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The Ministry of Health and Healing
Even though you make many prayers, I will not hear.
Your hands are full of blood.’”
Isaiah 1:11-15.
Drunkards are capable of better things. They have been entrusted
with talents with which to honor God and bless the world, but fellow
humans have laid a snare for their souls. They have built themselves
up by degrading others, living in luxury while the poor victims
whom they have robbed live in poverty and wretchedness. But God
will call to account those who helped speed drunkards to ruin. He
who rules in the heavens has not lost sight of the first cause or the
last effect of drunkenness. He who cares for the sparrow and clothes
the grass of the field will not pass by those who have been formed
in His own image, purchased with His own blood. He will heed
their cries. God marks all this wickedness that perpetuates crime
and misery.
The world and the church may have approval for the person who
has gained wealth by degrading the human soul. They may smile
upon the one by whom men and women are led down step by step in
the path of shame and degradation. But God notes it all and renders
a just judgment. The liquor seller may be termed by the world a
good businessman, but the Lord says, “Woe unto him.” He will be
charged with the hopelessness, the misery, the suffering, brought
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into the world by the liquor traffic. He will have to answer for the
want and woe of the mothers and children who have suffered for
lack of food and clothing and shelter and who have buried all hope
and joy. He will have to answer for the souls he has sent unprepared
into eternity. And those who sustain the liquor seller in his work
are sharers in his guilt. To them God says, “Your hands are full of
blood.”
License Laws
The licensing of the liquor traffic, it is argued, tends to restrict
its evil. But the licensing of the traffic places it under the protection
of law. The government sanctions its existence and thus fosters the
evil that it professes to restrict. Under the protection of license laws,