The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1874-10-10
MOTHS IN THE CANDLE.

candle burns. Every night, while the can.
die lasts, the slaughter goes on, and leaves
it's wingless and dead around it. The light
is beautiful, and warm, and attractive;
and, unscared by the dead, the foolish crea-
lures rush into the flames, and drop, hope
lessly singed, their little lives despoiled.
1t has been supposed that men have rea-
son, and a moral sense. 1t has been sup
posed that they observe, draw conclusions,
and learn by experience. Indeed, they
have been in the habit of looking down
upon the animal world as a group of in
feror beings, and as subjects of commiser-
alton on account of their defencelessness,
yet there is a large class of men, reproduc-
ed by every passing generation, that do
exactly what the moths do, and die exact
ly as the moths die. They learn nothing
by observation or experience. They draw
no conclusions save those which are fatal
to themselves. Around certain class of
brilliant temptations they gather, night
after night, and with singed wings or life
less bodies they strew the ground around
them. No instructions, no expostulations,
no observation of ruin, no sense of duty,
no circumstances of conscience, have any
effect upon them. If they were moths in
fact they could not be sillier or more obtuse.
They are, indeed, so far under the domino
ton of their animal natures that they act
like animals, and sacrifice themselves in
flames that the worlds experience has
shown to be fatal.
A single passion, which need not be
named, further than to say that, when
hallowed by love and legitimate gift of
life to life, it is as pure as any passion of
the SOULS one of the candles around
which the human moths lie in myrads of
disgusting deaths. If anything has been
proved by the observation and experience
of the world it is that Righteousness, and
all illicit qualification of the passion involv-
ed in it, are killing SINS against mans
own ature,-that by it the wings are
singed not only, but body and soul are de-
diligence come weakness, perverted moral
beastliness, benumbed sensibilities a dis
gushing life, and disgraceful death. Be-
fore its baleful fire the sanctity of woman
hood fades away, the romance of life dies,
and the beautiful world loses all its charm.
The lives wrecked upon the rock of SEN
sualty are strewn in every direction
Again and again, with endless repetition,
young men yield to the song of the siren
that beguiles them to their death. They
learn nothing, they see nothing, they know
nothing but their wild desire, and ON they
go to destruction and the devil.
Every young man who reads this article
has two lives before him. He may choose
| either. He may throw himself away on a
few illegitimate delights, which cover his
brow with shame in the presence of his
mother, and become an old man before
his time, with all the wine drained out of
his life; or he may grow up into pure,
strong manhood, held in healthy relation to
al he "a tai tn ha inh stafa
He may be beast in his heart, or he may
have wife whom he worshps children
whom he delights in, self-respect which
enables him to meet unabashed the neblest
woman, and an undisputed place in good
society. He may have dirty imagination,
or one that hates and spurns all impurity
| as both disgusting and poisonous. In
brief, he may be man, with a mans
| powers and immunities, or sham of a
man,-a whited sepulchre, conscious that
he carries with him his own dead bones,
and all uncleanness. 1t is matter entire
| ly of choice. He knows what one life is,
and where it ends. He knows the essen
| tial quality and certain destiny of the
other. The man who says he cannot con-
troll himself not only lies, but places his
Maker in blame. He can control himself,
and, if he does not he is both fool and a
| and self-respect that come of confluence,
entertained for a single day, is worth more
than the illicit pleasures of world for all
time. The pure in heart see God in every
thing, and see Him everywhere, and they
are supremacy blest.
Wine and strong drink form another
candle in which millions of men have
| singed themselves, and destroyed both soul
| and body. Here the signs of danger are
more apparent than in the other form of
sensuality, because there is less secrecy
The candle burns in open space, where all
men can see it. Law sits behind and sane
tions its burning. 1t pays princely reve-
nue. to the government. Women flaunt
their gauZes in it. Clergymen sweep their
robes through it. Responsibility uses it to
light its banquets. In many regions of
this country it is a highly respectable can
die. Yet, every year, sixty thousand per-
sons in this country die of intemperance
and when we think of the blasted lives
that live in want and misery, of wives in
despair of loves bruised and blotted out,
of children disgraced, of aims houses fill
| ed, of crimes committed through its in fl u
ence, of industry extinguished, and of dis
| ease engendered, and remember that this
has been going on for thousands of years,
wherever wine has been known; what are
we to think of the men who still press into
the fire? Have they any more sense than
the moths? 1t is almost enough to shake
a mans faith in Immortality to learn that
he belongs to a race that manifests so little
sense, and such hopeless recklessness.
| There is just one way of safety, and
only one, and young man who stands at
the beginning of his career can choose
whether he will walk in it, or in the way
| of dor 10 Oh,
among men that wine is good,-that when
properly used it has help in it,-that in a
certain way it is food, or help in the
digestion of food. We believe that no
greater or more fatal Authorization ever
possessed the world, and that none so
great ever possessed it for so long time.
Wine is a medicine, and men would
take no more of it than of any other medi-
cine if it were not pleasant in it's taste,
and agreeable in it's first effects. The men
who drink it, drink it because they like it.
| The theories as to it's healthfulness come
afterwards. The world cheats itself, and
tries to cheat itself in this thing; and the
priests who pirate of "using this world as
not abusing it," and the chemists who
claim sort of nutritious property in aico-
hol which never adds to tissue @ and the
men who make jest of water drinking,
| dl huoW pellSCtiy VIGIL GudI WHO ana
strong drink always have done more harm
than good in the world, and always will
until that millennium comes, whose feet
are constantly tripped from under it by
the drunkards that lie prone in it's path.
The millennium with grog shop at every
corner is just as impossible as security
with burglar at every window, or in every
room of the house. All men know that
drink is curse, yet young men sport
around it as if there were something very
desirable in it, and sport until they are
hopelessly singed, and then join the grea t,
sad army that, with undiminished num-
bers, presses on to its certain death.
We do not like to become an exhorter in
these columns, but, if it were necessary,
we would plead with young men upon
weary knees to touch not the accused
thing. Total abstinence, now and forever,
is the only guaranty in existence against a
drunkard's life and death, and there is no
good that can possibly come to a man by
drinking. Keep out of the candle. 1t
will always SINCE your wings, or destroy
you.-Dr. D. G. Holland ), Scri6ner's for
| OrtOber