The Lexington dispatch. [volume] (Lexington, South Carolina) 1870-1917, 1898-08-17
Temperance.

livered by O. O. Drafts, at Cedar
Grove Academy, before the Sunday
School Convention, held on the 4th
Saturday in July, 1898:
My Friends: You may be sur
prised that I rise before you today to
talk on the subject of temperance.
Paul was against Christianity and
became an ardent Apostle of Carist,
and hope to be able to turn from
intemperance and become a faithful
disciple of temperance, and call upon
you to listen to these remarks from
small boy.
Intemperance frequently presents
beautiful exterior while within it
is all corruption, and as loathsome as
sulpulchre full Of dead mems
bones. The young man is charmed
and cheated by it, and old age it Of
ten covers with shame and disgrace
Intemperance is like summer cloud
that is beautiful and promises pleas
ure and shelter, but soon it bursts
upon human life with all the fury of
the tempest. It soon sends its blast
and sweep its tide into the home,
across tribunals of justice and up to
the very altar of the Church Of God.
It is serpent throwing its poison
GUS fangs into the hearts of living
souls; it is an inward fire. The wine
sparkles in the cup, but cat last it
stingeth like an adder and biteth
like a serpent" Its victims groans
and writhes in agony until the poison.
like boiling blood, circulates through
all his veins reaching his brain and
setting his soul on fire.
The temperance reformation has
made heavy blows upon ''King Alco-
hol," but his throne is not yet over
turned. His dark internal empire
stands still. His frowning fortress,
hurling frebands and arrows and
death li:ts its b ,rrid front in the
midst of Christian communities, and
on every side are monuments of his
dreadful conquest. As the young
man ventures out on the inviting
ocean of intemperance as the green
fields of sobriety disappears the
waves of destruction begin to dash
around him, the whistling blast of
poverty make frightful music; the
moaning of the pitiless storm dis.
turbs his dream of pleasure, and ere
long he is an unmanageable wreck
upon the sea of temporal and eternal
ruin.
Poverty follows intemperance as
sure as night follows day. God has
declared that the drunkard shall
come to poverty, and whenever we
see drunkenness we also gaze upon
squalish misery. This fact is 50 clear
that we expect young man to ruin
himself, squander his fortune, become
idle and worthless when he CON-
mences a course of intemperance.
He becomes destitute of money, des-
titute of friends, destitute of charac-
ter and destitute of all that is noble,
and thus hobbies to an early grave
before the face of an insulted God,
and we fear in many cases share the
fate of an eternal hell "prepared for
the devil and his angels" 1ntem-
perance hastens life and urges an
early death. A man once dreamed
that he saw the demon workmen at
their unhallowed task manufacturing
with great zeal the elixer of death.
While he gazed on, barrel after bar
rel of the accursed poison was drawn
from the cistern and prepared for
sale. The employment OF some was
to mark and label those barrels OF
poison which had been put up.
Quenching coal fire in the liquid,
the Internal monster went to work.
On all the barrels in letters which
would remain invisible until the first
glass was drawn and then burn forth
like fire, he wrote: Consumption
palsy, fever, plague, insanity: mad
ness. redness of eyes, sorrow Of
heart, death, damnation, and the like
which, when the liquid death had
been sold, and the buyers drew from
it for the first time flashed out in the
| faces of thirsty customers, they SOW
written in words of fla ne, the dis
eases which they knew were preying
upon their systems, and fed from
the place of terror. Though on th'
barrels in the rum shops we do no
find the words of fire written there
by demon hands, yet We behold mor'
| fearful inscriptions on the living, dy
ing countenances of men. Clean