THE GATES OF HELL

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 24, 1881

"THE GATES OF HELL."

In a sermon upon this subject, Mr. Talmage said: "Another gate of hell, and the chief gate, and as wide as all the others put together, is the gate of alcoholic beverages. On the night of exploration I found that everything was done under the enchantment of the wine cup; that was one of the chief attractions of the illuminated garden; that staggered the step of the patrons as they went home. The wine cup is the instigator of all impurity, and the patron of all uncleanness. So far as God may help me, I shall be its unending foe. It was the testimony of the officials on the night of the exploration, that those who frequent the house of death, go in intoxicated; the mental and spiritual abolished, the brute ascendant. Tell me a young man drinks, and I know the rest. Let him become a captive of the wine cup, and he is captive of all vices. No man ever runs drunkenness alone. That is one of the carrion crows that go in a flock. If that break is ahead, you may know the other breaks follow. In other words, it unbalances and dethrones and makes him a prey to all the appetites that choose to light on his soul."

"There is not a sin on this continent that does not find its chief abettor in the places of inebriety. There is a drinking bar before, behind, or a bar under it. The officers said to me that night, 'You see how these escape legal penalty; they are licensed to sell liquor.' Then I thought within myself, the court which licenses the sale of intoxicating liquors, gambling houses, licenses libertinism, licenses disease, licenses all crime, all sufferings, all woes. It is the legislature and the courts who swing wide this grinding, roaring, stupendous gate of the lost. But you say, you have shown us how these gates swing in to allow entrance for the doomed; please tell us how they swing out for the escape of the penitent. Let me answer, it is the exception when they come out. I think nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand perish."