ng, be filled up? But how shall we continue temperate?
Not by using the means of destruction. Not by a moderate indulgence in
the cup of seduction. Not by beginning where all those began who have
since ended in ruin. But by _entire abstinence from strong drink_. Let
us renounce entirely what cannot profit us, what forms no important item
in our comforts, what may bring us, as it has brought such multitudes as
strong as we, to the mire and dirt of drunkenness.

But we can do something more. We can contribute the influence of our
example to help bring into disrepute the use of ardent spirits for any
purposes but those of medicine. If any of us are confident that we could
go on in the moderate, without ever coming to the immoderate use of
strong drink, we know that the deliverance of the country from its
present curse is utterly hopeless while ardent spirit is in the hands of
the people. It must be banished. Public opinion must set it aside. Young
men must contribute to form that opinion. It cannot be formed without
the total abstinence of the temperate. Let us not dare to stand in its
way.

But we can do something more. We have an influence which, in a variety
of ways, we may use in the community to diminish the temptations which,
wherever we look, are presented to the unwary to entice them to
intemperance. We can employ the influence of example, of opinion, and of
persuasion, to drive out of fashion and into disrepute, the common but
ensnaring practice of evincing hospitality by the display of strong
drink, and of testifying friendship and good-will over the glass. We can
contribute much powerful cooperation in the effort to make the use of
ardent spirits for the ordinary purposes of drink so unbecoming the
character of temperate people, that he who wishes to have his reputation
for temperance unsuspected, will either renounce the dangerous cup, or
wait till no eye but that of God can see him taste it. We can do much,
in union with those of more age and more established influence, to
create a public feeling against the licensing of those innumerable
houses of corruption where seduction into the miseries of drunkenness is
the trade of their keepers, and the means of destruction are vended so
low, and offered so attractively, that the poorest may purchase his
death, and the strongest may be persuaded to do so. These horrible
abodes of iniquity not only facilitate the daily inebriation of the
veteran drunkard, but they enc