The Abominations of Modern Society Part 11

I maintain that the question of sobriety is higher than the question of availability; and that however eminent a man's services may be, if he have habits of intoxication, he is unfit for any office in the gift of a Christian people. Our laws will be no better than the men who make them.

Spend a few days at Harrisburg, or Albany, or Was.h.i.+ngton, and you will find out why, upon these subjects, it is impossible to get righteous enactments.

Again, we will war upon this evil by organized societies. The friends of the rum traffic have banded together; annually issue their circulars; raise fabulous sums of money to advance their interests; and by grips, pa.s.s-words, signs, and stratagems set at defiance public morals. Let us confront them with organizations just as secret, and, if need be, with grips, and pa.s.s-words, and signs maintain our position. There is no need that our philanthropic societies tell all their plans.

I am in favor of all lawful strategy in the carrying on of this conflict. I wish to G.o.d we could lay under the wine-casks a train, which, once ignited, would shake the earth with the explosion of this monstrous iniquity.

Again: we will try the power of the pledge. There are thousands of men who have been saved by putting their names to such a doc.u.ment. I know it is laughed at; but there are men who, having once promised a thing, do it. "Some have broken the pledge." Yes; they were liars. But all men are not liars. I do not say that it is the duty of all persons to make such signature; but I do say that it will be the salvation of many of you.

The glorious work of Theobald Mathew can never be estimated. At his hand four millions of people took the pledge, including eight prelates, and seven hundred of the Roman Catholic clergy. A mult.i.tude of them were faithful.

Dr. Justin Edwards said that ten thousand drunkards had been permanently reformed in five years.

Through the great Was.h.i.+ngtonian movement in Ohio, sixty thousand took the pledge. In Pennsylvania, twenty-nine thousand. In Kentucky, thirty thousand, and mult.i.tudes in all parts of the land. Many of these had been habitual drunkards. One hundred and fifty thousand of them, it is estimated, were permanently reclaimed. Two of these men became foreign ministers; one a governor of a State; several were sent to Congress. Hartford reported six hundred reformed drunkards; Norwich, seventy-two; Fairfield, fifty; Sheffield, seventy-five. All over the land reformed men were received back into the churches that they had before disgraced; and households were re-established. All up and down the land there were gratulations, and praise to G.o.d. The pledge signed, to thousands has been the proclamation of emanc.i.p.ation.

I think that we are coming at last to treat inebriation as it ought to be treated, namely, as an awful disease, self-inflicted, to be sure, but nevertheless a disease. Once fastened upon a man, sermons will not cure him; temperance lectures will not eradicate the taste; religious tracts will not remove it; the Gospel of Christ will not arrest it.

Once under the power of this awful thirst, the man is bound to go on; and if the foaming gla.s.s were on the other side of perdition, he would wade through the fires of h.e.l.l to get it. A young man in prison had such a strong thirst for intoxicating liquors, that he cut off his hand at the wrist, called for a bowl of brandy in order to stop the bleeding, thrust his wrist into the bowl, and then drank the contents.

Stand not, when the thirst is on him, between a man and his cups!

Clear the track for him! Away with the children: he would tread their life out! Away with the wife: he would dash her to death! Away with the Cross: he would run it down! Away with the Bible: he would tear it up for the winds! Away with heaven: he considers it worthless as a straw! "Give me the drink! Give it to me! Though hands of blood pa.s.s up the bowl, and the soul trembles over the pit,--the drink! give it to me! Though it be pale with tears; though the froth of everlasting anguish float in the foam--give it to me! I drink to my wife's woe; to my children's rags; to my eternal banishment from G.o.d, and hope, and heaven! Give it to me! the drink!"

Again: we will contend against these evils by trying to persuade the respectable cla.s.ses of society to the banishment of alcoholic beverages. You who move in elegant and refined a.s.sociations; you who drink the best liquors; you who never drink until you lose your balance: consider that you have, under G.o.d, in your power the redemption of this land from drunkenness. Empty your cellars and wine-closets of the beverage, and then come out and give us your hand, your vote, your prayers, your sympathies. Do that, and I will promise three things: First, That you will find unspeakable happiness in having done your duty; secondly, you will probably save somebody, perhaps your own child; thirdly, you will not, in your last hour, have a regret that you made the sacrifice, if sacrifice it be.

As long as you make drinking respectable, drinking customs will prevail; and the ploughshare of death, drawn by terrible disasters, will go on turning up this whole continent, from end to end, with the long, deep, awful furrow of drunkards' graves.

Oh, how this Rum Fiend would like to go and hang up a skeleton in your beautiful house, so that when you opened the front door to go in you would see it in the hall; and when you sit at your table you would see it hanging from the wall; and when you open your bed-room you would find it stretched upon your pillow; and waking at night you would feel its cold hand pa.s.sing over your face and pinching at your heart!

There is no home so beautiful but it may be devastated by the awful curse. It throws its jargon into the sweetest harmony. What was it that silenced Sheridan's voice and shattered the golden sceptre with which he swayed parliaments and courts? What foul sprite turned the sweet rhythm of Robert Burns into a tuneless ballad? What brought down the majestic form of one who awed the American Senate with his eloquence, and after a while carried him home dead drunk from the office of Secretary of State? What was it that crippled the n.o.ble spirit of one of the heroes of the last war, until the other night, in a drunken fit, he reeled from the deck of a Western steamer and was drowned! There was one whose voice we all loved to hear. He was one of the most cla.s.sic orators of the century. People wondered why a man of so pure a heart and so excellent a life should have such a sad countenance always. They knew not that his wife was a sot.

"Woe to him that giveth his neighbor drink!" If this curse was proclaimed about the comparatively harmless drinks of olden times, what condemnation must rest upon those who tempt their neighbors when intoxicating liquor means copperas, nux vomica, logwood, opium, sulphuric acid, vitriol, turpentine, and strychnine! "Pure liquors:"

pure destruction! Nearly all the genuine champagne made is taken by the courts of Europe. What we get is horrible swill!

I call upon woman for her influence in the matter. Many a man who had reformed and resolved on a life of sobriety has been pitched off into old habits by the delicate hand of her whom he was anxious to please.

Bishop Potter says that a young man who had been reformed sat at a table, and when the wine was pa.s.sed to him refused to take it. A lady sitting at his side said, "Certainly you will not refuse to take a gla.s.s with me?" Again he refused. But when she had derided him for lack of manliness he took the gla.s.s and drank it. He took another and another; and putting his fist hard down on the table, said, "Now I drink until I die." In a few months his ruin was consummated.

I call upon those who are guilty of these indulgences to quit the path of death. O what a change it would make in your home! Do you see how everything there is being desolated! Would you not like to bring back joy to your wife's heart, and have your children come out to meet you with as much confidence as once they showed? Would you not like to rekindle the home lights that long ago were extinguished? It is not too late to change. It may not entirely obliterate from your soul the memory of wasted years and a ruined reputation, nor smooth out from anxious brows the wrinkles which trouble has ploughed. It may not call back unkind words uttered or rough deeds done--for perhaps in those awful moments you struck her! It may not take from your memory the bitter thoughts connected with some little grave: but it is not too late to save yourself and secure for G.o.d and your family the remainder of your fast-going life.

But perhaps you have not utterly gone astray. I may address one who may not have quite made up his mind. Let your better nature speak out.

You take one side or the other in the war against drunkenness.

Have you the courage to put your foot down right, and say to your companions and friends: "I will never drink intoxicating liquor in all my life, nor will I countenance the habit in others." Have nothing to do with strong drink. It has turned the earth into a place of skulls, and has stood opening the gate to a lost world to let in its victims, until now the door swings no more upon its hinges, but day and night stands wide open to let in the agonized procession of doomed men.

Do I address one whose regular work in life is to administer to this appet.i.te? I beg you--get out of the business. If a woe be p.r.o.nounced upon the man who gives his neighbor drink, how many woes must be hanging over the man who does this every day, and every hour of the day!

A philanthropist, going up to the counter of a grog-shop, as the proprietor was mixing a drink for a toper standing at the counter, said to the proprietor, "Can you tell me what your business is good for?" The proprietor, with an infernal laugh, said, "_It fattens graveyards!_"

G.o.d knows better than you do yourself the number of drinks you have poured out. You keep a list; but a more accurate list has been kept than yours. You may call it Burgundy, Bourbon, Cognac, Heidsick, Hock; G.o.d calls it strong drink. Whether you sell it in low oyster cellar or behind the polished counter of first-cla.s.s hotel, the divine curse is upon you. I tell you plainly that you will meet your customers one day when there will be no counter between you. When your work is done on earth, and you enter the reward of your business, all the souls of the men whom you have destroyed will crowd around you and pour their bitterness into your cup. They will show you their wounds and say, "You made them;" and point to their unquenchable thirst, and say, "You kindled it;" and rattle their chain and say, "You forged it." Then their united groans will smite your ears; and with the hands out of which you once picked the sixpences and the dimes, they will push you off the verge of great precipices; while, rolling up from beneath, and breaking among the crags of death, will thunder:

"_Woe to him that giveth his neighbor drink!_"

THE HOUSE OF BLACKNESS OF DARKNESS.

Men like to hear the frailties and faults of others chastised. With what blandness and placidity they sit and hear the religious teacher excoriate the ambition of Ahab, the treachery of Judas, the treason of Athaliah, and the wickedness of the Amalekites. Indeed, I have sometimes felt sorry for the Amalekites, for in all ages, and on all occasions, they are smitten, denounced, and pursued. They have had their full share of censure and excoriation. It is high time that in our addresses in pulpits, and in domestic circles, we turn our attention to the driving out of these worse Amalekites which are swarming in society to-day, thicker than in the olden time. The ancient Amalekites lived for one or two hundred years; but these are not weakened after a thousand years. Those traversed only a few leagues of land; these stalk the earth and ford the sea. Those had each a sword or spear; these fight with a million swords, and strike with a million stings, and smite with a million catastrophes. Those were conquered with human weapons; but to overcome these we must bring out G.o.d's great fieldpieces, and employ an enginery that can sweep from eternity to eternity.

There is one subject which we are expected, in all our teachings, to shun, or only to hint at: I mean the wickedness of an impure life.

Though G.o.d thunders against this appalling iniquity from the heavens curse after curse, anathema after anathema, by our unwillingness to repeat the divine utterance we seem to say, "Lord, not so loud! Speak about everything else; but if this keeps on there will be trouble!"

Meanwhile the foundations of social life are being slowly undermined; and many of the upper circles of life have putrefied until they have no more power to rot.

If a fox or a mink come down to the farmyard and carry off a chicken, the whole family join in the search.

If a panther come down into the village and carry off a child, the whole neighborhood go out with clubs and guns to bring it down.

But this monster-crime goes forth, carrying off body and soul; and yet, if we speak, a thousand voices bid us be silent.

I shall try to cut to the vitals of the subject, and proceed with the _post-mortem_ of this carca.s.s of death. It is time to speak on this subject. All the indignation of the community upon this subject is hurled upon woman's head. If, in an evil hour, she sacrifice her honor, the whole city goes howling after her. She shall take the whole blame. Out with her from all decent circles! Whip her. Flay her.

Bar all the doors of society against her return. Set on her all the blood-hounds. Shove her off precipice after precipice. Push her down.

Kick her out! If you see her struggling on the waves, and with her blood-tipped fingers clinging to the verge of respectability, drop a mill-stone on her head.

For a woman's sin, men have no mercy; and the heart of other women is more cruel than death.

For her, in the dark hour of her calamity, the women who, with the same temptation, might have fallen into deeper d.a.m.nation, have no commiseration and no prayer.

The heaviest stroke that comes down upon a fallen woman's soul is the merciless indignation of her sisters.

If the mult.i.tudes of the fallen could be placed in a straight line, it would reach from here to the gates of the lost, and back again.

But what of the destroyer?

We take his arm. We flatter his appearance. We take off our hats.

He is admitted to our parlors. For him we cast our votes. For him we speak our eulogies. And when he has gone we read over the heap of compost: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. They rest from their labors and their works do follow them."

In the fas.h.i.+onable city to-day there walk a thousand libertines. They are a moving pest. Their breath is the sirocco of the desert. Their bones have in them the decay of the pit. They have the eye of a basilisk. They have been soaked in filth, and steeped in uncleanliness, and consumed in sin, and they are all adrip with the loathsomeness of eternal death. I take hold of the robe of one of these elegant gentlemen, and pull it aside, and say, "Behold a Leper!"

First, if you desire to shun this evil, you will have nothing to do with bad books and impure newspapers. With such an affluent literature as is coming forth from our swift-revolving printing-presses, there is no excuse for dragging one's self through sewers of unchast.i.ty. Why walk in the ditch, when right beside the ditch is the solid flagging?

It seems that in the literature of the day the ten plagues of Egypt have returned, and the frogs and lice have hopped and skipped over our parlor tables.

Waiting impatiently in the house of some paris.h.i.+oner, for the completion of a very protracted toilet, I have picked up a book from the parlor table, and found that every leaf was a scale of leprosy.

Parents are delighted to have their children read, but they should be sure as to what they read. You do not have to walk a day or two in an infected district to get the cholera or typhoid fever; and one wave of moral unhealth will fever and blast an immortal nature. Perhaps, knowing not what you did, you read a bad book. Do you not remember it altogether? Yes; and perhaps you will never get over it.

However strong and exalted your character, _never read a bad book_. By the time you get through the first chapter you will see the drift; If you find the marks of the hoofs of the devil in the pictures, or in the style, or in the plot, away with it. You may tear your coat, or break a vase, and repair them again, but the point where the rip or fracture took place will always be evident. It takes less than an hour to do your heart a damage which no time can entirely repair. Look carefully over your child's library; see what book it is that he reads after he has gone to bed, with the gas turned upon the pillow. Do not always take it for granted that a book is good because it is a Sunday-school book. As far as possible know _who_ wrote it, who ill.u.s.trated it, who published it, who sold it.

Young man, as you value Heaven, never buy a book from one of those men who meet you in the square, and, after looking both ways, to see if the police are watching, shows you a book--very cheap. Have him arrested as you would kill a rattle-snake. Grab him, and shout "Police! police!"