Basic HTML Version
Chapter 27—Evils of the Drug and Liquor Traffic
“‘Woe to him who builds his house by unrighteousness and his
chambers by injustice, ... who says, “I will build myself a wide
house with spacious chambers, and cut out windows for it, paneling
it with cedar and painting it with vermilion.” Shall you reign because
you enclose yourself in cedar? ... Your eyes and your heart are for
nothing but your covetousness, for shedding innocent blood, and
practicing oppression and violence.’”
Jeremiah 22:13-17
.
This scripture pictures the work of those who manufacture and
who sell intoxicating liquor. Their business means robbery. For the
money they receive, no equivalent is returned. Every dollar they add
to their gains brings a curse to the spender.
With a liberal hand, God has bestowed His blessings upon the
human family. If His gifts were wisely used, the world would know
little of poverty or distress! But wickedness has turned His blessings
into a curse. Through greed of gain and the lust of appetite, the
grains and fruits given for our sustenance are converted into poisons
that bring misery and ruin.
Every year millions and millions of gallons of intoxicating
liquors are consumed. Millions upon millions of dollars are spent
to buy wretchedness, poverty, disease, degradation, lust, crime, and
death. For the sake of gain, the liquor dealer sells that which corrupts
and destroys mind and body. He entails on the drunkard’s family
poverty and wretchedness.
When his victim is dead, he does not hesitate to take the very
necessities of life from the destitute family, to pay the drink bill of
the husband and father. The cries of the suffering children, the tears
of the widowed mother only exasperate him. He grows rich on the
[190]
misery of those whom he is leading to perdition.
To a great degree, prostitution, vice, violent crimes, and poverty
are a result of the liquor seller’s work. Like the mystic Babylon of
the Apocalypse, he is dealing in “bodies and souls of men.” Behind
the liquor seller stands the mighty destroyer of souls, and every art
229