WHY ARE MY BOYS DRUNKARDS?
THE above is a question propounded by a distressed mother. She is a good woman, has been a devoted Christian from a child, is a faithful wife and a kind, loving, praying mother. But, alas, she has lived to see her fine-looking, hardy boys grow up and become drunkards. She has done all she could in the way of kindly admonishing against the seduction of the wine cup, and lovingly warning them of the ruin which the rum-fiend inflicts upon its victims. Many, many hours in the stillness of the night has she spent on her knees, her heart almost broken, pleading with God to save her boys from being ruined by strong drink, only to see them waxing worse and worse. And now, almost in desperation, she asks, “Why are my boys drunkards? Why does not God interpose and save them in answer to my prayer? Does He no longer hear and answer the prayers of His sorrow-stricken children? Is the fault mine? Have I not faithfully done my duty—done all that a fond mother could do to save her boys?” Alas, for that mother! Our hearts bleed for her and her boys as well. God does hear and answer prayer, but the same God who says, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver thee,” also says, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” And He also says that He visits the “iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.” “But,” one asks, “what have those passages to do with this poor, distressed mother’s case?” Only this, she is reaping what she has sowed. Years ago when she was a happy, beautiful, young woman she made the awful mistake made by so many others, of accepting the attention of a young man whom she knew to be given to strong drink, and permitted him to woo and win her. She not only knew that he was in the habit of becoming intoxicated, but she also knew that the appetite for strong drink was a characteristic of his family. Of course, like many another foolish girl, she felt sure she could “reform him.” Her parents and friends warned her, but despite their admonitions and protestations she would have her own way, and gave herself to be the wife of a drunken husband, and in so doing doomed herself to be the sorrowing mother of drunken sons. She sowed the wind and is reaping the whirlwind! She set in motion a cause, and now because He who is the author of the law of cause and effect does not think it wise to interpose miraculously and in answer to her prayer suspend that law and change the inherited nature, the boys, on whom she decided to inflict an unnatural appetite for strong drink by marrying a man given to the use of intoxicating liquors, are going the way of the drunkard! It is an awful case, but “shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?” This sad case is only one of many, and is given to be a warning to our young lady readers. Dear girls, if you would avoid a similar sorrow, pray now to be saved from marrying men addicted to strong drink. It is the only effectual way to pray for deliverance from the sorrow which the poor woman whose case is described above, suffers. To pray11after the boys begotten of a drunken father have fallen into the same habit of drinking, is too late. We will not say that they can not and will not be saved from a drunkard’s hell, but experience teaches that, as a rule, such are not saved from the inherited appetite for strong drink; and when, in addition, they are exposed to the seductive influences of the open saloon and the society of those who drink, how are they to escape? There are ten thousand wives and mothers in this country to-day whose hearts are broken and whose homes are but hovels of want, violence, and sorrow, simply because they, lured by the hope that they could reform them, married men who they knew were given to tampering with the drunkard-making beverage. They mourn and suffer and pray, but the adamantine law of cause and effect holds, and as in the case of Esau, their repentance and tears are of no avail in so far as undoing what they have done is concerned. They are only reaping what they sowed, and thereby verifying the truth that “God is not mocked.”—Religious Telescope.