The united opinion. [volume] (Bradford, Vt.) 1881-1970, 1897-05-28


could stop at any time, if wanted to. "
He is dead now. What killed him?
Drink! Drink And yet among his last
utterances was, 81 can stop at any
time' He did not stop it because he
could not stop it. Oh, there is point
in inebriation beyond which II man
goes he cannot stop! One OF these vic
tins said to a Christian man, "Sir, if
[ were told that | couldn't get a
drink until tomorrow night unless l
had all my fingers cut off, would say,
Bring the Ratchet and cut them off
now " / have a dear friend in Phila-
delphia whose nephew came to him one
day, and when he was exhorted about
his evil habit said: "Uncle, can It
give it up. If there stood cannon and
it was loaded, and glass Of wine were
set on the mouth of that cannon, and l
knew that you would fire it off just as I
came up and took the glass, l would
start, for must have it." Oh, it is a
sad thing for man to wake up in this
life and feel that he is a captivel He
says: 81 could have got rid Of this once,
but can't now. 1 might have lived an
| honorable life and died a Christian
death, but there is no hope for me now.
! There is no escape for me. Dead, but
not buried | am walking corpse. |
am an apparition of what once was.
am Gagged immortal beating against
the wires Of my cage in this direction
beating against the cage until there is
ho yT,iToc o1,1 blood
soul, yet not able to get out. Destroyed
without remedy"
The Drunlard's Suffering.
go on and say that the disciple of
rum suffers from the loss of health. The
older men may remember that some
years ago DR.. Sewell went through this
country and electrified the people by his
lectures, in which he showed the effects
of alcoholism Oh the human stomach.
He had seven or eight diagrams by
which he showed the devastation of
strong drink upon the physical system.
There were thousands of people who
turned back from that ulcerous sketch,
swearing eternal abstinence from every
thing that could intoxicate.
God only knows what the drunkard
suffers. Pain files Oh 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 sleeping limbs. What
fiends stand by his midnight pillow.
What groans tear his ear What hor-
rors 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 all at once.
Have you ever been in the ward Of the
hospital where these inebriates are
dying, the stencil of their wounds
driving back the attendants, their voices
sounding through the night: The keep
er comes up and says: Hush, now be
still Stop making all this noise - But
it is effectual only for a moment, for as
soon as the keeper is gone they begin
again: go Godl o God Helpl
Help! Drink! Give me drink! Help!
Take them off ne! Take them off me!
O Godw And then they shrek, and
they rave, and they pluck out their hair
by handfuls and bite their nails into
the quick, and then they groan, and
they shrek. and they blaspheme, and
they ask the keepers to kill them
"Stab mel Smother me! Strangle mel
Take the devils off mer Oh, it is no
fancy sketch That thing is going on
now all up and down the land, and
tell you further that this is going to be
the death that some Of you will die,
know it. | see it coming.
A Destroyer of the Home.
Again the inebriate suffers through .
the loss of home. | do not care how |
much he loves his wife and children, if .
this passion for strong drink has mas
tered him he will do the most outra-
geous things, and if he could not get "
drink in any other way he would sell
his family into eternal bondage. How
many homes have been broken up in
that way no one but God knows. Oh,
is there anything that will so destroy a
man for this life and damn him for the
life that is to come? Do not tell me that
a man can be happy when he knows
that he is breaking his wife's heart and
his children with rags. Why,
there are on the roads and streets of this
land today little children, barefooted,
and unkempt, want on every
patch of their faded dress and on every
wrinkle of their prematurely old coun-
5enances, 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
iespoiler of homes, thou recruiting Off
ser of the pit, hate thee.
But my subject takes a deeper tone,
and that is that the unfortunate of
whom speak suffers from the loss of
The soul. The Bible intimates that in
he future world, if we are unforgiven
lere, our bad passions and appetites,
will go along with us and
make our torment there. So that, | sup
bose, when an inebriate wakes up in
hat world he will feel an infinite thirst
him. Now, down in this I
world, although he may have been very
DOOR, he could beg or he could steal 8
.ents with which to get that which
would slake his thirst for little while,
nut in eternity where is the rum to
ome from?
Oh, the deep, exhausting, exasperat-