as you
will, you can not afford to drink intoxicating liquors. The moment you
begin to form the habit of drinking that moment you begin to endanger your
reputation, health and happiness, and that of your family and friends also.
And let me say right now that you begin to form the habit when you touch
your lips to any sort of intoxicating drink the first time. I have drank
the sparkle and foam, and the gall and wormwood of all liquors. Do you envy
me the horrors through which I have passed? You know how to avoid them.
Never touch liquor. If you are bent on going to hell and destruction,
choose a nearer and more honorable way by blowing your brains out at once.

A few words more, dear readers, and I will bid you good by. Many of you
have no doubt heard of my restored peace and lasting favor with God at
Fowler, Indiana. With regard to it and my condition at the present time, I
will incorporate in substance the letter which I recently published in
reply to inquiries addressed to me from all parts of the country, shortly
after that event. I will give the letter with but little change, even at
the risk of repeating what is elsewhere recorded. It is as follows:

On the evening of January twenty-first, 1877, at Jeffersonville, Indiana,
God pardoned my sins and made me a new creature. For weeks happiness and
joy were mine. The appetite--rather my passion--for liquor, which made the
present a misery and the future a darkness, was no longer present. Its
heavy burdens had fallen from me. Of this there could be no doubt; but I
had been educated to believe that "once in grace always in grace," and this
led to a fatal deception, a belief that I could not fall; that after God
had once pardoned my sins I was as surely saved as if already in Paradise.
That they were pardoned I had not a doubt, for the manifestations were as
clear as light. Falsely thinking that I was pardoned for all time, my soul
grew self-reliant: I became at the same time careless of my religious
duties. I neglected to pray, to beware of temptation, and, naturally
enough, soon found myself drifting into the society of those who neither
loved nor feared God. Had I trusted alone in God and permitted the Savior
to lead and keep me, I should not have fallen. Instead, I went back to the
world, gave no thanks to God for his mercy and love, and thus dishonoring
him, his face was hidden from me.

I went to Boston to speak in Moody and Sankey's meeting. I never once hoped
by