Intemperance | AdventAI

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 16, 1864

Intemperance.

THE people of this country are making rapid strides in intemperance. The quantity of spirituous liquors drank the past year, is probably fifty per cent. greater that was ever before consumed in this land in twelve consecutive months. Men drink everywhere; and seem to glory in their shame. Gentlemen, and even ladies, traveling, take their bottle of brandy with them on the cars, and unthinkingly partake before whoever may be present, of the waters of damnation.

When the emperor of China was compelled, by British arms, to admit opium into the Empire, to the great injury of the people he was advised to collect duties upon it, and thus increase his revenue. The emphatic reply of this heathen monarch, was:

'It is true, I cannot prevent the introduction of the flowing poison; gain-seeking and corrupt men will, for profit and sensuality, defeat my wishes. But nothing will induce me to derive a revenue from the vice and misery of my people.'

Noble words! Could not our professedly Christian government, with profit to themselves and the country, take lessons of morality from this idolatrous emperor? Our government scruples not to derive a revenue from the vice and misery of the people. It is esteemed patriotic to drink. What does it matter, though the once kind husband and father is transformed, by strong drink, into a demon incarnate, who kills his wife by tortures more exquisite than the inquisition ever inflicted, and brings his children to beggary and shame. The wretch who sold him the liquor pays the State for his license, and every glass of poison drank, puts a trifle into the distended pocket of some unscrupulous government official. And so the damning traffic is tolerated and encouraged. What has the country gained for its lavish expenditure of treasure and blood in dethroning King Cotton, if, in its place, we are to have a bloody reign of King Alcohol? No plantation driver ever plied the instruments of torment so mercilessly as he! . . . Officers, maddened by strong drink, cruelly treat our brave soldiers, and often expose them to unnecessary slaughter; and reckless surgeons inflamed by brandy, make cripples for life, or send to an untimely grave those whom sober skill might have restored to soundness of body.

Christian men! you must rouse yourselves from your lethargy and grapple with this terrible monster. Already some of your own number have fallen by his cruel power. Even ministers of the Gospel are yielding to the terrible influence. Some belonging to the same Conference with which we were once connected, secretly, as they suppose, take delight in the intoxicating cup, and others have openly bartered their hopes of heaven for the maddening bowl. Your children, if not yourselves, may fall under the influence of this ruinous fascination. Every motive of the Gospel and of humanity calls upon you to exert all the influence you possess to check the progress of the tide of woe which is mounting higher and higher, threatening to sweep away everything that is lovely in its blighting progress.—Earnest Christian.