p. 21 | He Drinks by Talmage

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 12, 1882

He Drinks.

By Talmage

TELL me a young man drinks and I know all the rest. Let him become captive of the wine-cup and he is the captive of all other vices. No man ever runs drunkenness alone. That is one of the carrion crowns that goes with a flock. If that beak is ahead you may know that the other beaks follow. In other words, strong drink unbalances and dethrones and makes him the prey of all the appetites that choose to alight upon his soul. There is not a piece of sin upon this continent but finds its chief abettor in the places of inebriety. There is a drinking place before it or behind it, or a bar over it or a bar under it. The officer said to me that night, "You see how they escape legal penalty; they are licensed to sell liquor." Then I thought within myself the court that licensed the sale of intoxicating liquors, licenses gaming houses, licenses libertinism, licenses diseases, licenses death, licenses all crimes, all suffering, all disaster, all woes. It is the Legislature and courts that swing wide open this grinding, roaring, stupendous gate of the lost.—Talmage.