Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1899-06-09

beyond which If Il man 60 he cannot
stop! But sometimes man will be
more frank than that. A victim of |
strong drink said TO reformcr: at is |
impossible for me TO stop, realize it.
But If you should tell me couldn't have
Il drink untH tomorrow night unless | |
had all my fingers cut off, would say: |
Bring the Ratchet and cut them off,"
had very dear friend in Philadelphia |
whose nephew came to him and was
talking about his trouble and confessed
ii. lie confessed he could not stop. My
friend said: "You must stop" He said;
~ can't stop. If there stood cannon,
and it was loaded, and there was a
glass of wine on t. mouth of the can
non, and | knew YOU would fire it off
il approached, would start to get
that glass of wine, | must have it. |
can't get rid of tbs habit. can't get
away from it," Oh, it is awful for a
man to wake up and feel that he is
captive! | hear him soliloquizing, say
ing: 81 might have stopped three
months ago, but can't stop NOW. Dead
but not buried; l am walking corpse.
| am an apparition of what once was.
[ am Gagged immortal and my soul
beats against the wires of my cage on
this side and beats against the wires of
my cage on the other side until there
is blood on the wires and blood on the
soul, but / can't get out. Destroyed
without remedy"
Again, the man suffers from the loss
of usefulness. Do you know some of the
men who have fallea into the ditch were
once in the front rank in churches and
in the front rank in reformatory insti-
tutions? Do you know they once knelt
at the family altar and once carried
the chalice of the holy communion on
sacramento days? DO you know they
once stood in the pulpit and preached
the Gospel of the Son of God? We will
not forget the scene witnessed some
years ago in my Brooklyn church when
man rose in the midst of the audi
ence, stepped into the aisle and walked
up and down. Everybody saw that he
was intoxicated. The ushers led him
out, and his poor wife took his hat and
overcoat and followed him to the door.
Who was he? He had once been q
mighty minister OF the Gospel of Jesus
Christ in sister denomination, had
often preached in this very city. What
slew him? Strong drink! Oh, what
must be the feeling of man who has
destroyed his capacity for usefulness!
Do not be angry with that man. Do not
lose your patience with him. Do not
wonder IL he says strange things and
gets irritatcd easi'i'i n the family. lie
has the Pyrences and the Andes and
the Alps on him. Do not try to per-
suadc him that there is no future pun
ishment. Do not go into any argument
to prove TO him that there is no hell. lie
knows there is. lie is there now
But he suffers also in the loss of phys
zeal health. The older people in this au-
dience can remember DR.. Sewell going
through this country electrifying great
audiences by demonstrating to them
the effect of strong drink upon the hui
man stomach. | am told he had eight
or ten diagrams which he presented to
the people, showing the different stages
in the progress of the disease, and am
told tens of thousands of people turned
back from that ulcerous sketch and
swore eternal abstinence from all intox-
icants. God only knows what the
drunkard suffers. Pain files on every
nerve and travels every muscle and
gnaws on every bone and stings with
every poison and pulls with every tor
ture. What reptiles crawl over his shiv-
ering limbs! What specters stand by
his mdnightpillows What groans tear
the air! Talk of the rack, talk of the
funeral pyre, talk of the Juggcrnaut-
he suffers all at once.
See the attendants stand back from
that ward in the hospital where the in
ebriates are dying. They cannot stand
it. The keepers come through it and
say: flush up, now! Stop making this
noise! BE still! You are disturbing all
the other patients. Keep still now!"
Then the keepers pass on, and after
they get past then the poor creatures
wiring their hands and say: 80 God !
Help, help! Give me rum, give me
rum! o God! o Cod" And they
Shrek and they blaspheme and they cry
for help and then they ask the keepers
to STAY them, saying: "Stab me, stran-
gle me, smother me! o Godl Help,
helpl Rum! Give me rum! o God!
lIelp!" They tear out their hair by the
handful, and they bite their nails into
the quick. This is no fancy picture. II
is transporting in hospital at this mo-
ment. 1t went on last night while you
slept, and, more than that, that is the
death some of you will die unless you
stop. | see il coming. God help you tc
stop before you go so far that you can
not stop.
But it plaques a man also in the loss
of home. lido not care how much he
loves his wife and children, if this habit
gets the mastery over him he will dc
the most outrageous things. If need be
in order to get strong drink he would
sell them all into everlasting captivity
There are hundreds and thousands Of
homes that have been utterly BLASTED
of it. ] am speaking of no abstraction
Is there anything so disastrous to {
man for this life and for the life tC
Gomez Do you tell me that man car
be happy when he knows he is breaking
his wife's heart aud clothing his chill
dren with rags? There are little chill
dren in the streets to-day, barefooted
unkempt, uncombed, want written OF
every patch of their faded dress and OF
every wrinkle of their prematurely ole
countenance, who would have been il
the house Of God this morning as wei
clad as you had II not been that strong
drink drove their parents down into
penury and then down into the grave