Co-Partnership | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 17, 1878

Co-Partnership.

THE RUMSELLER'S PROPOSAL TO THE DEVIL.

DEAR SIR : I have opened apartments, fitted up with all the enticements of luxury, for the sale of rum, brandy, gin, wine, beer, and all their compounds. Our objects, though different, can be best obtained by united action. I therefore, propose a co-partnership. All I want of men is their money. All else shall be yours.

Bring me the industrious, the sober, the respectable and I will return them to you drunkards, paupers and beggars.

Bring me the child, and I will dash to the earth the dearest hopes of the father and the mother and I will plant discord between them and make them a curse and a reproach to their children.

Bring me the young man, and I will ruin his character, destroy his health, shorten his life, and blot out the highest and purest hopes of youth.

Bring me the mechanic or the laborer and his own money—the hard-earned fruits of his toil shall be made to plant poverty, vice and ignorance in his once happy home.

Bring me the warm-hearted sailor, and I will send him on a lee-shore, and make shipwreck of all fond hopes forevermore.

Bring me the professed followers of Christ, and I will blight and wither every devotional feeling of the heart. I will corrupt the ministers of religion, and defile the purity of the church.

Bring me the patronage of the city, and of the courts of justice—let the magistrates of the State and the Union become my patrons—let the law-makers themselves meet at my table and participate in violation of law, and the name of the law shall become a hissing and a by-word in the streets.

Bring me, above all, the moral, respectable man—if possible bring the moderate temperance man, though he may not drink, yet his presence will countenance the pretexts under which our business must be masked. Bring him to our stores, oyster saloons, eating houses and hotels, and the more timid of our victims will then enter without alarm.

Yours faithfully, RUMSELLER.

REPLY.

MY DEAR BROTHER : I address you by this endearing appellation because of the congeniality of our spirits, and of the great work we are both engaged in—the work of DESTRUCTION. I most cordially accept your proposals. For five thousand years I sought in vain for a man so fully after my own heart, to do my work among men. I even ransacked the lowest depths of hell for a devil who could and would do for me the whole work of destruction.

But little success attended their efforts. My minions always made some mistake, or too soon showed the cloven foot. I sent out the demon Murder, and slew a few thousands, most generally the helpless and innocent. Men turned away with loathing from him, and his mission was comparatively a failure.

I bade my servant Lust go forth. He led innocent youths and beautiful maidens in chains—destroying virtue, wrecking happiness, blasting characters, and causing untimely deaths and dishonored graves. But even then many of his victims escaped through the power of God, my enemy.

I sent out Avarice, and in his golden chains some were bound, but men learned to hate him for his meanness, and comparatively few fell by him.

The twin brothers Pestilence and War went forth, and Famine stole behind them; but these three indiscriminately slew the old and the young—men, women and children; the good as well as the bad, and heaven received as many accessions as hell.

In sadness my satanic heart mourned over the probable loss of my crown and kingdom, as I contemplated the tremendous strides which the gospel of Jesus was making in saving men from my clutches. But when I received your kind letter, I shouted till the welkin of hell echoed the shout, "Eureka! Eureka!"—"I have found it! I have found it!" Yes, my dear friend, I could have embraced you a thousand times, and I have given orders to reserve for you a place nearest my person the most honorable seat in my kingdom. In you are combined all the qualifications of just such a friend and partner as I have long wished for, and in your business are all the elements of success. Now shall my throne be forever established. Only carry out your designs and you shall have money, though it be wrung from the broken hearts of helpless women, and from the mouths of innocent, perishing children. Though you fill the jails, work-houses and poor-houses, though you crowd the insane asylums, though you make murder, incest and arson to abound, and erect scaffolds and gallows in every village, town and city, you shall have money. I will also harden your heart so that your conscience will never trouble you. You shall look upon blood and even shed it, without shame or anguish. You shall think yourself a gentleman, though men and women, your victims, shall call you demon. You shall be devoid of the fear of God, the horrors of the grave, and the solemnities of eternity, and when you come to me your works shall produce a reward forever. All I claim is the souls of the victims.

Yours to the very last, DIABOLUS.