink was the kindest of men in the world. But it was the old story. He "never intended to become a drunkard," but like hundreds of men that to-day, moth-like, flutter in the light of this dangerous flame, fondly imagining they shall escape its scorching breath, he drank socially, and finally sank lower, and lower, until his property was fast becoming dissipated. Then death came into the home, and the mother and wife—

"Laid down life's weary load."

Over the dead form the gray head of Old Mose bowed in silent agony. At last he stole out of the little cottage, knelt under a spreading oak, whose tall form towered toward the stars, and lifting his face heavenward, as the night breezes fanned his fevered cheek, he promised God that, "while that tree stood he would never drink again. That to the motherless children he would be a true father." The death of the patient, trusting wife left a feeling of tenderness and awe in his soul, as if God had come out of the great shadow of this affliction to rescue him from his evil course.

Four years rolled away, and the home was a happy one, because father was always sober, and always kind. But one day the demon of desire again possessed him. He dared not break that solemn vow made to God under the stars, but he took his ax and felled the mighty oak to the ground, and then went to the saloon and bought drink, and all day drank heavily, and at night, wild and infuriated, with the same ax with which he had deliberately chopped down the monument of that vow, he murdered his boy in cold blood. Poor, silent, sorrowful old man! There is always before him that fair young face, with its pleading look upon it. He has suffered a thousand deaths in the weary days of his incarceration. How often that sad old face, furrowed with tears, rises before me as men coldly say, "That temperance movement has no interest to me."

You think, my drinking friend, that it would be impossible for you to commit so horrid a crime as this; but I say to you solemnly, it is only the mercy of God that has kept your hands from being stained with blood. You have been wild with drink. There have been long periods of unconsciousness when you could not recollect what you did or said. Self-control was lost, the better nature lay in a death-like swoon, while all the evil in your being was thrice alive. No man who drinks, needs to boast of being better than poor old Mose, for it was not in his heart to do anybody wrong. Every man who drowns himself in drink takes tremendous chances, and no human being has any right to thus tamper with his eternal happiness.—Morning and Day of Reform.