FEARFUL TO CONTEMPLATE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 6, 1878

“FEARFUL TO CONTEMPLATE.”

THIRTY-THREE estimates, carefully compiled, from different parts of the United States, and all brought to harmonize, show the following startling facts:—

There is drank each year, in our government, 561,600,000 gallons of ardent spirits, which, at manufacturing prices, cost the consumers the round sum of $3,841,264,000.

It kills 164,062 persons each year, whose days are each shortened ten years, making a total of 1,640,620 years of time; put at $50 per year, this makes 82,031,000.

There are 1,523,662 regular or moderate dram drinkers, who lose one-third of their time drinking, and preparing for the drunkard’s grave, which is equal to 100 days to each man in the year, put at 50c. per day, this makes 76,183,100.

The total amount of crime costs the government annually $32,528,437, three-fourths of which is caused by ardent spirits, 24,396,328.

Add cost of pauperism, both public and private, caused by this evil, 21,375,000.

$4,045,249,428

This amount in one-dollar greenback bills, laid lengthwise (one touching another), would make a line 453,776 miles long. To count this amount at the rate of one dollar per second (eight hours in a day) would require 384 years of time, about eleven average lifetimes. And all this enormous tax for what? To degrade mankind, and hurry them off to the drunkard’s grave and the drunkard’s hell. This vast sum, if turned in a proper direction, would educate, clothe, feed, and provide a home for every poor orphan in the land; would build up every institution of learning necessary; pay off every pastor; build every church house needed; and in a short time send the gospel to earth’s remotest bounds; and no one harmed or hurried off to hell by it. Oh, how merciful and forbearing is the Almighty!

Now let some brother or sister, who is not held in bondage by “tobacco,” come out and show us the figures on that question.—Texas Baptist.