HE DRINKS by Talmage

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jul 14, 1881

HE DRINKS.

By Talmage

TELL me a young man drinks, and I know the rest. Let him become captive to the wine-cup, and he is captive to all other vices. No man ever runs drunkenness alone. That is one of the carrion crows that go in a flock. If that break is ahead you may know the other breaks that 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 place 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. An officer said to me, "You see how they escape legal penalty; they are licensed to sell liquor." Then I thought within myself, the court that licenses the sale of intoxicating liquors, licenses gambling houses, licenses libertinism, licenses diseases, licenses death, licenses all crimes, all sufferings, all disasters, all woes. It is the legislature and courts who swing wide open the grinding, rearing, stupendous gate of the lost.—Talmage.