WHO ARE SLAIN?

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 4, 1881

CANON FARRAR tells of four hundred miners who were killed by an explosion of fire-damp, caused by a smoker, who opened his safety lamp to light his pipe. To that pipe, he says, were sacrificed these precious lives. All England, he adds, is full of the fire-damp of intemperance, perilous and pestilential. The only safety is total abstinence. On the night of September 19, 1806, in the hospital ward of a London work-house, might have been seen the helpless, speechless form of a man who had been picked up in the street. As this dying man was unknown, an advertisement was inserted in the morning paper, stating that he was a tall gentleman, about forty-five years of age, in blue coat and dark pants, with a gold watch in his pocket, a note-book written chiefly in Greek and Latin, and an algebraic calculation. He was soon identified as Prof. Porson, regarded by the universities as the finest classical scholar of the age. He was taken to his home and died in the prime of life, another victim of intoxicating drink. "Yea, many strong men have been slain by her!" Yet the witty poet, Dr. Holmes, has said it is "the drunkard's shallow skull" rather than the silver cup which is to be feared. But the men of largest brain and noblest culture have sunk to the lowest level by first looking at the wine when red, touching and tasting till self-control is lost. A single county in Texas in one year spends $3,000 for the support of the Gospel, $100,000 for tobacco, and $300,000 for whisky.—Sel.