Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1879-07-16
How Every Man Can Help.

urge you the duty OF self-denal for the
sake of others. If you are fond OF drink,
abandon it before 1t be too late for your
own sakei If you are not fond Of it, IL will
cost you nothing TO give il up. We are all
face to face with hideous, a degrading, a
colossal evil. The Legislature either cannot
or will not help us. Warning, preaching,
moral influence, even extended education,
fails to help us; increased wages, diminished
hours of work, only deepen our peril and our
loss. There is one way, aud one way only;
but that is a certain and an easy way by
which not merely TO check, but even 10 an
initiate, the curse. 1t is that every one of
us should cease to contribute to this monster
evil the penny of a contribution or the
shadow of an example, The use Of that
deadly, peculiar, and wholly unnecessary
substance is so far inseparable from the
abuse, that where the individual use is, there
the national abuse will be. Unrestricted
liquor traffic will, to the end of time, mean
for rnyriads intense temptation temptation
means drunkenness drunkenness means de-
graduation, horror, ruin, crime. You are
Christian. Will you give up needless
luxury to help in saving others from blast.
ing curse Z You are patriot. Will you
give up poor tickling of the palate, an I'M
your nation from blighting degradation
If you do not help, at least be ashamed to
hinder. Call not those fanatics who would
clear their conscience from every faint of so
dangerous a leaven. Do not gild a self
indulgence with the Ophir gold Of Holy
Scripture or hide the forehead of a luxury
under the phylactery OF scribe.
Not long ago there was in certain COL
liery an explosion by which four hundred
miners were suddenly hurled amid shattered
ruins into horrible death. 1t was caused by
single miner who had opened his safety
lamp to light his pipe. To that pipe of TO-
bacco were sacrificed four hundred precious
lives Of fathers, of husbands, and of sons ;
and, alas on the bodies of not few of
those who persisted in that fiery blast were
found duplicate keys by which, hitherto with
impunity, they had done the same. Alas |
my brethren, England and Scotland are such
a mine; they are full of the explosive fire
damp of intemperance. In all societies it
hangs dense around us in the perilous and
pestiential air. Do not say that there is
none of this flaming peril around you that
you may open your safety-lamp and no harm
come Of it. 1t may be so it may not be
so. You could not, you would not do it if
you were sure that there was danger, for
that--as you see at once-would be deadly
selfshness and atrocious crime. But you
cannot be sure that there is not danger Is
the gain worth the risk ? Is the transient
and animal indulgence worth the permanent
and eternal peril ? No harm may come to
you but if harm comes to others who are
treasured by your example, you, even you,
will have helped to perpetuate a frightful
curse, whose effects, in SCATTERING blast after
shattering blast, shall be tapped in echoes
of ruin and of misery, too late for penitence,
amid generations yet unborn. The fatal
and the fatally common key of that safety
lamp is what is called " moderate drinking"
If i'll this particular struggle you would be
patriots, if in this matter you would show
your true love for your brother men, fling it
away. Like the Nazarites of old, like the
children of Jonadab the son of Rechab,
drink neither wine nor strong drink, SO long
as by it you make weak or cause to stumble,
or tempt into ruin aud misery the soul-the
priceless soul-of brother the soul Of
your brother for whom Christ died.-From
an address by Canon Fdrrdr.