Perhaps some reputable vender is offended at the freedom of these remarks. I would ask him if he has never been offended at the smell of that filthy drunkard who has hung around him? I would ask him if his conscience has never stung him as ragged children have come to him in bleak November to have him fill their father’s bottle? I would ask him if his soul has never shook within him as he passed, in the darkness of night, the graveyard where three, four, or five of his neighbors lie without even a tombstone, who found their death at his counter? His traffic may be profitable, but let him beware lest while he feeds the monster it turns and devours him and his offspring. At least, let him solemnly inquire, before God, whether he can be a virtuous man and knowingly promote vice; or an honest man, and rob his neighbor by selling an article which promotes sorrow, disease, and death.
I congratulate you, gentlemen, on the stand which you have taken against the monster Intemperance, and on the success with which your efforts have been crowned. You are doing a work for this country for which future generations will call you blessed. Let your watchword be onward, extermination, death; and victory will be yours. Our weapons are simple, but mighty. O what a discovery is this principle of entire abstinence! Let the name of its author be embalmed with that of Luther, and Howard, and Raikes, and Wilberforce. What has it not already done for our suffering country! What a change meets the eye as it wanders from Georgia to Maine—from the Atlantic to our western borders. Here we see farms tilled; there buildings raised; here churches built; there vessels reared, launched, and navigated too; manufactories conducted; fisheries carried on; prisons governed; commercial business transacted; journeys performed; physicians visiting their patients; legislators enacting laws; lawyers pleading for justice; judges deciding the fate of men, and ministers preaching the everlasting Gospel—without intoxicating liquor. Here we see importers unwilling to risk the importation of spirituous liquor into the land; there distillers abandoning their distilleries as curses to themselves and the community; and merchants, not a few, expelling the poison from their stores, and some pouring it upon the ground, choosing that the earth should swallow it rather than man. And all this in the short space of three years. What has done it? Entire abstinence. What then will not be done, when, instead of 50,000 who now avow it, 500,000 shall give their pledge that they will abandon a kingdom founded in blood. And can they not be found in this land of humane men, and patriots, and Christians? Yes, they can. Onward then, gentlemen. Listen not to those who say you are carrying matters too far. So said the wolf. She loved life, and she loved blood. But did she ever regard the cry of the sheep? The monster Intemperance has been glutted with blood; and never spared, and had no pity. He still howls for blood; and many plead that he may have some. But depend upon it, their pleas are only those of debased appetite and avarice. Rally the community against them. Enlighten the public mind. Collect facts. Let your towns and villages be searched with candles. Go into the dens. Bring the monster and his suffering victims to light, and the public indignation will no longer slumber.
Of one thing I will remind you. The demon will daunt the timid. It is noisy and fiery. Attack it, and it will roll its eyes, and snap its teeth, and threaten vengeance. Attempt to starve it, and it will rave like the famished tiger. Thousands have fed it against their consciences, rather than meet its fury. But fear not. The use of ardent spirit meets no support in the Bible or the conscience, and the traffic meets none. Be firm. Be decided. Be courageous. Connect your cause with heaven. It is the cause of God; the cause for which Immanuel died. O, as men and patriots, banish intemperance, with all its sources, from your country and the land. As ministers and Christians, banish it for ever from the churches of the living God. Let the demon no longer hide in the sanctuary. Let entire abstinence be written in capitals over the door of every church. Expel for ever the accursed enemy, that the Spirit of the Lord may descend and bless us with life and peace.
To those not connected with the Temperance Association, I would say, Look at this enterprise. It injures no man, wrongs no man, defrauds no man, has no sectarian or political object in view; it would only relieve our infant nation of a burden and a curse which is fast placing it side by side with buried Sodom. As wise men, judge ye of its importance and merits. As men hastening to judgment, act in relation to it. A solemn responsibility rests upon you. Shall the land now be rid of intemperance? You reply, Yes—and talk of wholesome laws, and high licenses, and prudent use. Three green withes on Samson! Entire abstinence is the only weapon which will destroy the monster. “But we can practise that without giving our pledge.” True. But until you give it, he will count you his friend and haunt your dwelling. In this cause there is no neutrality. Have you supported this cruel kingdom of darkness and death? Will you do it longer? Shall conscience be riven by the act? Shall the land that bears you be cursed; the young around you be sporting with hell; the awakened sinner be drowning conviction at his bottle; the once fair communicant be disgraced; the once happy congregation be rent; its ministry be driven from the altar, and its sanctuary crumble to ruin? Shall our benevolent institutions fail, and our liberties be sacrificed? Shall God be grieved? Shall wailings from the bottomless pit hereafter reproach and agonize you as the cause of the ruin, perhaps of your children and children’s children? Methinks one common pulsation beats in your hearts, and you answer, No—no. Methinks I see you rising in the majesty of freemen and Christians, in behalf of an injured country and church, and destroying at once the demon among you.
ARGUMENT AGAINST THE MANUFACTURE
OF
ARDENT SPIRITS:
ADDRESSED TO
THE DISTILLER AND THE FURNISHER OF THE MATERIALS.
BY REV. EDWARD HITCHCOCK, D. D.
A sense of duty impels me to address this portion of my fellow-citizens, in the hope that I may persuade them to abandon the employment by which they furnish ardent spirits to the community. I am not about to charge them as the intentional authors of all the evils our country suffers from intemperance, nor wholly to clear myself from the guilt; for some of these men are my neighbors and personal friends, and I know them to be convinced that the excessive use of ardent spirits is a frightful evil among us, and that they would cheerfully join in some measures for its suppression, though not yet satisfied that those now in train are judicious or necessary. Not long ago, I was in essentially the same state of mind, and encouraged these men in the manufacture of spirits, by the purchase and use of them. Now I would fain believe that the minds of all these individuals are open to conviction, and that the same arguments which satisfied me that I was wrong, will satisfy them.
In the first place, therefore, I would reason with these men as a chemical philosopher. The distiller is a practical chemist; and although he may never have studied chemistry in the schools, he cannot but have often thought of the theory of his operations. And the farmer who receives at the distillery, in return for his rye, cider, or molasses, a liquid powerful substance, obtained from them, will very naturally inquire by what strange transformation these articles have been made to yield something apparently so very different from their nature. Probably, some of them may have concluded that the spirits exist naturally in the grain, and apples, and sugar-cane, just as flour, and cider, and molasses do. And hence they have inferred, first, that God intended the spirits for the use of man, as much as the flour, the apples, or the molasses; and that it is just as proper to separate the spirits by distillation, as it is to obtain the flour by grinding and bolting. Secondly, that there can be nothing injurious or poisonous in the spirits, any more than in the apples, the grain, or the molasses; the only injury, in either case, resulting from using too much. Thirdly, that spirits must be nourishing to the body, constituting, as they seem to do, the very essence of the fruit, grain, and molasses, which are confessedly nutritious.