The Grenada sentinel., 1899-05-06


Drink"
Oh, my young friends. want to tell
you that there is a point in inebriaton
beyond which If man go he cannot
stop! But sometimes a man will be
more frank than that. A victim of
strong drink said to reformer: ut is
impossible for me 10 stop. ! realize it.
But If you should tell me couldn't have
drink until tomorrow night unless |
had all my fingers cut off, would say:
Bring the hatchet and cut them off. !"
had very dear friend in Philadelphia
whose nephew came to him and was
talking about his trouble and confessed
it. He confessed he could not stop. My
friend'said: "You must stop" He said:
Il cant stop. If there stood cannon,
and it was loaded. and there was
glass of wine on the mouth of the can
non. and | knew you would fire it off
if approached. ! would start to get
that glass of wine. must have it.
can't get rid of this habit. can't get
away from it," Oh, it is awful for
man to wake up and feel that he is a
captive! hear him soliloquizing, say
ing: 81 might have stopped three
months ago. but can't stop now. Dead,
but not buried; am walking corpse.
am an apparition of what | once was.
l 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 l can't get out. Destroyed
without remedy"
of usefulness. Do you know some of the
men who have fallen 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
sacramental 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
a 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
mighty minister of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ in a 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 if he says strange things and
gets irritated easily in the family. He
has the Pyrcnees 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. He is there now!
But he suffers also in the loss of phys
ical 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 hu-
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 midnight pillows! What groans tear
the air! Talk of the rack, talk of the
funeral pyre, talk of the Juggernaut-
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: Hush 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: 20 God!
Help, help! Give me rum, give me
rum! o God! o God!" And they
shrek and they blaspheme and they cry
for help and then they ask the keepers
to slay them, saying: stab me, stran-
gle me, smother me! O God! Help,
help! Rum! Give me rum! 0 God!
Help" They tear out their hair by the
handful, and they bite their nails into
the quick. This is no fancy picture. 1t
is transpiring 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. l see it coming. God help you to
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 do
the most outrageous things. If need be,
in order to get strong drink he would