The Middlebury register and Addison County journal. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1883-1885, 1883-04-20
THE DRAM.SHOP.
Sermon Preached on Fast Day by Rev. =.
Lewis II. Spears at Union Services IN the
Baptist church,, Middlebury.

drink which justify the wicked Tor q reward
and take away the righteousness of the right
eous from me."-Isaiah u. 22-23.
With respect to intemperance as an
evil, the civilized world is substantially
agreed. Whatever Jul differences, we
unite in pronouncing it the worlds
browning calamity. God pours wealth
and plenty into our lap, and this evil
remorselessly swallows it, until it is
well nigh impossible to find any stand
ard by which to measure its over
whelming waste. The whole cost of
our churches and schools is but as the
small dust of the balance compared
with it. The combined value of health
full food and necessary clothing is puny
alongside of it. Public expenditure in
all our towns, cities, States and nation,
mammoth though it be, is insufficient.
Almost the only possible measure,
drawn from real life, is the national
debt, representing the accumulated
ruin of wars %desolations and the
prodigality of atreasury preyed upon
by INSCRIPTIONS rings. And yet, how
soon does the drink bill overtake even
this measure In Great Britain, five
years time will do this, and in our
republic three years will more
than do it. Try to imagine, as well
as you can, what these national
debts represent. You will then make
q small beginning in your estimate of
this browning scourge. L say a small
beginning, for material waste, however
verwhelming in fact, is comparatively
but a trife. With it, in wholesale
destruction, is almost the great sum of
physical health. Not only do sweeping
pestilence and epidemics find broad
highways cast up by alcoholic prepare
ton for their worst desolations, there
is scarcely a breath drawn, or a single
pulse-beat, that is not damaged by the
same poison. In fact, the worlds best
health is such only by comparison q
scared remainder. The mind also,
imperial, almost divine, in itself and
functions, is a favorite and all too suc-
cessful field for the saddest havoc. At
the touch of our common foe. reason
covers in the dust, discrowned and
repulsive. Prospective and dawning
childhood, innocent and helpless, is
loaded with every possible i'll up to
chattering, empty idiocv. Into the
song of human happiness, otherwise
swelling in glad triumph, come plain
tive wailings and shrieks Of defiant or
despairing wretchedness. Virtue is
debauched and turned into the worst
excuses of crime. How old, and yet
how true, the story of manhood's
honor, of woman's purity, Of child
hoods innocence, all turned into the
darkest work of sin and crime, until
the fit emblems and constant COM
panions of drinking habits are the aims
house, the goal, the bludgeon, the
gibbet!
My friends. I will not so disparage
your judgment and knowledge as to
bring any evidence in proof of these
characterizations. The world is full
of such proof. Volumes might be
filled with the testimony Of the wisest
publicists, the most incorruptible
judges, the most sacrificing philan-
thropists, or the purest divines. In
stead of paucity or poverty of evidence,
happy he into whose personal lot
have not come, from this source, bit
terness unspeakable, and loss unmiti-
gated by the slightest consoling COM
p~ensation.
But, it may be asked, why, in the
face of such gigantic and portentous
evil, there is not a universal and
fierce uprising? How can there
be a single instance of apathy, much
less of aid and comfort, to the common
foe? Only partial answer to these
questions is possible. The human mind
and sensibilities, including conscience,
may become measurably uncon-
scious of close and deadly dangers,
like jewellers in a room whose atmos-
phere is steadily poisoned by foul gas.
Our history, as a nation, proves this. 1t
should be remembered, also, that the
very readiness of assent with which
truths in this matter are admitted
causes weakness of impression. AS
COleridge has sail, Truths, of all
Others, the most awful and interesting,
are too often considered as so true that
they lose all the power of truth, and
lie bedridden in the dormitory of the
soul, side by side with the most de-
spised and exploded errors" 1t is easy
to absolve ones conscience from Wig
orous reaction against the evil before
us by wholesale and ready admissions
of its magnitude. Again, of the great
host of sufferers who might testify and
work effectually, multitudes are kept
back because their sufferings are SO
deep and desolating they cannot open
them afresh. The very approach of
the subject from afar fills them with a
paralysis of horror. 1t also seems as
if some think to cover from sight the
cause of their sorrow by assumed in
difference, or even, in some cases, by
championing that which has destroyed
them.
Many, willing to work, are idle be
cause in the face of such looming
mountains of difficulty they do not SEE
what they "a do. Some are crippled
by selfish fears. Some are intimidated