Litchfield enquirer., 1852-11-25
LITCHFIELD ENQUIRER
LITCHFIEI.D, Nov. 5. 1852.
From the NesO York Evdngelist. "A Letter on Temperance.

From hhe NeaO York Evdngelist. A Letter on Temperance.
 From the Pres6ytery of Cortland to the churches and congregations under.
 .s..a their care.
 DEAR BRETHREN AND When the heads of the seventy sons of King Abab were brought in baskets to Jehn, with apparent astonishment he ex- claimed. "Who slew aH theseS" It was, indeed, killing upon large scale to take off so many heads at once. But we have to speak of others who have been kilfed-innumerahle thousands of them. From generation to generation they have been slain. The heap has become im- mensely large. It has grown to be, as 1t were, one great, tall, black monument of dea,h--an infamous pile of human skeletons and dislocated bones. Nor has u yet ceased to grow. There is not a year but there is added unto it huge masses of putrid and offensive matter. We speak not of the dead who have been cut down of old age, or by any of the ordinary diseases which prey upon the human family: We speak not of the dead who have fallen in bloody battles. By the cholera thsy have not died nor by the earthquake. They ale dead of inteneperance. IL has deprived them of life. and thrown them into this great heap of putrid corpses. It is entirely useless to attempt any just measurement of this mighty heap. or of the woes and sorrows involved in the dying of SO many. One might as we'll attempt to measure the ocean in his hand, or to outspeed the light in its travel. What onc drunkard endures in this life is no small amount. What his innocent wife and children suf- fer may be still greater. Neither of these can be described. Only those who have .telt the bangs can have any just conception of what they really are.- What, then, must be the aggregate of pain and sorrow. and misery and wretch, edness, which millions upon millions of drunkards and drunkatds' wives and children have endured. And yet these ae hardly the beginning of the results of this harvest. After death there comes an eIerual state. All souls are immortal. and all human bodies must be raised from the dead. In eternity, those who have lived and died in habits of intoxi- cation, must meet their appropriate re-. ward. l. is dreadful enough for drunk ald to live and die such i; so to obliterate the image of his Maker from his moral nature; so degrade and brutalize his body ; 50 mar all his peace in lie, and so plant his dying pillow with the sharp, est lhorns. But for the drunkard to go such into ete,nity--to go there with the declaration all eady out fl om the court oi heaven, that he shall never enter that happy world, climaxes the scene and winds up the tipal results of his crime. We cannot but see that this evil Is a giant ore, though the whole of it's may nnude we can never measure. We can look far enough into it, and see enough of its results, to understand tEat we are loudly and most imperitively called upon to do all that we can 10. diminish it.
 ! And here, fellow citizens. the question arises, what more can we do or what shall We next attempt to accomplish ? And to this we say. first of aU, Hesitate not to. cherish the belief thst the great in> terests of the temperance reform are sate, and its .fsaa! triumph naost certain- This cause stands not upon mistaken philosophy. It is no,false notion that all Falcoholic liquors, as a beverage. are inju- rious-it is fact as well established as Flhat any other poisons are so. The man who ventures to deny it, throws himself Ear behind the age in which he lives. and cannot expect to be believed. And as truth has never yet been so stricken down in any period of the world as not 10 rise again and re assert its supremacy, so we arc fully confident that everything which goes for time to impede it's pro g,ess, as well in this as in every other cause, must ultimately render more as. tonishing it's inaltriumph. To,roll back and obhle:ate a reform Of such mora grandeur, wee like the arrestlng of t Ecomet in its mysterious orb.. An al mighty power only can do it, because such a power is employed in carrying ii on. Few in these days will deny that She agency of God is in. thls work Aside, then, from tEe fact that truth is mighty and must prevail. we have the fullest evidence that the cause must go on. because 1t is Gods cause. We have never known a work of the Deity to be broken of: in the middle. There flies no world of light in a random orbit What work of judgment or mercy was ever left but half completed
 | But because the interests of this re- form are believed to be safe. and its final results most certain, it does not by any means follow that we should feel no fur. ther concern about it. or cease to put forth vigorous efforts to complete it. SC ieasOn does not suggest j. so the scrip. lures do not teach, The Church of God