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206
Temperance
Licenses are granted on the plea that they may bring a revenue
to the public treasury. But what is this revenue when compared
with the enormous expense incurred for the criminals, the insane,
the paupers, that are the fruit of the liquor traffic! A man under the
influence of liquor commits a crime; he is brought into court; and
those who legalized the traffic are forced to deal with the result of
their own work. They authorized the sale of the draft that would
make a sane man mad; and now it is necessary for them to send the
man to prison or to the gallows, while often his wife and children
are left destitute, to become the charge of the community in which
they live.
Considering only the financial aspect of the question, what folly
it is to tolerate such a business! But what revenue can compensate
for the loss of human reason, for the defacing and deforming of the
image of God in man, for the ruin of children, reduced to pauperism
and degradation, to perpetuate in their children the evil tendencies
of their drunken fathers?—
The Ministry of Healing, 342-344
.
What Prohibition May Accomplish
—The man who has
formed the habit of using intoxicants is in a desperate situation.
His brain is diseased, his will power is weakened. So far as any
power in himself is concerned, his appetite is uncontrollable. He
cannot be reasoned with or persuaded to deny himself. Drawn into
the dens of vice, one who has resolved to quit drink is led to seize
the glass again, and with the first taste of the intoxicant every good
resolution is overpowered, every vestige of will destroyed.... By
legalizing the traffic, the law gives its sanction to this downfall of
the soul, and refuses to stop the trade that fills the world with evil.
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Must this always continue? Will souls always have to struggle for
victory, with the door of temptation wide open before them? Must
the curse of intemperance forever rest like a blight upon the civilized
world? Must it continue to sweep, every year, like a devouring fire
over thousands of happy homes? When a ship is wrecked in sight of
shore, people do not idly look on. They risk their lives in the effort
to rescue men and women from a watery grave. How much greater
the demand for effort in rescuing them from the drunkard’s fate!
It is not the drunkard and his family alone who are imperiled by
the work of the liquor seller, nor is the burden of taxation the chief
evil which his traffic brings on the community. We are all woven