The Strongest Drink by Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 29, 1883

The Strongest Drink.

By Charles Haddon Spurgeon

WATER is the strongest drink. It drives mills; it's the drink of lions and horses, and Samson never drank anything else. Let young men be teetotalers if only for economy's sake. The beer money will soon build a house. If what goes into a mash-tub went into the kneading-trough, families would be better fed and better taught. If what is spent in waste were only saved against a rainy day, workhouses would never be built. The man who spends his money with the public and thinks the landlord's bow and "How do ye do, my good fellows," mean true respect, is a perfect simpleton. We don't light fires for the herring's comfort, but to roast him. Men do not keep pot-houses for laborers' good; if they do, they certainly miss their aim. Why, then, should people drink "for the good of the house?" If I spend money for the good of any house, let it be my own and not the landlord's. It is a bad well into which you must put water; and the beer-house is a bad friend, because it takes your all and leaves you nothing but headaches. He who calls those his friends who let him sit and drink by the hour is ignorant—very ignorant. Why, red lions and tigers and eagles and vultures are all creatures of prey, and why do so many put themselves within the power of their jaws and talons? Such as drink and live riotously, and wonder why their faces are so blotchy and their pockets so bare, would leave off wondering, if they had two grains of wisdom. They might as well ask an elm tree for pears as look to loose habits for health and wealth. Those who go to the public house for happiness climb a tree to find fish.—Spurgeon.