"'YOUNG MEN, AHOY!'
"'What is it?'
"'The rapids are below you! Now see the water foaming all around you! See how fast you go! Quick! QUICK! Pull for your very lives! Pull till the blood starts from your nostrils and the veins stand like whipcords on your brow!'
[At this point, quickly detach the drawing from the board, turn it one-fourth around and re-attach with thumb tacks; then, add the lines to complete [Fig. 97].]
"'Ah, it is too late! Shrieking, cursing, blaspheming, over the falls you go!—and thousands thus go over every year by the power of evil habits, declaring, "When I find it is hurting me, I will quit." But these latter do not go by the water way, but by the whiskey way, which is a thousand times worse! No man today fills a drunkard's grave who did not once think he could quit—but he found, too late, that he couldn't.'
"'Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise,' says Solomon, and he might have made it ten times as strong and still kept within the truth. Everywhere, and at all times, when a young man starts to do evil, he hears plainly and clearly the cry, 'Young man, ahoy! The rapids are below you!' It is the voice of conscience, his true and faithful servant. But, unfortunately, as the voice is unheeded and bad habits grow stronger, conscience grows weaker, and, after a while, it cannot serve us at all, for Satan has taken possession of it. The evil one can do as much mischief with a man's conscience as he can with his heart. He can 'sear it with a hot iron.' (I Tim. 4: 2.) He can 'defile' it. (Titus 1: 15.) He can kill it. (Eph. 4: 17-19.) And how can a seared, defiled, dead conscience help him to shun temptation and sin? Many a man, honest in his dealings with those about him, is dishonest with himself when he begins to allow bad habits to rule his life and to allow Satan to defile and kill the conscience which has been provided to guide him in caring for his own body—the earthly temple given to him by God as the earthly abiding place of his immortal soul."