WHAT WILL YOU TAKE?

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Feb 19, 1880

WHAT WILL YOU TAKE?

How often this question is asked by men accustomed to the use of intoxicating drinks. Suppose we put the question in a more practical way? Will you have ten cents' worth of poison? Will you take a pain in the head? Will you take a rush of blood to the heart? Will you take a stab in the lungs? Will you take a blister on the mucous membrane? Will you take a nauseating sickness of the stomach? Will you take redness of the eyes, or black eyes? Will you take a tint of red for your nose? Will you take a rum-bud for your face? Will you take an offensive breath? Will you take a touch of delirium tremens? Suppose we change the question a little. Will you take something to drink which will make you more thirsty than you were before you drank it! There would be some sense in asking a man out at the elbows to take a coat, or in asking a bare-headed man to take a hat, or in asking a shoeless man to take a pair of boots, or in asking a hungry man to take something to eat; but it is a piece of insane absurdity to ask a man to take something to drink—that which will not quench thirst. Why should he take something? Will it make him stronger, wiser, better? No; a thousand times no! It will make him weaker; it will make him idiotic and base; it will make him an enemy to himself, and a shame to his name.—Ex.