Temperance | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 19, 1883

Temperance.

Dr. Gunn on Alcohol.

“I AM aware that there is a prejudice against any man engaged in the manufacture of alcohol. I believe that from the time it issues from the coiled and poisonous worm in the distillery until it empties into the hell of death, dishonor, and crime, that it demoralizes everybody that touches it, from its source to where it ends. I do not believe anybody can contemplate the subject without becoming prejudiced against that liquor crime:

“All we have to do, gentlemen, is to think of the wrecks on either bank of the stream of death; of the suicides, of the insanity; of the poverty, of the ignorance, of the destitution; of the little children tugging at the faded and weary breasts; of weeping and despairing wives asking for bread; of the talented men of genius it has wrecked, the men struggling with imaginary serpents, produced by this devilish thing; and when you think of the jails, the almshouses, of the asylums, of the prisons, of the scaffolds upon either hand, I do not wonder that every thoughtful man is prejudiced against this stuff called alcohol.

“Intemperance cuts down youth in its vigor, manhood in its strength, and old age in its weakness. It breaks the father’s heart, bereaves the doting mother, extinguishes natural affections, erases conjugal loves, blots out filial attachments, blights parental hope, and brings down mourning age in sorrow to the grave. It produces weakness, not strength; sickness, not health; death, not life. It makes wives, widows; children, orphans; fathers, fiends, and all of them paupers and beggars. It feeds rheumatism, nurses gout, welcomes epidemics, invites cholera, imports pestilence and embraces consumption. It fills your jails, supplies your almshouses and demands your asylums. It covers the land with idleness, misery, and crime. It engenders controversies, fosters quarrels, and cherishes riots. It crowds your penitentiaries and furnishes victims to your scaffolds. It is the life blood of the gambler, the element of the burglar, the prop of the highwayman and the support of the midnight incendiary. It countenances the liar, respects the thief, esteems the blasphemer. It violates obligations, reverences fraud, and honors infamy. It defames benevolence, hates love, scorns virtue, and slanders innocence. It incites the father to butcher his helpless offspring, helps the husband to massacre his wife, and the child to grind the parricidal axe. It burns up men, consumes women, detests life, curses God, and despises Heaven. It suborns witnesses, nurses perjury, defiles the jury box, and stains the judicial ermine. It degrades the citizen, debases the legislator, dishonors statesmen, and disarms the patriot. It brings shame, not honor; terror, not safety; despair, not hope; misery, not happiness; and with the malevolence of a fiend, it calmly surveys its frightful desolation, and unsatisfied with its havoc, it poisons felicity, kills peace, ruins morals, blights confidence, slays reputation, and wipes out national honors, then curses the world and laughs at its ruin.

“It does all that and more—it murders the soul. It is the son of villianies, the father of all crimes, the mother of abominations, the devil’s best friend and God’s worst enemy.”