The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1888-02-04

around us, possessing forms and organic
structures, as literally and truly as do
the physical bodies recognized by our
corporal senses, then, but not until
then, will we begin to get the proper
view into human life, and of that mys-
terious something so often spoken of as
the Immortality Of the soul and then
only will we be able to understand and
proftably contemplate the demoraliziDg
agencies and influences that affect the
spirit of man, while yet his physical
body may not be much disturbed. This
is the reason we have here consid-
cred the disease of intemperance on the
soul apart from the body.
2. The curse of intemperance upon
the body. 1t is all important, consider
ing the moral reactions of the body, and
especially the fact of a propagation of
the species, to notice the disorganizing
effect of excess, defect and perversion,
almost constantly at work in the human
body. Body and soul, as long as they
subsist in their organized state, are
strict unity. The abuses of the one are
also abuses of the other; the disturb
ances and diseases of one disturb and
disease the other. The fortunes of the
body must, in this way, follow the for
tunes of the soul, whose organ it is.
The body is the workshop of intemper-
ance, which begins its destructive raw
ages in the brain.
What then must be the effect, when
every path in its wonderful network of
intelligence is travelled, day by day and
year by year, by the insulting and
degrading myriads of Incorporate
thought, hardened by the tramp of
their feet, and busted by their internal
smoky trail?
But turning to more practical evil
dences, or matters of fact. we shall see
plainly enough that what should follow,
in the effects of intemperance upon the
body, actually does follow. How the
excuses of the appetites and passions
terminate in diseases and final disor-
ganization of the body, is well under
Stood The false conjunction made by
Incorporate drink, deluging the tissues
of the body with its liquid poisons and
reducing the body to loathsome
wreck, often sickens the heart, and is re-
voting to every sentiment of refinement
and decency. The habit of intemper.
ance takes away the power Of self
government, loosens the passions, and
makes even the natural appetite for
food an instigator of excess. How
many of the sufferings and infrmities
even of persons called virtuous, are
known by all intelligent physicians to
be only the grooming Of the body under
loads habitually imposed, by the IN
tempered and really diseased voracity
of their appetites. If we could trace
all the secret actions of causes, how
faithfully would the fevers, the rheu-
matisms, the neuralgia and other tor
ments, all the grim looking woes of
dyspepsia, be seen to follow the unreg-
ulated license of this most terrible
enemy of the human family.
Nor is anything better understood
than that whatever disorder of the
mind wounded pride, ill-regulated
ambition, hatred, covetousness, fear,
inordinate care throws the mind out
Of rest, throws the body out of rest
also. Thus it is that intempsrance, in
all its forms, becomes power Of bodily
disturbance, shattering the nerves, in
flaming the tissues, distempering the
secretions and brewing general fer
ment of disease and death. In one
view, the body is kind of perpetual
crystalization; and the crystal of true
health cannot form itself under intern
perate action, because the body has
within perpetual agitating cause
which forbids the process. Aud, if
looking round upon the great field of
humanity, and noting the almost uni
versal working of disease, in so many
forms and varieties that they cannot
be named or counted, we sometimes
exclaim with sigh, What great hos
pital the world isl We must be dull
spectators if we stop at this and do not
also connect the remembrance with that
intemperance that now swells the
stream of vice, extravaganza and death,
until it has become the most wasting
plague that ever cursed the nations of
the earth.
8. Effects of intemperance upon So
ciety.-Going now to society and the
disorganizing effects of intemperance
there to appear, we see that if the soul
and body are both distempered and re-
duced to an unnatural state and dis
eased condition, the great interests of
society must suffer in a corresponding
manner and degree.
Considered as gro with humanity is,
in some very important sense, an or
ganic whole. If the races are not all
descended of single pair, as has been
strenuously asserted by some-still it