Select Temperance Tracts

by American Tract Society

Widow. Oh, sir, resignation is easy if we feel a confidence, or even a feeble hope, that our friends who are taken away will escape the agonies of a second death. But how can we hope against the express declarations of the word of God?

Distiller. And yet, madam, your husband had many excellent qualities.

Widow. And he would still have lived to bless me and the world by their exhibition, had it not been for your distillery.

Distiller. I have no idea of sitting in judgment upon our departed friends, and sending them to hell because they had a few failings.

Widow. Ah, sir, if my husband has gone there, it was your distillery that sent him. Before that was built no man was more kind, temperate, and happy. But you persuaded him to labor there, and paid him in whiskey, and it ruined him, and ruined us all. Look at me—look at these children, without food, without raiment, without fire, without friends, except their Friend in heaven. I do not ask you to bestow upon us any articles for the supply of our temporal necessities; but look at us, and be entreated to tear down your distillery, so that you may not multiply upon you the execrations of the widow and the orphan, wrung from them by the extremity of their sufferings.

Gentlemen, let me exhort you to take such a tour of observation as this once a month. Oh, I entreat every one in the land, who has any concern in the manufacture of ardent spirits, to do the same; and ere long, I am persuaded, you would either abandon every claim to humanity, or abandon for ever your pernicious employment.

In the fifth place, I advise and forewarn these men as their personal friend. If you distil ardent spirits, or furnish the materials, you must use them yourselves and allow of their use in your families; otherwise your inconsistency, not to say dishonesty, would subject you to universal contempt. Now, to have your children familiar with the sling, the toddy, and the flip, as they grow up! Is here no danger that the temptation will prove too strong for them? Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned? And what compensation for the intemperance of a wife, or a child, would be the highest profits of an orchard, a field of rye, or a distillery? Oh, to be a drunkard is to destroy the soul as well as the body: and what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? And are you yourselves in no danger of intemperance, plied as you are by so many allurements? Look around you and see how many strong men, how many of the wise, the moral, the amiable, and the apparently pious, have fallen before the fascinations of this prince of serpents. And are you safe who stand even within the reach of his forky tongue, and lay the bait for his victims, and lure them into his jaws by tasting of it yourselves? Oh, the history of distillers and temperate drinkers, in their last days, furnishes an awful warning for you.

But there is another danger before you, of which, as a faithful friend, I wish to forewarn you. I see a dark storm gathering over your heads. You cannot be ignorant of the mighty movement that is making in our land on the subject of temperance. You must have felt the heavy concussion, and heard the rolling thunder. The religious, the moral, the patriotic, the learned, and the wise, as intemperance has been developing its huge and hateful features more and more, have been aroused to effort; they have closed together in a firm phalanx; and as they move on with the standard of total abstinence waving before them, the great, and the good, and the valiant of every name, are swelling their ranks. The cry is waxing louder and louder, “Where are the strong holds of the monster; point out to us the fountains that supply his insatiable thirst, and who it is that feeds them; and who it is that opens the enormous floodgates? and thither we will march, and against such men will we point our heaviest artillery.” And to this cry there is an answer more and more distinctly breaking out: “To the distilleries—to the distilleries.” My friends, wait not till this storm of public indignation bursts upon you, nor fancy that you can face it. Oh, no; it will be a steady, fiery blast, that will bear you down; and you will find that none but the dregs of the community will be left with you to sustain you. You will be left with the drunkards, to be distinguished from them only as their abettors and supporters; and from you will every virtuous and patriotic man turn away in disgust, as enemies to himself, his children, and his country. Think not that all this is imagination: look up, and you will see the cloud blackening, and the lightning beginning to play, and hear the thunder roaring. But it is not yet too late to escape from the fury of the storm.

Finally, I would entreat these men as a Christian. Some of them profess a personal and experimental knowledge of vital Christianity, and are members of the visible church. What, can it be that a real Christian should, at this day, be concerned in the manufacture of ardent spirits for general use? When I think of the light that now illuminates every man’s path on this subject so clearly, and think how the horrors of intemperance must flash in his face at every step, I confess I feel disposed indignantly to reply, No; this man cannot be a Christian. But then I recollect David, the adulterer; Peter, the denier of his master, profanely cursing and swearing; and John Newton, a genuine convert to Christianity, yet for a long time violating every dictate of conscience and of right; and I check my hasty judgment, and leave the secret character of the manufacturer of ardent spirits to a higher and more impartial tribunal. But if such a man be really a Christian, that is, if he do really love God supremely and his neighbor as himself, in what a state of awful alienation and stupidity must he be living! Remaining in such a state, that is, while persevering in so unchristian an employment, can he have any evidence himself, or afford any evidence to others, of possessing a Christian character?