scharge
his Christian duties, or open his heart in charity? Does it not palsy
the heart, quench the spirit of prayer, seal up every holy and
benevolent feeling, and turn many from Christ, that they walk no more
with him? What can a professor mean who refuses to enlist under the
temperance banner? Does he really want the monster to live? Does he pray
that he may? Will he stand aloof from this conflict? Is he determined to
deny himself in nothing? To care not if others perish? To risk shipwreck
of character and conscience, and to keep in countenance every drunkard
and dram-shop around him? Is it nothing to him that intemperance shall
spread like a _malaria_, to every city, and village, and neighborhood,
until the land shall send up nothing but the vapors of a moral
putrefaction, and none shall here pray, or preach, or seek God; but
ignorance, and crime, and suffering, withering comfort and hope, shall
go hand in hand, until we can be purified only by a rain of fire and
brimstone from heaven? O for shame, for shame! Let the Christian,
pleading for a little intoxicating liquor, be alarmed; let him escape
as for his life from the kingdom of darkness. "Come out of her, my
people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of
her plagues."

Next to diseased appetite, the love of money is the most potent
principle in the breast of depraved man. Thirty-six thousand distillers,
and eighty-five thousand venders of ardent spirits in our land, form a
tremendous host in opposition to our enterprise. They live everywhere.

"Pass where we may, through city or through town,
Village or hamlet, of this merry land,
* * * * every twentieth pace
Conducts the unguarded nose to such a whiff
Of stale debauch, forth issuing from the sties
That law has licensed, as makes Temperance REEL."

They live wherever the demon has his haunts. Or rather, he lives where
they live; for they feed him. And while he fattens on the article they
make and vend, they receive in return the silver and gold of his deluded
victims. Now, how can this formidable host, who cry out, Our craft is in
danger, by this demon we have our wealth--how can they be met? Can they
be met at all? Yes, they can--for they are men; generally reputable men;
in cases not a few, pious men; and all have consciences, and may be made
to feel their accountableness to God. Now let them be told that they
keep this monster alive; that to their distiller