Proverbs 23

Proverbs 23:7

AND Proverbs 23:7THE man referred to in our text is one who had invited guests to his table, and was serving them with all the outward appearances of hospitality, whilst inwardly purposing their ruin and planning to execute his spite. Solomon calls attention to the well-known fact that men may act a dual part, pretending the good and hoping all the while to gain some unholy advantage by hypocrisy. He would warn us against that courtesy which hides away criminal intent; and he seeks to shield the credulous from the snare of human huntsmen by calling attention to the latent thought as the last, though silent, expression of the real design. “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he”.And yet we see no reason why we should not bring from this text the greater, broader principle which the sentence so perfectly expresses, namely: the relation of creed to conduct. Every one must admit that a certain relation exists, and that our text defines that relation perfectly. If there can be such a thing as a man thinking always one way and acting always in ways diverse from his purpose, then who could describe the horror of the heart in which such a battle between purpose and prosecution was going on. No, even as our text says, “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he”, and that is true of both the worst and the best among us.

Our creed determines our conduct.I employ the word creed in the original and rightful sense of that term. I intend by it, that opinion, or circle of opinions, which an individual is found to be entertaining.

I am sorry that this good word, creed, has been so associated in ecclesiastical speech that it is today an offensive term, in the judgment of many most excellent men. Use it in whatever sense you may; there comes with its utterance an offensive breath. It is the breath of a past age in which the limitations put upon thought by men who were ignorantly bigoted, and pretenders to infallibility, fairly prevented progress in study, and left religion, science and literature stupid, falling into rottenness and decay. I do not wonder that men say of such creeds, they shall not shape my faith, nor determine my conduct, nor circumscribe the realm of my research.The period is past in which the creed that came of mere tradition is to be accepted as true. At the coming of Christ, it would appear from Scripture, men had almost ceased to think at all for themselves. The learned among the Jews pursued a policy in study which furnished the most striking contrast with that employed at Athens, the great center of secular learning.

Of the Athenians it is said, “They spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.” Of the masters in Israel it might have been said with equal emphasis, “They spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell or hear some old thing.” Geikie in his “Life and Words of Christ”, refers to this influence which tradition held, in words that seem strange indeed to the methods of our age, saying, “As in the case of the Brahminical theocracy of India, that of Judea attached more importance to the ceremonial precepts of its schools than to the sacred texts on which they were based. Wherever Scripture and tradition seemed opposed, the latter was treated as the higher authority.

Phariseeism openly proclaimed this, and set itself, as the Gospel expresses it, in the chair of Moses, displacing the great law-giver.“It is a greater offence,” says the Mischua, “to teach anything contrary to the voice of the Rabbis, than to contradict Scripture itself * *. The Bible was like water, the traditions, likewise the commentaries on the traditions, like spiced wine.” When Jesus came, he wrought along revolutionary lines. It would have been vastly more popular to have agreed with the fathers, and rehashed the old things. But traditions then were too remote from the truth for Christ to accept, indorse and teach them. So he was ever and again astonishing his hearers by swinging out on some new line of truth, by bringing to light the long neglected, yet loftiest, principles of right, by contradicting even what the most noted Rabbis had received from hoary tradition and were repeating with religious fervor. Men were amazed at his boldness and said, “He teaches with authority”, and came demanding, “By what authority sayest Thou this?”There is always more or less of tradition in religion.

Men have heard from some speaker what pleased them, and they are as vigilant in its defense as they are earnest in protecting the inspired Word. In fact, they are sometimes more ardent far in arguing for that faith which has been handed down by some favorite teacher than they are in defending the truth, fresh-read from the sacred text.

There is no surer way for an individual thinker to bring against himself carping and the cruellest criticism than to announce as his faith what clashes with the existing opinions of some people. Men do not turn into the Scriptures to see who may be right, the innovater, or the fathers against whom he has run, but unsheath their daggers and start at once at the breast of him who dares to speak the truth which causes the old creed to crumble.At this point advanced (?) thinkers have always had my sympathy. While I cannot accept their conclusions, I have no right as a Christian, and as one who wishes for himself untrammeled liberty in study, to deride the motive and impeach the purpose of him who studies the same sacred text, and seeks the same illumination, and yet is forced to another conclusion. It seems to me that most revolutionary doctrines, if they half-approve themselves to our sense of the right, are worthy our calmest consideration. They may contain the very logic, which, like the Master’s speeches, is calculated to establish that which we should hold as the Word of the Lord, and sift out that which we have only brought from the traditions of men.Some people seem to think that in order to pay proper respect to the fathers, we must go on forever repeating their thoughts and defending their faiths. On the other hand we would do violence to their sense of right, if we saw in their systems of faith, deficiencies, and left them without the needful correction.There used to prevail in some Eastern countries, the custom of burying the living kindred with the dead.

He who holds to all that has been taught, asking no questions, seeking no light, effecting no progress, has consented to share the father’s theological grave. We repeat, the period has passed in which men only ask, “What has been said upon this subject, or what has been taught touching this doctrine?” The time has come when teachers everywhere should ask other, “What ought now to be said?

What can now be truthfully taught?” and then go out to propagate that Gospel which they read from the Word of the Lord. He who does that will have a creed which must shape his own conduct and is most apt to affect for good, the behaviour and opinions of his hearers.Again, when we speak of creed and conduct, we do not intend by creed, that creation of partisan council, or dogma of fallible popes, or even the confessions of faith formulated by renowned Presbyteries.Ours is not a time in which mere ecclesiasticism determines the limits of a man’s faith. That fallacy has never recovered from Luther’s exposition of the truth. When a man, in the close of the nineteenth century and in Protestant America, stands forth to inform the world what the ritualistic churches have taught, and demands of us an assent to their every utterance, whether Scriptural or not, we seem to hear a voice from an age long since dead, and one which we had ardently hoped was buried out of sight. At every such a speech, the truly Protestant Christian is both amazed and amused—amazed at the credulity which can accept the decisions of men whose minds were only medium and whose characters were not always above reproach; amused at the extravagance of asking men to defend and practice the decrees of their fellows, when God has already spoken, and His speech is an open page.A young fellow came into my room not long since, whose home is under the shadow of a famous Theological School. After, he was convinced that I wouldn’t give an order for the books he was selling, he launched out upon the theological sea.

He asked me why I didn’t do this and that, and said the book of common prayer taught these duties. I responded by asking him why he didn’t get baptized?

He said he didn’t believe in my baptism! I opened my Bible and began reading him such passages as Matthew 3:5-6; Mark 1:9; and Romans 6:4. He said, “Those references don’t amount to anything. My church teaches differently!” I asked him where his church got the right to teach differently. He replied, “We are the Apostolic church and surely it knows what is right!” I asked him what evidence he had that his was the Apostolic church. He replied, “All history proves it.” I asked him to be a little more definite and reminded him of a vast deal of history that never so much as heard of his church.

Then he said, “Every student of the church fathers knew the truth of their claim of Apostolic succession.” I asked him which one or ones of the church fathers taught it. He said, “All of them.” “But,” I said, “give me the name of one of them.”Poor fellow, in his confusion, he had forgotten them all.

After lecturing him to my heart’s content on the folly of assertions which he could not defend and the foolishness of a faith which swallowed fallible utterances without testing their degree of truth by the Revelation of God, I gave him the names of the most prominent fathers, and told him to use them hereafter and not appear so green. He went away saying, “Mr. Riley, I know I have made a fool of myself, but I know the creed of my church is right.”All that reminds us of Moody’s anecdote which he relates of a man whom he asked what he believed. The fellow replied, “I believe what my church believes.” “And what does your church believe?” continued Moody. “It believes what I believe”, replied the man.The man who can be satisfied with such a faith is almost as credulous as the witty Irishman, who is reported to have been piloting a company of travellers through the most interesting institutions of his native land. In one building he showed the distinguished gentlemen a number of relics and related to them the traditions associated with each. Finally, he brought to one of the men a skull, saying as he passed it to the visitor’s hand, “The skull of St.

Patrick”. “Oh”, said the visitor, as he received the distinguished bones and began a close study of them.Shortly afterward the Irishman was on the ground a second time, bowing as before and offering to the man a much smaller head, and explained, “Here, your honor, is the skull of St. Patrick when he was a boy.”I am fully persuaded that; over-credulity has dragged into men’s minds almost as much of hurtful error, as scepticism itself has effected in the lives of men.

For my own part, I hail the dawning of the age of investigation. Except a man be able to give a reason for the faith that is in him, his creed will not be apt to greatly affect his conduct. It is one thing to subscribe one’s name to a system of theology wrought out by others; but to live out a poor fragment of theology which you yourself have brought from God’s Word is another thing, and a vastly better thing.This sermon was suggested to me by an editorial in which the writer employed these words, “What startling contradictions, what bewildering paradoxes, do we often find in men’s opinions and conduct. It is said of ‘the most Christian King’, Louis 15th, whose life was one long orgie, that he was strictly orthodox in his religious belief. The victims of his vile pleasures were carefully instructed in the Catholic faith. While he was wallowing in every pollution, he was anxious to keep his harem free from the heresies of the Jansenists.”It will be a good day for the world when men learn that such creeds have not the strength of a spider’s web to hold men back from hell!

I sometimes think they will prove to be only the net in which Satan shall take captive the souls of silly men. The bottomless pit is the place for creeds that do not improve men’s conduct.Some people may be asking, “What need of creeds at all?” I answer, “The question is a wild one.” So long as men think, creeds must exist, for a man’s thought is a man’s creed.

If the question is more far-reaching and intends to ask after the denominational creeds of Christendom, I say, “They exist for a like reason.” Men have learned that great companies of them bring from God’s truth substantially the same ideas. In that fact they find a needed basis for organization and most effective service to their common Lord.If any man thinks the principle upon which the churches act in this matter a wrong one, let him attempt to form a bank-stock company, to inaugurate a building and loan association, a perfect business corporation of any sort, by putting together a score of men, each of whom holds another business opinion from that of any of his proposed partners. If that stock doesn’t sell at fifty percent below par before a year has passed, then the parties will either dissolve their relations or the world will witness the eighth wonder.So, neither can a church or denomination exist whose members hold such diverse and diverging opinions, that all becomes religious wrangle. Those men, who are today worrying the brethren in their respective denominations, with their irregular opinions, could learn a lesson on good behaviour from the Baptist clergymen who from time to time have dissented from the fundamental principles which their churches bring from God’s Word. Until lately scarce a man of them all but played the part of a Christian gentleman, and learning that he was not in sympathy with our views of truth, stepped down and out, seeking more congenial relations for his own work, and saving the church the painful disturbance that his continued stay would have worked. Toy, Behrends, Pentecost Hague and Bridgeman all went and we wished them so well as to hope for them a re-discovery of the truths they had lost.But the value of knowing what your church believes, my friend, is to be measured by the influence which that faith exerts on your conduct.

As the late Dr. Northrup so strongly said, in his address at Cin, “There are worse heresies in these last days than heterodoxy of doctrine.” They are the heresies of conduct.

James discusses that subject when, in his Epistle, he says, “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can such faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, and one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body, what doth it profit? Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone” (James 2:14-17).Any system of faith that can be lawfully brought from God’s truth must have as one of its first and most fundamental principles, the doctrine of the necessity of a regenerate nature. But a man might give that first place in the formulated statement of his doctrine, and yet be as far from living like a man made over by God’s Spirit as the East is from the West.I was reading one day, when I came upon a sentence from Carlyle, in which he said, “Cheerfulness was a prime necessity to success and was a man’s duty as well. We ought to smile at the world as we walk its paths.” Why didn’t he do it then? we ask. Why didn’t he conform his conduct to his creed?

Why did he live and speak as pessimistically as if God was dead?And so the people who look to us as Christians, judge of what we believe by the way in which we behave. That is the best way to show your faith, to illustrate your faith, to impress your faith upon others: Live it out.

One day of regenerate living goes farther toward establishing that doctrine of Scripture, than a subscription to all the creeds of Christendom could do, no matter how much they emphasized that article of the faith.Again, repentance must enter into all creeds brought from Scripture.But it isn’t the mere article on the printed page. It is that change of mind and revolution of thought that will effect another and a holier life. I believe in his repentance who brings forth its fruit in godliness and obedience.When Frederick Charrington of East London repented, nobody was in doubt of it—not so much because he told them that he believed in repentance, but because he showed them the fruits of that experience.Mr. Hughes in his work, “Social Christianity”, says of Charrington, “When he was converted to God, as a brewer, he started a Bible-class. One day it occurred to him that it was very inconsistent that he should try to reclaim with a Bible-class on Sunday the men who were made drunk with his beer on Saturday. Thereupon, without hesitation, that brave young man, for the sake of Christ and the human race, sacrificed £80,000.”Be willing to give up your ungodly associates, and have quenched your unholy passions and appetites, and sacrifice your unholy gain, my friend, and you have the creed that I want for the Church.Again, any creed that is Scriptural must contain an article touching a man’s willingness to obey God.But the only way for a man to get that article in the creed of life is to have and exercise the spirit of obedience.

Paul got up from the place whereon his old creed had been shattered by a voice from Heaven, saying, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do”? That was the beginning of a new creed, which was to be co-extensive with conduct.

That creed cost him his life at last, because he both purposed and performed. He might have silently held to all his ideas and passed through the world unmolested. But death in God’s service was preferred by him, above the silent ease to which the devil tempted him.So, my friend, if you only say that “Obedience is better than sacrifice,” and go right on disobeying God, refusing to confess Him before men as He requires, refusing to put Him on in baptism as He requires, refusing to come out from the world and be separate as He demands, refusing to show your love for Him by keeping His commandments as He tells you you must do, then don’t be deceived into thinking that somehow you will escape His wrath and enter Heaven.The time will come when every disobedient soul shall know the truth to which Walter Scott gave utterance when drawing his last breath. His son-in-law was at his bed-side and Scott looked into the face of the young man from whom he was about to part for all of time, and so he said, “Be a good man, Lockhart—be a good man. Nothing else will give you any comfort when you come to lie here.”So, my friend, whatever your creed, get one that is truthful, “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he”. There is a beautiful legend about one of the early saints, Hymelin, that when he was dying, all the church-bells in town began ringing in the sweetest

Proverbs 23:31-32

THE TEMPTER AND Proverbs 23:31-32I WANT to speak to you this evening on “Tippling”; and while it is my purpose to cover the whole subject, the discussion will have special reference to another of the sins now common in so-called good society. The text of this evening is uttered by the world’s greatest philosopher. In the wisdom of his utterances, he takes a place second only to the Son of God. Solomon was perhaps the one individual of all past time whose intensive experience, intellectual ability, personal and political opportunities, fitted him to speak upon subjects of great moral concern.This Book of the Proverbs is the inspired record of his statements, and upon the social vice of tippling, our text was his deliverance.Three things are clearly suggested by it. The first is his appeal for total abstinence; the second is his description of our insidious temptation; and the third is his deliverance on the terrible end of wine-bibbing.TOTAL If Solomon is to be accepted as speaking words of wisdom upon this subject, or, if the Scriptures are to be received as authoritative upon things to which they address themselves, then three things concerning total abstinence are clear.Temperance is not total abstinence. There are not a few of our social tipplers who know one passage of Scripture, if they know no more, “Be temperate in all things”. Any intelligent study of the Word of God will show that the Bible asks us to be temperate in all good things; total abstainers from all bad things! To even hint that the Bible suggests temperance in sin is to contort its teachings. We belong with the company of those who believe in the temperate use of all good things. To us, Prof.

Flynn’s statement that “lots of people were drunken through their eating”, was in no wise objectionable. Of course the stupor of inordinate eating is not so great, and the insanity not so noticeable; and yet, that many of us eat too much, may hardly be denied.

Sydney Smith once humorously said, “According to my own computation I have eaten and drunk between my seventh and seventieth year, forty-four wagon-loads more than was good for me.”It is stated on what seems to be good historical authority, that Vitellius exemplified this fact, also, by eating a round thousand of oysters at a single sitting. And when his appetite lagged a bit he adopted the abominable fashion of the hour, and tickled his palate with a peacock-feather in order to make room for new indulgence. Still, I confess to you I would rather travel with, and live with a man who lived as Seneca used to, eating a few hundred oysters at a time and blaming the delicious mollusks for his indigestion, than to spend ten minutes in an observation car where some fellow puffs his tobacco smoke, which has gotten too bad to remain longer in his mouth, into my face, inasmuch as two drops of tobacco oil will throw a cat into convulsions. No! The Bible teaches temperance in good things; total abstinence from bad things!We never hear a man, or a woman for that matter, talking about “temperance in all things” when we know it is in self-defense of the tippling habit, but we are reminded of the minister who dwelt in the Highlands of Scotland in the day when tippling was also permitted to the parish preacher. This particular pastor found one of his parishioners drunk one day, and reproved him.

The guilty one confessed, but said that he did not drink as much as the parson. When the preacher expressed surprise, Jim answered, “Ye take a glass of whiskey and water after dinner, and ye take another toddy just before retiring!” “Yes, to help digestion and to promote sleep,” said the minister. “Well,” continued Jim, “that’s just fourteen glasses a week, or about sixty every month.

I only get paid off once a month, and then, if I were to take sixty glasses, they would leave me dead or at least drunk for a week. Now, ye see the only difference is that ye time your drinking better than I do!”In fact, that is the only difference between many a society sister and the poor fellow who could not find his way from the blind pig to his lodging last night—she “times” it better.Tippling is not total abstinence. There are quite a few people who think that regular drinking is wrong, but an occasional tippling, just to celebrate a certain occasion, is not objectionable. The wisest thing I ever heard on the subject of drink was, “Young men, I have a prescription for you which, if you adopt, will make a drunkard’s grave an impossibility; will make even a single spree an impossibility. It is this, never take the first drink!” Can any man imagine what blessing, and even peace, could be brought to our world if its youth had sense enough to see the wisdom of that sentence, and to follow it once for all?A writer from England says, “Some years ago it was my privilege to visit the Haworth parsonage, once the home of the famous Bronte family, the home where Charlotte and her sister wrote their interesting books. The hope of that house was centered in Branwell, the bright, intelligent brother.

The sisters fondly expected that Branwell, by his artistic skill, would make the name of Bronte famous, and they were ready to go from home and earn their own livelihood, that the father might spend the more on Branwell’s education.“Near to the Haworth parsonage was the ‘Black Bull Inn’ and when the landlord was in want of some one to entertain his customers he called in the clergyman’s son. One day he tasted drink for the first time, afterwards tippling a bit, and finally he became a drunkard,” and the writer continues, “That terrible ‘Black Bull’ impaled him upon its horns, tossed him up for sport, then left him bruised and broken, to endure suffering, shame and death.” Insobriety, which often begins with the invitation to a social glass, is the short road to Perdition!“Taste not: touch not” is total abstinence, and it is also Sacred Scripture (Colossians 2:21).

Theodore Cuyler, famed for saying many expressive things, spake the truth concerning the Christian’s attitude toward this whole matter when he said, “Nineteen centuries of sin and shame, and of soul-slaughter, have taught Christ’s Church that she can never be a nursing mother to her children while she mixes the sincere milk of the Gospel with one poison drop of Satan’s brewing.”But the appeal for total abstinence on the part of the sober man is more easy than the practice of the same upon the part of intemperate society. Solomon admits as much, and by this text suggestsTHE Three features of the social glass he holds before us.Its color is a sort of decoy. “Look not thou upon the wine when it is red”. Those of us who hunt ducks know the value of a decoy. It will draw them from the sky within range of the deadly gun. Even a duck has sense enough to learn, after he has been touched by a few shot, that he is not to tarry around everything that is attractive, that he is not to seek social fellowship at the possible cost of life. Drinking men and women know less than ducks; they have seen the slain by the thousands round about the cup of red wine, and yet they settle beside them, to lay their lips to the same!Its sparkle is also insidious. “When it sparkleth in the cup”. Perhaps we have not stopped to think what the foam that gathers on the beer, or the sparkle that arises in the wine cup, suggests?

People sometimes say that if God did not want them to drink, He would not have made liquor. God never made alcohol.

He is the Author of life not of Death. The latter is the devil’s work, and alcohol is always not only death, but degradation.Dr. A. J. Gordon says, “Chemists pronounce that fermentation is death,” and he refused on that account to have any fermented wine administered in his church in connection with the sacred communion service. What chemists pronounce, human experience abundantly attests. Sparkling liquors have sent men and women to the most disreputable graves ever seen upon the face of the earth. “Look not thou upon the wine when it is red”.Its smooth taste is also a temptation. In old Kentucky where I grew up, they had a custom of keeping whiskey for a long time, contending that it grew more oily in the course of years.

The Bible speaks of “the oil of gladness”; intemperance tells the story of “the oil of sorrow.” And what a sorrow it is! The mother who sits over a card-table, tippling between turn and tricks, little imagines the harvest of sorrow which she may be sowing; and the father who is only fitted for duties by the stimulus of a toddy, takes a path, which, if the lads follow, will land them in the pit. I had an enclosed card from a friend a day or two ago, on the end of which was pasted a little clipping to the little three-year-old in the house, “Come in here now; I want you to be a good boy to-day. If you are not good you won’t go to Heaven!” To which he replied, “I don’t want to go to Heaven; I want to go with my Father.” And, seriously, that father whose steps lead to intemperance, may one day find himself being tracked to hell by the very babe who was the joy of his young manhood, the hope of his mature years, but who will become, under his intemperate tutelage, the occasion of his “weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth” through all eternity.The result of tippling is additional temptation. When Solomon said, “Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it sparkleth in the cup, when it goeth down smoothly” he plainly suggested the circumstance that there is no stopping place for the man or woman who once becomes at all intemperate. This truth—it is hard to get into the head.

The average man or woman begins life with the conceit of personal superiority and says, “I can quit when I want to.” I listened to a man in Kentucky who told me proudly that he had quit. In proof of his established position he said, “A few days since a couple of my old friends caught me in front of a saloon and dragged me up to the bar and filled a glass for me.

When it was full to the brim, I said, “Gentlemen, you can put a $1,000 bill under it, if you want to and it will not tempt me.” But in less than six months that man was back to his cups again.Campbell Morgan, in one of his sermons, paints the power of intemperance, when once a man has fallen into that custom. He was a member of Morgan’s congregation, a fellow of splendid parts, who now and then broke loose and went on a drunk. After one of these drinking bouts Mr. Morgan called upon him to cease from this evil custom. Looking upon Morgan with disdain in his face— the mark not of unkindness, but of inward agony, he said, “Mr. Morgan, what is the good of your talking to me?

You don’t know anything about this passion for drink; you don’t know what it means! When the thirst is on me, if you put a glass of wine on that table, and standing on the other side of it, you told me that if I touched it you would shoot me, and I knew that hell lay the other side of the bullet, I would drink that wine!” And, as Morgan remarked, “That is not a mere fanaticism.

There is many a man in that condition.”The work of the Church of God then, is largely with youth. Our business is not so much the reformation of men as their proper formation; not so much getting them out of sin as keeping them out of temptation, and the business of the man who uses his brain is not that of devising schemes for the cure of the liquor habit, but that of resisting the insidious temptation of the social cup which may be passed by the dainty, dimpled and diamond-bedecked hand of a sister; which may be set at the side of the plate in the father’s house, which may be passed about when you are spending a social evening, or which may be in its more accustomed setting of the accursed saloon. “Look not thou upon the wine …. turn from it, pass away”! But Solomon has not ceased his injunction as yet.It remains for him to describeTHE “At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder”. Strong drink is the occasion of all sorrow. It matters little whether it be physical disability, moral degradation, or spiritual disaster, strong drink can accomplish each and everyone. An old tramp, tousled and grimy, used to peddle on the Bowery the following poem with these words—“Not copyrighted—no owner—but the Truth” “He took a bottle up to bed, Drank whisky hot each night, Drank cocktails in the morning, But never could get light. He shivered in the evening, And always had the blues, Until he took a bowl or two— But he never blamed the booze.

“His joints were full of rheumatiz His appetite was slack, He had pains between his shoulders, And chills ran down his back, He suffered from insomnia, And at night he couldn’t snooze He said it was the climate— But never blamed the booze.

“His constitution was run down— At least, that’s what he said— His legs were swelled each morning, And he often had swelled head. He tackled beer, wine, whiskey, And if they didn’t fuse He blamed it to dyspepsia— But he never blamed the booze.

“He said he couldn’t sleep at nights, And always had bad dreams; He claimed he always laid awake Till early sunrise beams. He thought it was malaria— Alas, ’twas but a ruse— He blamed it onto everything— But he never blamed the booze.

“His liver needed scraping, And his kidneys had the gout; He swallowed lots of bitters, Till at last he cleaned them out. His legs were swelled with dropsy, Till he had to cut his shoes; He blamed it to the doctors— But he never blamed the booze.

“Then he had the tremens, And he tackled rats and snakes; First he had the fever, And then he had the shakes. At last he had a funeral, And the mourners had the blues, And the epitaph they carved for him was— ‘He never blamed the booze.’” Describe for me any grief that has overtaken man to break his heart, darken his character, embrute his nature, and bury him in a disreputable grave, and I will bring to you ten thousand instances in which strong drink has done the same. It has dried up the milk of human kindness; it has distorted the features of the face; it has befoiled the intellect; it has bedraggled the appearance; it has broken the heart; it has banished hope; it has turned beautiful homes into terrible hells; it has made loving wives living, cowardly slaves; and incited in the breasts of little children a fear of father and mother. No form of poverty but it has imposed; no conceivable disgrace but it has wrought; no grave so dark but it has dug a deeper one; no death so dismal but the death of its victims has exceeded it; no soul so deeply destroyed in hell but it has sent to lower depths.It incites to all social vice. Solomon realized that so long ago as his day; and you will notice that he precedes this appeal to total abstinence by the description of the harlot, and follows it by an enumeration of those social vices which are today undermining state and nation. At this present moment the drinking place, run in violation of all law, is associated with every conceivable sin—lust, robbery, murder; these find the drinking place an incubator.We are compelled, therefore, to believe as Dr. George Lorimer once said, “This incessant whitewashing, dressing, and cookering of sin, is a snare and a curse.

The man who wittingly furnishes a drunkard with drink is vile enough to please Satan and all his impish satellites, but his wickedness detracts nothing from the crime of him who willingly becomes his victim. We have no more right to say ‘The poor adulterer,’ or ‘the poor murderer,’ than ‘the poor drunkard,’ Why should we fondle the former while we decry the latter?

May they not all have inherited tendencies, weaknesses, infirmities? Why should the theory of disease be made so much of in the one case, and be so lightly regarded in the others? Evidently an unfair discrimination is made by some persons in favor of the drunkard as against other transgressors of God’s law; but in my judgment, founded on Holy Writ, they stand on a common level of criminality; and while our pity should be equally given to all in our desire to recover them from their wickedness and misery, our firm condemnation should be equally expressed against all in the exercise of the same Christlike desire.”“Seneca,” he continues, “defines drunkenness as ‘Voluntary madness,’ Douglas Jerrold described it as the ‘epitome of all crime.’ While Shakespeare rivals them all in his sharp judgment, ‘Every inordinate cup is unblessed, and the ingredient is a devil.’”The day we preach to young men that drinking is not a disease, but is the devil’s scheme for their utter destruction; and the day we tell our society women that their tippling customs are a disgust to all decent men and an offense to a righteous God, we will have at last exploited the theory that is at once true and looks to the total abstinence demanded by our text. When, years ago, the saloons were driven out of Atlanta, Ga., gambling ceased, harlots quit the streets, policemen were almost out of a job; but the illegal sale of liquor will never come to an end as long as private tippling is indulged and defended. The blind pig is only the post-graduate work for those who have had their primary training in private parties, where the wine cup was socially approved and employed.The end is the serpent’s bite—death! I have been told by people in the South that there is no more agonizing death than that which results from the venom of the adder or viper.

I know, and you know, that in human experience, there is no death so agonizing as that which results from strong drink, and that agony is increased in proportion to the wealth of the character destroyed. Years ago, when I was pastor in New Albany, Ind., I aided Dr.

Cloakey a bit in gathering statistics for his little volume “Dying at the Top.” You may remember the instance of J. J. Talbot, I have employed it in this pulpit and published it in another volume, but I do not want to conclude to-night with the recital of such an incident lest I leave discouragement upon some man, or some woman, upon whom the drink habit has a hold. I believe there is salvation from all sin—from even this sin. There are men in the membership of this church who a few years since were utterly hopeless. Strong drink had so far discouraged their spirits that they regarded hell as inevitable.

Today they walk the streets in perfect sobriety; no lips can sing songs of greater joy than those which well up from their hearts. They knew once what it was to be discouraged, they know now what it is to be redeemed!Ernest Gordon, in his life of his father, refers to -that marvelous dream in which Dr.

Gordon thought he saw Jesus enter his church and sit in Pew No. 40. And Ernest says, “Directly behind that pew, next to the door, is where, not in a dream, but in sad reality, father found the lost sheep. He had not strayed in by accident; he had been bleating about the fold for some hours, with the vague hope of finding help. But Satan, with the premonition that he was about to be deprived of his prey, had made a last desperate effort to retain him.” “Call a policeman. Take him away to the lockup,” would no doubt have been the words of some, but not so with that gracious pastor, he pled with God and by His power undertook and accomplished the impossible; and Ernest says, “That wretched specimen of ruined humanity became through the miracle of conversion, a most extraordinary example of the transforming and sustaining power of God’s Spirit. For seventeen long years the man here referred to has, in the Divine strength, been kept from falling.

The slave was freed, his family reunited in Christian fellowship. No testimony has been more eloquent, because of its evident truth and because of its note of thankfulness, than this man’s, so unfailingly given in the evening meetings of the church.

In season and out of season, at the shop and among the squalid wrecks at mission meetings, has he borne witness to God’s presence. And even on Boston Common, where Whitfield preached to the multitudes of an earlier generation with such power that tears might be seen on every cheek, the pitiable drunkard, now clean and whole and in his right mind, may be found on warm afternoons in the leafy months, setting forth the Gospel of Christ to the motley crowds about him.”Aye, yes, degraded man; you may Le redeemed! My poor sister, long praying for your husband, he may be redeemed! My sorrowing mother, praying for your boy, he may be redeemed!