The Londonderry sifter. (South Londonderry, Vt.) 1883-19??, 1891-03-12
THE WOE OF THE NATION
lNTEMPERANCE MAY SWEEP ITS
FREEDOM AWAY.

Tho Evil That Noah wrought-Modern
Science Has Made Liquor u Thousand
fold More Deadly Than the Ancient
wines-we Must War Against 1t.
NEW YORK, March DIR Talmage
continued today the series of sermons
he commenced last Sunday on the Ten
Plaques of New York and the Adjacent
Cities" The plague which he places
second on the list is intemperance, and
on that subject he discoursed this
morning in the Academy of Music,
Brooklyn, and this evening in New
York. At the close of the service in
the New York Academy of Music, DIR.
Talmage went over to the Union Square
theatre, where his son, Mr., Frank De
Witt Talmage, was holding an overflow
meeting, and briefly addressed the
crowded house. Both the New York
services are under the auspices of The
Christian Herald, of which DR.. Talmage
is editor. The text of the doctors ser
mon was taken from Gen. tx, 20-21;
Noah planted vineyard, and he
drank of the wine and was drunken"
This Noah did the best and the worst
thing for the world. He built an ark
against the deluge of water, but intro
duced a deluge against which the
human race has ever since been trying
to build an ark-the deluge of drunken
ness. In my text we hear his stagger
ing steps. Shem and Japhet tried to
cover up the disgrace, but there he is,
drunk on wine at time in the history
of the world when, to say the least,
there was no lack of water Inebria-
ton, having entered the world, has not
retreated. Abigail, the fair and heroic
wife, who saved the fiocks of Nabal,
her husband, from contiscation by in
vaders goes home at night and finds
him SO intoxicated she cannot tell him
the story of his narrow escape, Uriah
came to see David, and David got him
drunk, and paved the way for the des-
poliation of a household. Even the
church bishops needed to be charged to
be sober and not given to too much
wine, and SO familiar were people of
Bible times with the staggering and
| falling motion of the inebriate that
Isaiah, when he comes to describe the
fual dislocation of worlds, says, 1.-THE
earth shall reel to and fro like drunk.
| ard"
THE WATERS OF MADNESS.
Ever since apples and grapes and
wheat grew the world has been tempt
ed to unhealthful stimulants But the
intoxicants of the olden time were an
innocent beverage, harmless orange
ade, quiet sirup, a peaceful soda
water, as compared with the liquids Of
modern inebriation, into which mad
ness, and fury, and a gloom, and a
fire, and suicide, and retribution
have mixed and mingled. Fermenta-
ton was always known, but it was not
until thousand years after Christ that
distillation was invented. While we
must confess that some of the ancient
arts have been lost, the Christian era
nence of whisky and rum and gin
The modern drunk is hundredfold
worse than the ancient drunk Noah
in his intoxication became inbecile,
but the victims of modern alcoholism
have to struggle with whole menage-
ries of wild beasts and jungles of hiss
ing serpents and perditions of bias
pheming demons.
An arch fiend arrived in our world,
and he built an invisible caldron OF
temptation. He built that caldron
strong and stout for all ages and all
nations. First he squeezed into the
caldron the juices of the forbidden
fruit of Paradise. Then he gathered
for it distillation from the harvest
fields and the orchards of the hemis
pheres. Then he poured into this cal
dron capsicun and copperas and log
wood and deadly nightshade and as
sault and battery and vitriol and OPT
UNI and rum and murder and sulphurit
acid and theft and potash and cochi
neal and red carrots and poverty anG
death and hops, but it was dry com
pound, and it must be moistened, and
it must be liquefied, and so the arcf
fiend poured into that caldron tht
tears of centuries of orphanage anc
widowhood, and he poured in the bloot
of twenty thousand assassinations
And then the arch fiend took shove
that he had brought up from the fur
naces beneath, and he put that shove
into this great caldron and began t.
stir, and the caldron began to heav,
and rock and boil and sputter and his
and smoke, and the nations gathered
around it with cups and tankards ant
demijohns and kegs, and there wa
enough for all, and the arch fiend cried
"Ahal champion fiend am |. Who ha
done more than have for collins ant
graveyards and prisons and insan
asylums and the populating of the los
world2 And when this caldron i
emptied I'll fill it again, and I'll stir i
again, and it will smoke again, an,
that smoke will join another smoke
the smoke Of torment that assembled
for ever and ever. ! drove fifty ship
on the rocks of Newfoundland, an,
the Skerries, and the Goodwins
have ruined more senators than gath
er this winter in the national coun
ellis. have ruined more lords thai
are now gathered in the house o
peers. The cup out of which
ordinarily drink is a bleached huma1
skull, and the upholstery of my palac
is SO rich a crimson because it is dye
in human gore, and the mosaic Of m
floors is made up of the bones of chi
dren dashed to death by drunken pal
ents, and my favorite music-sweete
than re Deum or triumphal march
my favorite music is the cry of daugh
tiers turned out at midnight on tn
street because father has come HON
from the carousal, and the seven hnr
dred voiced shrek of the sinkin