INTEMPERANCE by The Young Man's Friend

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 10, 1881

INTEMPERANCE.

By The Young Man's Friend

INTEMPERANCE, like other vices, is deceitful and seductive. It frequently presents a beautiful exterior, while within it is all corruption, and as loathsome as a sepulcher, full of dead men's bones. Youth is charmed and cheated by it, and old age it often covers with shame and disgrace.

You have seen a calm cloud appear in the heavens in a clear day in summer. At a distance it looked beautiful. Its shining edges glittered with delusive splendor, and it moved up the sky as majestically as the chariot of Jehovah. As it approached, the beauty disappeared; on man below, it cast dark, threatening glances; the golden fringes vomited forth forked lightning; and what afar, seemed mellow music, was soon found to be harsh and terrific thunder. Soon the tempest was abroad on earth. The beasts of the field fled for shelter to the shadow of the high rock; the yellow harvest of the husbandman was swept away, and man himself fled, a fugitive before the storm.

Intemperance is like that cloud! It promises shelter and shade to the thirsty spirit, but soon bursts upon human life with all the fury of the tempest. It sends its blast and sweeps its tide, into the domestic retreat, across tribunals of justice, and up to the very altars of the church of God.

You have seen the ocean calm and tranquil. As far as the eye could reach not a ruffle disturbed the surface of the waters. Like a sea of glass, it reflected the form of every bird which took passage over it, and gave back from its clear bosom the polished beauty of the heavens above. Invited by the serenity of ocean and sky, the mariner launched his vessel, and spread his canvas to catch the gentle breeze. Soon a change came on. The wind blew like the hurricane. The waves tumbled and foamed upon each other. The ship plunged, and quivered, and strained in the trough of the sea. Sunken rocks now lifted their huge forms and sharp peaks high above the water, and anon were buried deep, by the mountain billow. Morning came; and a vessel, without mast, or rudder, or sail, or chart, or compass, or crew, floated upon the bosom of the surge.

Intemperance is like that ocean! To the youthful voyager it seems as calm and placid, as a sea of glass.

But as he ventures out; as the green hills of sobriety disappear, the waves of destruction begin to dash around him; the whistling blasts of poverty make frightful music; the moaning of the pitiless storm disturbs his dream of pleasure, and ere long he is tossing, an unmanageable wreck, upon the sea of temporal and eternal ruin.—The Young Man's Friend.