Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes — A Reader’s Guide

Himself were here in body, do you know what He would advise on this point? He would say: "As it is written;" "Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it goeth down smoothly: at the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder." Beware of the social glass, my friend, for though it promises pleasure, it gives but pain; it promises joy, it gives but sorrow; it promises deliverance, it gives but eternal death!

III. STUDY THE DRINK EVIL.

We hear it said, "No use to picture the horrors of the drink evil; every one knows them already." In part, this is true. All of us know more than we wish it were possible to be true; and yet no one can ever realize its horrors until caught, and torn, and mangled in its pinching, jagged, griping meshes. It is one thing to know by a distant glance, it is another thing to know by the pangs of a broken heart and of a wrecked life. For those who are not thus caught in its meshes to realize its horrors so as to seek its destruction but one course is possible; namely, To study the evil. Let the teacher tell of its ravages; let the minister proclaim its curses; let the poet sing it; the painter paint it; the editor report it; the novelist portray it; the scientist describe it; the philosopher decry it; the sisters and wives and mothers denounce it--until all shall unite in smiting it to its death!

We should study the drink evil in its relation to disease. That strong drink tends to produce disease is no longer questioned. "During the cholera in New York City in 1832, of two hundred and four cases in the Park Hospital only six were temperate, and all of these recovered; while one hundred and twenty-two of the others died. In Great Britain in the same year five-sixths of all who perished were intemperate. In one or two villages every drunkard died, while not a single member of a temperance society lost his life." "In Paisley, England, in 1848, there were three hundred and thirty-seven cases of cholera, and every case except one was a dram-drinker. The cases of cholera were one for every one hundred and eighty-one inhabitants; but among the temperate portion there was only one case to each two thousand." "Of three hundred and eighty-six persons connected with the total abstinence societies only one died, and he was a reformed drunkard" of three months' standing. "In New Orleans during the last epidemic the order of the Sons of Temperance appointed a committee to ascertain the number of deaths from cholera among their members. It was found that there were twelve hundred and forty-three members in the city and suburbs, and among these only three deaths had occurred, being only one-sixth the average death-rate." "In New York, in 1832, only two out of five thousand members of temperance societies died." The Northwestern Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one of the oldest and most successful Companies in the Northwest, has lived for nearly forty years next neighbor to lager beer interests. The shrewd men of this company have studied the influence of the beer industry upon those who engage in it. The result is, that they will no longer grant an insurance policy to a beer-brewer, nor to any one in any way engaged in the business. In their own words their reason is this: "Our statistics show that our business has been injured by the short lives of those men who drink lager beer."