p. 8 | A Divine Indictment by C. M. S.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 11, 1914

A Divine Indictment

By C. M. S.

THE Word of God gave Divinity's estimate of the drink traffic many centuries ago, and specified its three distinctive features. We read:—

"Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise." Prov. 20: 1.

Those distinctive features are: It is a mocker; it is a rager; it is a deceiver. Through all the centuries of human history since men began to drink fermented beverages, liquor has been demonstrating the truth and the justice of that divine indictment.

As a mocker, strong drink has no equal in the world. Men have taken their first taste and loathed it. They have said liquor never could gain a hold upon them. And then they have drunk it to show their contempt for its power, to show themselves stronger than the drink demon. They have declared they could drink or they could let it alone; and hugging that delusion, they have

continued to drink instead of letting it alone.

With the drink inside, they were surer than ever that they were strong enough to let it alone, and would do so when they found that it was injuring them.

Then one day, to prove their power to their friends and show their worrying and sorrowing relatives that there was no danger, they determined to leave it off. A day passed, and there was a craving they could not satisfy; two days passed, and the craving become a demand that grew persistent and insistent and peremptory. Three days passed, and the craving and the demand began to smolder and a flame began to burn at the very root of the soul, and no amount of water would quench it.

Then these victims, with their backs against the wall, fighting for their honor, fighting to preserve themselves from complete overthrow and their families from ruin, pleaded with themselves for the sake of their manhood, for the sake of their loved ones, to refuse to yield. Then, with nature exhausted and with their first horrible realization of the strength of the furies they had tampered with, they ceased to boast, and began to plead with the drink demon itself. But it mocked them, and shouted in their ears, "Drink! Drink!" "But," pleaded the victim, "I have boasted I could leave it alone." "Never mind your boast; drink!" "But I have said I was stronger than you, and if I drink it will prove me a liar." "Never mind that; drink!" "But I have promised my loved ones I would stop it. If I can't, I am ruined, and they are ruined." "Never mind what you promised; drink!" "But if I go back to this, I am lost, eternally lost. The hopes of my wife and my children will be blasted, and I doomed to shame and contempt." "But what do I care for that? Drink!"

He drinks. And that struggle has gone on in the breasts of millions of human beings who have been startled into the realization of their terrible condition when they have sought to break away from the invisible tentacles which the drink demon has wound around every fiber of their being. It has led them on to scout the fears of their friends, and when it has been sure of its power, it has mocked them in their weakness. It has mocked at their pleadings, mocked at their ambitions, mocked at every desire they had for good, and has burned its mockery into their souls when its victims have found themselves going down into the vortex of utter ruin and taking their loved ones with them. Truly "wine is a mocker."

In the causation of brawling and strife, discord and contention of every kind, the liquor business has no equal. The inspired writer says: "Strong drink is raging." We see this verified wherever liquor is sold. Neither land nor climate alters its characteristics in that particular.

The royal prosecuting attorney of Italy declares that three fourths of the crimes committed against persons in Italy are committed by the intoxicated. Similar declarations have been made by public officials of other countries. Think what it would mean to Italy to have three fourths of her crime wiped out. It would mean four times as much peace as she has at the present time. It would mean only one fourth as many criminal prosecutions, one fourth as many assaults and murders, one fourth as much taxation for the support of courts and jails and penitentiaries. If it were not for liquor in Italy, three fourths of those now serving time in penal institutions would be engaged in some kind of gainful pursuits. And yet Italy continues to license that business which increases her people's taxes and decreases their productivity.

What is true of Italy is true of every other nation in the world in varying degree according as the people are more addicted or less addicted to the use of strong drink. If this world should stand a hundred years, or two hundred years, our posterity would look back upon the dealings of the nations with the liquor traffic as the monumental folly of the age.

The raging of men is increased wherever the footprints of the drink demon are found. The records of the courts of the nations, the states, and the municipalities prove that there is no stirrer up of rage like the demon of strong drink; and it has never entered a home in the world that it has not left it worse than it found it, or wrecked it and scattered its members to the four winds. Strife, discord, dissension, disunion, wrath, and rage,—these are the thorn seeds the liquor traffic sows in the path of humanity wherever it goes.

The third leg of this tripod of misery and wickedness is deception. The liquor business has deceived nations and states and municipalities and individuals. It has made nations, states, and cities believe that they could not maintain the various departments of government without the revenue derived from licensing the liquor business. But it has taken out of the people from five to ten dollars for every one that it has paid in revenue. Thus has it deceived the people. But in addition to extracting from five to ten dollars for each one it has contributed, it has besotted men and women, reduced their earning capacity, and filled their homes with discord, misery, and want.

An English Parliamentary investigating committee declares that on account of the liquor business England is robbed of one sixth of the possible product of her laboring population. This in one year means a loss of $633,000,000. During the same time the liquor business paid to the government in revenue $171,000,000. Thus the nation lost $462,000,000 in one year on that one item alone. Add to that loss Great Britain's two-billion-dollar drink bill and the cost of three fourths of the court trials and three fourths of the cost of maintenance for the inmates of England's penal institutions, and what the liquor traffic pays over to the government for its license to do business dwindles into insignificance. It is the most peculiar kind of finance that is seen anywhere in the world. In no other department of human affairs do men pay out ten dollars, or even five dollars, to get one in return. But that is what is done wherever the liquor traffic is licensed to carry on its business. In causing nations, states, and cities to think they must have the liquor revenue in order to operate their departments, the liquor business has demonstrated that God's Word is true when it calls strong drink a deceiver.

On every count, then, it proves itself to be what Heaven declares it to be. It has mocked humanity for ages; it has stirred up strife, hatred, and murder for ages; it has deceived the race for ages. It is high time that men everywhere should rise up and say, It is enough. No other such devastating agency ever came into this world. It is Satan's right-hand supporter. It has written a history that drips with blood and tears from its first chapter to its last. It has fostered and nourished and propagated every crime that is known to man; and to license it to continue its operations for a few million crime-stained and blood-wet dollars in revenue is the most stupendous folly the book of history records.

C. M. S.