"And ye twain shall be one flesh."
"What God hath joined together, let no man put asunder."
No, not even rum; yet it often does. We have just read of one of the many thousand sad instances that have occurred in this world, of rum separating those who had taken upon them that holy ordinance which makes them as one flesh, one heart, one mind; and, unless such have one mind both to be drunk together, how can they live with one another? How can they live in rum's pollution in the holy bonds of matrimony? There is nothing holy about such a sinful life.
Do away with the cause—abolish intoxicating liquor from society, and you will not only rivet those holy bonds with golden rivets, but you will shut up nine-tenths of the brothels and gaming houses in this city. Without rum they could not live over the first quarter's rent day. With it their profits are enormous—its effects awful.
I could point you to a house in this city, with its twenty-five painted harlots, where the sales of wine in one year have been thirteen thousand bottles, costing $15,000, and selling for $39,000. And why not a profit, since men and women will get drunk in a palace, the mere repairs or additions to which, in one season, cost the almost incredible sum of $70,000?
Who furnished the money? Who made the inmates what they are? Those who made the wine; not those who furnished the grape juice, for it is probable that the whole did not contain a thousand bottles full of that liquor.
What caused the inmates to be what they are? Rum!
Who made them harlots? Not those who marry, or are given in marriage.
Marriage is one of the best preventives of licentiousness, but it is not often perhaps that it produces so positive a reformation as in the following cases.
"I have married," said Mr. Pease to me one day, "some very curious couples. That of Elting was very remarkable."