I have no time to notice other objections. Nor need I. I have stated the principle of all. I just add here, that the excuses which are set up for this traffic will apply just as well to any other business as this, and will fully vindicate any other employment, if they are to be sustained. Apply these excuses to the case of a bookseller. The question might be suggested, whether it was a moral or an immoral business to deal in infidel, profligate, and obscene pictures and books. True, it might be alleged that they did evil, and only evil continually. It might be said that neither the love of God or man would prompt to it. He might be pointed to the fact, that they always tended to corrupt the morals of youth; to blight the hopes of parents; to fill up houses of infamy; to blot out the hopes of heaven; and to sink men to hell. But then he might with commendable coolness add, “This traffic is not condemned in the Bible. If I do not engage in it, others will. It contributes to my livelihood; to the support of the press; to the promotion of business; and I am not responsible for their reading the books, nor for their desire for them. I am pursuing the way in which my fathers walked before me, and it is my living, and I will do it.” Wherein does this plea differ from that of the trafficker in ardent spirits? Alas, we have learned how to estimate its force in regard to other sins; but we shrink from its application in regard to this wide-spread business, that employs so much of the time and the wealth of the people of this land.
Here I close. The path of duty and of safety is plain. These evils may be corrected. A virtuous and an independent people may rise in their majesty and correct them all. I call on all whom I now address, to exert their influence in this cause; to abandon all connection with the traffic; and to become the firm, and warm, and thorough-going advocates of the temperance reformation. Your country calls you to it. Every man who loves her welfare, should pursue no half-way measures; should tread no vacillating course in this great and glorious reformation.
But more especially may I call on young men, and ask their patronage in this cause. For they are in danger; and they are the source of our hopes, and they are our strength. I appeal to them by their hopes of happiness; by their prospects of long life; by their desire of property and health; by their wish for reputation; and by the fact that by abstinence, strict abstinence alone, are they safe from the crimes, and loathsomeness, and grave of the drunkard. Young men, I beseech you to regard the liberties of your country; the purity of the churches; your own usefulness; and the honor of your family—the feelings of a father, a mother, and a sister. And I conjure you to take this stand by a reference to your own immortal welfare; by a regard to that heaven which a drunkard enters not—and by a fear of that hell which is his own appropriate, eternal home.
Again I appeal to my fellow professing Christians; the ministers of religion, the officers and members of the pure church of God. The pulpit should speak, in tones deep, and solemn, and constant, and reverberating through the land. The watchmen should see eye to eye. Of every officer and member of a church it should be known where he may be found. We want no vacillating counsels; no time-serving apologies; no coldness, no reluctance, no shrinking back in this cause. Every church of Christ, the world over, should be, in very deed, an organization of pure temperance under the headship and patronage of Jesus Christ, the friend and the model of purity. Members of the church of God most pure, bear it in mind, that intemperance in our land, and the world over, stands in the way of the Gospel. It opposes the progress of the reign of Christ in every village and hamlet; in every city; and at every corner of the street. It stands in the way of revivals of religion, and of the glories of the millennial morn. Every drunkard opposes the millennium; every dram-drinker stands in the way of it; every dram-seller stands in the way of it. Let the sentiment be heard, and echoed, and reëchoed, all along the hills, and vales, and streams of the land, that the conversion of a man who habitually uses ardent spirits is all but hopeless. And let this sentiment be followed up with that other melancholy truth, that the money wasted in this business—now a curse to all nations—nay, the money wasted in one year in this land for it, would place a Bible in every family on the earth, and establish a school in every village; and that the talent which intemperance consigns each year to infamy and eternal perdition, would be sufficient to bear the Gospel over sea and land—to polar snows, and to the sands of a burning sun. The pulpit must speak out. And the press must speak. And you, fellow-Christians, are summoned by the God of purity to take your stand, and cause your influence to be felt.
THE FOOLS’ PENCE.
Have you ever seen a London gin-shop? There is perhaps no statelier shop in the magnificent chief city of England. No expense seems to be spared in the building and the furnishing of a gin-shop.