ill do you
good. I have taken it for some years, and I think it does me good; and I
never want any more.' Time passed on, and presently the bottle of
bitters in the closet was exchanged for the barrel of whiskey in the
cellar; and the poor man was often at the tap for just as much as would
do him good, and he never wanted any more. Time passed on, and a
hogshead was needful; and its contents were exhausted with the same
intent, and the same self-deceivings. At length the home of his family
was relinquished to his creditors; his polluted body was lodged in a
jail, from which he presently issued a drunken vagabond, and wandered a
wretched being, until he found a drunkard's grave." It is but the
history of thousands. No laws of nature act with more uniformity than
the laws of intemperance. No inoculation sends with more certainty
disease into the system than drinking strong drink. Hundreds have made
an agonizing struggle to escape from perdition. They have seen their sin
and danger; they have walked the streets in agony; they have gone to
their homes and looked at their wives and children, and into the pit of
despair. But their feverish stomach has cried, Give, give! and they have
drank often and often, with the solemn promise that it should be the
last time; until they have exclaimed, with a once interesting youth, "I
know I am a ruined man, but I cannot stop."

Some, indeed, through much care and strength of constitution, may
escape; but the plague, if it appear not in their skin and their bone,
may break out in their children. "I will drink some," said an aged
deacon of a church of Christ; "for it does me good." God was merciful,
though he tempted Heaven, and it is said that he died with his character
untarnished; but six loathsome sons drank up his substance, with the
leprosy in their foreheads. What a meeting must there be between that
deacon and his sons on the judgment-day! The doctrine of prudent use
must be abandoned. It can have no standard. Every man thinks he drinks
prudently, whether he takes one glass a day or five, and is just as much
excited and just as liable to drunkenness as all drunkards were when
they stood where he now stands. He only that entirely abstains can
properly be called a temperate man. And he only is clear from the guilt
of spreading intemperance through the land. Moderate drinkers are the
life of this bloody system which is wringing with agony the hearts of
thousands. Did all at once drink