Drink Did It by John B. Gough

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 25, 1909

Drink Did It

By John B. Gough

A MINISTER of the gospel told me, in 1874, one of the most thrilling incidents I ever heard in my life. A member of his congregation came home, for the first time in his life, intoxicated, and his boy met him on his door-step, clapping his hands, and exclaiming, “Papa has come home!” He seized the boy by the shoulder, swung him around, staggered, and fell in the hall. The minister (I could give his name if necessary) said to me: “I spent the night in that house. I went out and bared my brow, that the night air might fall upon it and cool it; I walked up and down the hall. There was his child dead; there was his wife in strong convulsions; and there was he asleep. A man but thirty-five years of age asleep, with a dead child in the house, having a blue mark upon the temple, where the corner of the marble step came in contact with the head as he swung him around; and a wife upon the brink of the grave! When he awoke, passing his hand over his face, he exclaimed: ‘What is the matter? Where am I? Where is my boy?’”

“You can not see him.”

“Where is my boy?” he inquired.

“You can not see him.”

“Stand out of my way. I will see my boy!” To prevent confusion, I took him to that child’s bedside, and, as I turned down the sheet, and showed him the corpse, he uttered a shriek: ‘O my child!’”

That minister said further to me: “One year after that, he was brought to lie side by side with his wife in one grave, and I attended his funeral.”

The minister of the gospel who told me that fact is to-day a drunken hostler in a stable in Boston. Now, tell me what drink will do. It will degrade, imbrute and damn everything that is noble, bright, glorious, and godlike in a human being. There is nothing drink will not do that is vile, dastardly, sneaking, or hellish.—John B. Gough.