"Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness,
and his chambers by wrong; . . . that saith, I
will build me a wide house and large chambers, and cutteth
him out windows; and it is ceiled with cedar, and painted
with vermilion. Shalt thou reign, because thou closest thyself
in cedar? . . . Thine eyes and thine heart are not but
for thy covetousness, and for to shed innocent blood, and for
oppression, and for violence, to do it." Jeremiah 22:13-17.
The Work of the Liquor Seller
This scripture pictures the work of those who manufacture
and who sell intoxicating liquor. Their business means
robbery. For the money they receive, no equivalent is
returned. Every dollar they add to their gains has brought a
curse to the spender.
With a liberal hand, God has bestowed His blessings upon
men. If His gifts were wisely used, how little the world would
know of poverty or distress! It is the wickedness of men that
turns His blessings into a curse. It is through the greed of
gain and the lust of appetite that the grains and fruits given
for our sustenance are converted into poisons that bring misery
and ruin.
Every year millions upon millions of gallons of intoxicating
liquors are consumed. Millions upon millions of dollars
are spent in buying wretchedness, poverty, disease, degradation,
lust, crime, and death. For the sake of gain, the liquor
seller deals out to his victims that which corrupts and destroys
mind and body. He entails on the drunkard's family poverty
and wretchedness.
When his victim is dead, the rum seller's exactions do not
cease. He robs the widow and brings children to beggary. He
does not hesitate to take the very necessaries of life from the
destitute family, to pay the drink bill of the husband and
father. The cries of the suffering children, the tears of the
agonized mother, serve only to exasperate him. What is it
to him if these suffering ones starve? What is it to him if
they, too, are driven to degradation and ruin? He grows rich
on the pittances of those whom he is leading to perdition.
Houses of prostitution, dens of vice, criminal courts, prisons,
almshouses, insane asylums, hospitals, all are, to a great
degree, filled as a result of the liquor seller's work. Like the
mystic Babylon of the Apocalypse, he is dealing in "slaves,
and souls of men." Behind the liquor seller stands the mighty
destroyer of souls, and every art which earth or hell can devise
is employed to draw human beings under his power. In the
city and the country, on the railway trains, on the great
steamers, in places of business, in the halls of pleasure, in the
medical dispensary, even in the church, on the sacred
Communion table, his traps are set. Nothing is left undone to
create and to foster the desire for intoxicants. On almost every
corner stands the public house, with its brilliant lights, its
welcome and good cheer, inviting the working man, the
wealthy idler, and the unsuspecting youth.
In private lunchrooms and fashionable resorts, ladies are
supplied with popular drinks, under some pleasing name, that
are really intoxicants. For the sick and the exhausted, there
are the widely advertised bitters, consisting largely of alcohol.
To create the liquor appetite in little children, alcohol is
introduced into confectionery. Such confectionery is sold in
the shops. And by the gift of these candies the liquor seller
entices children into his resorts.
Day by day, month by month, year by year, the work goes
on. Fathers and husbands and brothers, the stay and hope
and pride of the nation, are steadily passing into the liquor
dealer's haunts, to be sent back wrecked and ruined.
More terrible still, the curse is striking the very heart of the
home. More and more, women are forming the liquor habit.
In many a household, little children, even in the innocence
and helplessness of babyhood, are in daily peril through the
neglect, the abuse, the vileness of drunken mothers. Sons
and daughters are growing up under the shadow of this
terrible evil. What outlook for their future but that they will
sink even lower than their parents?
From so-called Christian lands the curse is carried to the
regions of idolatry. The poor, ignorant savages are taught the
use of liquor. Even among the heathen, men of intelligence
recognize and protest against it as a deadly poison; but in vain
have they sought to protect their lands from its ravages. By
civilized peoples, tobacco, liquor, and opium are forced upon
the heathen nations. The ungoverned passions of the savage,
stimulated by drink, drag him down to degradation before
unknown, and it becomes an almost hopeless undertaking to
send missionaries to these lands.
Through their contact with peoples who should have given
them a knowledge of God, the heathen are led into vices
which are proving the destruction of whole tribes and races.
And in the dark places of the earth the men of civilized
nations are hated because of this.
The Responsibility of the Church
The liquor interest is a power in the world. It has on its
side the combined strength of money, habit, appetite. Its
power is felt even in the church. Men whose money has been
made, directly or indirectly, in the liquor traffic, are members
of churches, "in good and regular standing." Many of them
give liberally to popular charities. Their contributions help
to support the enterprises of the church and to sustain its
ministers. They command the consideration shown to the
money power. Churches that accept such members are
virtually sustaining the liquor traffic. Too often the minister
has not the courage to stand for the right. He does not declare
to his people what God has said concerning the work of the
liquor seller. To speak plainly would mean the offending
of his congregation, the sacrifice of his popularity, the loss of
his salary.
But above the tribunal of the church is the tribunal of God.
He who declared to the first murderer, "The voice of thy
brother's blood crieth unto Me from the ground" (Genesis
4:10), will not accept for His altar the gifts of the liquor
dealer. His anger is kindled against those who attempt to
cover their guilt with a cloak of liberality. Their money is
stained with blood. A curse is upon it.
"To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices
unto Me? saith the Lord. . . .
When ye come to appear before Me,
Who hath required this at your hand, to tread My courts?
Bring no more vain oblation . . . .
When ye spread forth your hands,
I will hide Mine eyes from you:
Yea, when ye make many prayers, I will not hear:
Your hands are full of blood."
Isaiah 1:11-15.
The drunkard is capable of better things. He has been
entrusted with talents with which to honor God and bless the
world; but his fellow men have laid a snare for his soul and
built themselves up by his degradation. They have lived in
luxury while the poor victims whom they have robbed, lived
in poverty and wretchedness. But God will require for this
at the hand of him who has helped to speed the drunkard on
to ruin. He who rules in the heavens has not lost sight of the
first cause or the last effect of drunkenness. He who has a
care for the sparrow and clothes the grass of the field, will
not pass by those who have been formed in His own image,
purchased with His own blood, and pay no heed to their cries.
God marks all this wickedness that perpetuates crime and
misery.
The world and the church may have approval for the man
who has gained wealth by degrading the human soul. They
may smile upon him by whom men are led down step by step
in the path of shame and degradation. But God notes it all
and renders a just judgment. The liquor seller may be
termed by the world a good businessman; but the Lord says,
"Woe unto him." He will be charged with the hopelessness,
the misery, the suffering, brought into the world by the
liquor traffic. He will have to answer for the want and woe
of the mothers and children who have suffered for food and
clothing and shelter, and who have buried all hope and joy.
He will have to answer for the souls he has sent unprepared
into eternity. And those who sustain the liquor seller in his
work are sharers in his guilt. To them God says, "Your hands
are full of blood."
License Laws
The licensing of the liquor traffic is advocated by many as
tending to restrict the drink evil. But the licensing of the
traffic places it under the protection of law. The government
sanctions its existence, and thus fosters the evil which it
professes to restrict. Under the protection of license laws,
breweries, distilleries, and wineries are planted all over the land,
and the liquor seller plies his work beside our very doors.
Often he is forbidden to sell intoxicants to one who is
drunk or who is known to be a confirmed drunkard; but the
work of making drunkards of the youth goes steadily forward.
Upon the creating of the liquor appetite in the youth
the very life of the traffic depends. The youth are led on, step
by step, until the liquor habit is established and the thirst is
created that at any cost demands satisfaction. Less harmful
would it be to grant liquor to the confirmed drunkard, whose
ruin, in most cases, is already determined, than to permit the
flower of our youth to be lured to destruction through this
terrible habit.
By the licensing of the liquor traffic, temptation is kept
constantly before those who are trying to reform. Institutions
have been established where the victims of intemperance may
be helped to overcome their appetite. This is a noble work;
but so long as the sale of liquor is sanctioned by law, the
intemperate receive little benefit from inebriate asylums. They
cannot remain there always. They must again take their
place in society. The appetite for intoxicating drink, though
subdued, is not wholly destroyed; and when temptation
assails them, as it does on every hand, they too often fall an
easy prey.
The man who has a vicious beast and who, knowing its
disposition, allows it liberty, is by the laws of the land held
accountable for the evil the beast may do. In the laws given
to Israel the Lord directed that when a beast known to be
vicious caused the death of a human being, the life of the
owner should pay the price of his carelessness or malignity.
On the same principle the government that licenses the liquor
seller should be held responsible for the results of his traffic.
And if it is a crime worthy of death to give liberty to a vicious
beast, how much greater is the crime of sanctioning the work
of the liquor seller!
Licenses are granted on the plea that they bring a revenue
to the public treasury. But what is this revenue when
compared with the enormous expense incurred for the criminals,
the insane, the paupers, that are the fruit of the liquor traffic!
A man under the influence of liquor commits a crime; he is
brought into court; and those who legalized the traffic are
forced to deal with the result of their own work. They
authorized the sale of a draft that would make a sane man
mad; and now it is necessary for them to send the man to
prison or to the gallows, while often his wife and children
are left destitute to become the charge of the community in
which they live.
Considering only the financial aspect of the question, what
folly it is to tolerate such a business! But what revenue can
compensate for the loss of human reason, for the defacing
and deforming of the image of God in man, for the ruin of
children, reduced to pauperism and degradation, to perpetuate
in their children the evil tendencies of their drunken
fathers?
Prohibition
The man who has formed the habit of using intoxicants is
in a desperate situation. His brain is diseased, his will power
is weakened. So far as any power in himself is concerned, his
appetite is uncontrollable. He cannot be reasoned with or
persuaded to deny himself. Drawn into the dens of vice, one
who has resolved to quit drink is led to seize the glass again,
and with the first taste of the intoxicant every good resolution
is overpowered, every vestige of will destroyed. One taste of
the maddening draft, and all thought of its results has
vanished. The heartbroken wife is forgotten. The debauched
father no longer cares that his children are hungry and naked.
By legalizing the traffic, the law gives its sanction to this
downfall of the soul and refuses to stop the trade that fills the
world with evil.
Must this always continue? Will souls always have to
struggle for victory, with the door of temptation wide open
before them? Must the curse of intemperance forever rest
like a blight upon the civilized world? Must it continue to
sweep, every year, like a devouring fire over thousands of
happy homes? When a ship is wrecked in sight of shore,
people do not idly look on. They risk their lives in the effort
to rescue men and women from a watery grave. How much
greater the demand for effort in rescuing them from the
drunkard's fate!
It is not the drunkard and his family alone who are
imperiled by the work of the liquor seller, nor is the burden
of taxation the chief evil which his traffic brings on the
community. We are all woven together in the web of humanity.
The evil that befalls any part of the great human brotherhood
brings peril to all.
Many a man who through love of gain or ease would have
nothing to do with restricting the liquor traffic has found,
too late, that the traffic had to do with him. He has seen his
own children besotted and ruined. Lawlessness runs riot.
Property is in danger. Life is unsafe. Accidents by sea and
by land multiply. Diseases that breed in the haunts of filth
and wretchedness make their way to lordly and luxurious
homes. Vices fostered by the children of debauchery and
crime infect the sons and daughters of refined and cultured
households.
There is no man whose interests the liquor traffic does not
imperil. There is no man who for his own safeguard should
not set himself to destroy it.
Above all other places having to do with secular interests
only, legislative halls and courts of justice should be free from
the curse of intemperance. Governors, senators, representatives,
judges, men who enact and administer a nation's
laws, men who hold in their hands the lives, the fair fame, the
possessions of their fellows, should be men of strict temperance.
Only thus can their minds be clear to discriminate between
right and wrong. Only thus can they possess firmness of
principle, and wisdom to administer justice and to show
mercy. But how does the record stand? How many of these
men have their minds beclouded, their sense of right and
wrong confused, by strong drink! How many are the oppressive
laws enacted, how many the innocent persons condemned
to death, through the injustice of drinking lawmakers,
witnesses, jurors, lawyers, and even judges! Many there are,
"mighty to drink wine," and "men of strength to mingle
strong drink," "that call evil good, and good evil;" that
"justify the wicked for reward, and take away the righteousness
of the righteous from him!" Of such God says:
"Woe unto them. . . .
As the fire devoureth the stubble,
And the flame consumeth the chaff,
So their root shall be as rottenness,
And their blossom shall go up as dust:
Because they have cast away the law of the Lord of
hosts,
And despised the word of the Holy One of Israel."
Isaiah 5:22-24.
The honor of God, the stability of the nation, the
well-being of the community, of the home, and of the individual,
demand that every possible effort be made in arousing the
people to the evil of intemperance. Soon we shall see the result
of this terrible evil as we do not see it now. Who will put
forth a determined effort to stay the work of destruction? As
yet the contest has hardly begun. Let an army be formed to
stop the sale of the drugged liquors that are making men
mad. Let the danger from the liquor traffic be made plain
and a public sentiment be created that shall demand its
prohibition. Let the drink-maddened men be given an opportunity
to escape from their thralldom. Let the voice of the
nation demand of its lawmakers that a stop be put to this
infamous traffic.
"If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death,
And those that are ready to be slain;
If thou sayest, Behold, we knew it not;
Doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it?
And He that keepeth thy soul, doth not He know it?"
And "what wilt thou say when He shall punish thee?"
Proverbs 24:11, 12; Jeremiah 13:21.