Health and Temperance by T. De Witt Talmage

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 27, 1890

Health and Temperance.

By T. De Witt Talmage

LET ALONE INTEMPERANCE.

I PROPOSE in this discourse to tell you what I think are the sorrows and the doom of the drunkard, so that you to whom I speak may not come to the torment. Someone says, "You had better let those subjects alone." Why, my brethren, we would be glad to let them alone if they would let us alone; but when I have in my pocket now four requests, saying, "Pray for my husband," "Pray for my son," "Pray for my brother," "Pray for my friend, who is the captive of strong drink," I reply, We are ready to let that question alone when it is willing to let us alone; but when it stands blocking up the way to heaven, and keeping multitudes away from Christ, I dare not be silent, lest the Lord require their blood at my hands.

I think the subject has been kept back by the merriment people make over those slain by strong drink. I used to be very merry over these things, having a keen sense of the ludicrous. There was something very grotesque in the gait of a drunkard. It is not so now, for I saw in one of the streets of Philadelphia a sight that changed the whole subject to me. There was a young man being led home. He was very much intoxicated—he was raving with intoxication. Two young men were leading him along. The boys hooted in the street, men laughed, women sneered, but I happened to be very near the door where he went in—it was the door of his father's house. I saw him go upstairs. I heard him shouting, hooting, and blaspheming. He had lost his hat, and the merriment increased with the mob until he came up to the door; and as the door opened his mother came out. When I heard her cry, that took all the comedy away from the scene. Since that time, when I see a man walking through the street reeling, the comedy is all gone, and it is a tragedy of tears and groans and heart-breaks. Never make any fun around me about the grotesqueness of a drunkard! Alas for his home!—Rev. T. De Witt Talmage.