Connecticut western news., 1889-08-14

if you knew what they suffer. Do not tell such as that there is no future punishment. Do not tell him there is no such place as he'll He knows there is. He is there now!
 go on and say that the inebriate suffers from the loss of physical health. The older men in the congregation may remember that some years ago Dr. Sewell went through this country and electrified the people by his lect- ures, in which he showed the effects of acho- hol on the human stomach. He had seven or eight diagrams by which he showed the devastation of strong drink upon the physi- cal system. There were thousands of people that turned back from that ulcerous sketch swearing eternal abstinence from everything that could intoXicate.
 God only knows what the drunkard suffers. Pain files on every nerve, and travels every muscle, and gnaws every bone, and burns with every flame, and stings with every poison, and pulls at him with every torture. What reptiles crawl over his creep ing limbs! What fiends stand by his mid night pillow: What groans tear his ear !! What horrors shiver through his soul! Talk of the rack, talk of the Inquisition, talk of the funeral pyre, talk of the crushing Jug gernaut-he feels them ali at once. Have you ever been in tie wa.d of a hospital wht rs these inebriates are dying, the stench of their wounds driving back the attendants, their voices sounding through the night! The keeper comes up and says, "Hush, now, be sill. Stop making all this noisew But 1t Is
 
 the keeper is gone, they begin again ''Oh, God! oh, God! Help! help! Rum! Give me rum! Help! Take them off me! Take them of me! Take them off me! Oh, Godo' And then they shriek, and they rave, and they pluck out their hair by hands-ful, and bite their nails into the quick, and then they groan, and they shriek, and they blaspheme, an l they ask the keepers to kill them. 'Stab me. Smother me. Strangle me. Take the devils off me- Oh, it is no fancy sketch. l krl., SS going on in some of the finest residences of every neighborhood on this continent. It went on last night while you slept, and l tell you further that this is going to be the death that some of you will die. I know it. see it coming.
 Oh, is there anything that will so destroy a man for this life and damn him for the life that is 10 come? I hate that strong drink. With all the concentrated energies of my soul, I hate it. Do you tell me that man can be happy when he knows that he is breaking his wife's heart and clothing his children with rags? Why, there are on the streets of our cities today little children, barefooted, uncombed and unkempt; want on every patch of their faded dress and on every wrinkle of their prematurely old coun- tenances. who would have been in churches | today, and as well clad as you are, but for the fact that rum destroyed their parents and drove them into the grave. Oh, rum! thou | foe of God, thou despOiler of homes, thou recruiting officer of the pit, l abhor thee But my subject takes 8 deeper tone, add | that is, that the inerbriate suffers from the loss of the soul. The Bible intimates that in the future world, if we are unforgiven here, our bad passions and appetites, uniestrained, | will go along with us and make our torment | there. So that I suppose when an ine5riate | wakes up in this last world he will feel an ill- | finite thirst clawing on him. Now, down in | the world, although he may have been very poor, he could beg or he could steal five cents with which to get that which would sake his | thirst for little while; but in eternity where | is the rum to come from? Dives could not get one drop of waier. From wbat chalice of eternal fires will the hot lips of the drunk ard drain his drarsht? No one to brew it. No one to mix it. No one to pour it. No | one to fetch it. Millions of worlds then for the dregs which the young man just now rant. Millions of worlds now for the rind thrown out from the punch bowl of an earthly banquet. Dives cried for | water. The inebriste cries for rum. Oh, the deep, exhausting, eXasperating, everlasting thirst of the drunkard in hell! Why, if 3 | Gend came up to earth for some internal work in a gfog shop, and should go back talk | ing on it's wing just one drop of t1at for which the ine0riate longs, w1at excitement | it would make there. Put that one drop | from off the fiends wing on inc tip of the tongue of the destroyeu inebriate? let 'he | liquid brightness just touch it, let the drop be very small if it only have in it tbe smack of alcoholic drink, let that drop just touch the lost inebriate in the lost world and he would spring to his feet and cry: ''That is rum? aha! tbat is rum!' ahd it would wake up the echos of the damned: "Give me rum Give me rum! Give me rumE In the fu- ture world, I do not believe that it will be the absence of God that will | make the drunEard's sorrow; l do not believe that it will be the absence of light !; do not believe that it will be the absence of holiness I think it will be the absence of strong drink. Oh! "look not upon the wine when it is red, when it moveth itself alright | in ine cup. for at the last, it biteth like a serpent and it stingeth like an adder.'
 Eut l want in conclusion to say one thing personal, for do not like a sermon that has no personalities in it. Pe,haps tbis has not | had that fault already. l want to say to | that wbjle declare that there was a point beyond which man could not stop. l walt | to tell you that while man cannot stop in his own strength, the Lord God, by bis grace can help him ,o stop at any time. ears ago | I was in room in New York where there 1 from drunkenness. l heard their testimony | and for ibe first time ill my life there flashed out a truth I never understood. They said "We were victims of strong drink. We tried | to give it up, but always failed; but some | how, since we gave our hearts to Christ, he has taken care of us." believe tbat the time | will soon come when the grace Ot God will | show it's power here not only to save mans soul but his body, and reconstruct, purify elevate and redeem it. verlly believe that although you feel graphing at the roots o1 | your tongue, an almost OmnipOtent thirst il | you will this moment give your heart to God he will belp you by his grace 10 conquer Try ii. It is your last chance. have looked off upon inc desOlation. Sitting under my | ministry tbe-e are people in awful peril from | StrODo drink and iu1oiuO from ordinary circumstances, there is not one chance in five tbopsand ,bat they vii get clear of it I see meu in this congre | gation of whom I must make the remark | that if they do not change their course within ten years they will, as 10 their bodies lie down in drunkards' graves; and as to theil soul, lie down in a druukards' perdiiion. know that it is an awful thing to say, but can't help saying it. Oh, beware! You have not yet been captured. Beware! As ye opeI the door of your wine closet today, may that decanfer flash out upon you. Beware! anC when you pour the beverage into the glass, il the foam at the top, in white letters, let there | be spelled out to your soul, "Bewaret' Wher | the books of Judgment are open, and ter million drunkards come up to get their doom | I want you to bear witness that l today, il the fear of God, and in the love for your sou told you with all affection, and with all kind ness, to beware of that which has already eX erted it's influence upon your family
 
 monition of the blackness of darkness for ever. Oh, if you could only hear this mo ment, Inlemperance, with drunkard'' bones, drumming on the head of the win, cask the Dead March of immortal souls, me thinks the very glance of wine cup would make you shudder, and the color of tht liquor would make you tbiuk of the blood o. the soul, and the foam on the top of the cup would remind you of the froth or the nhniac's lips, and you would go home from this service and knee down and pray God that, rather thar your children should become captive: of this evil habit, you would like to carry