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Chapter 1—An Incentive to Crime
Crime Is in the Land
—In these days when vice and crime of
every form are rapidly increasing, there is a tendency to become so
familiar with existing conditions that we lose sight of their cause and
of their significance. More intoxicating liquors are used today than
have ever been used heretofore. In the horrible details of revolting
drunkenness and terrible crime, the newspapers give but a partial
report of the story of the resultant lawlessness. Violence is in the
land.—
Drunkenness and Crime, 3
.
The Testimony of the Judiciary
—The relation of crime to in-
temperance is well understood by men who have to deal with those
who transgress the laws of the land. In the words of a Philadelphia
judge: “We can trace four fifths of the crimes that are committed to
the influence of rum. There is not one case in twenty where a man is
tried for his life, in which rum is not the direct or indirect cause of
the murder. Rum and blood, I mean the shedding of blood, go hand
in hand.”—
Drunkenness and Crime, 7
.
High Percentage of Crime Attributable to Liquor
—Nine
tenths of those who are taken to prison are those who have learned
to drink.—
The Review and Herald, May 8, 1894
.
Sequence of Drinking and Crime
—When the appetite for spir-
ituous liquor is indulged, the man voluntarily places to his lips the
draft which debases below the level of the brute him who was made
in the image of God. Reason is paralyzed, the intellect is benumbed,
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the animal passions are excited, and then follow crimes of the most
debasing character.—
Testimonies for the Church 3:561
.
Why Alcohol and Crime Are Related
—Those who frequent
the saloons that are open to all who are foolish enough to tamper
with the deadly evil they contain, are following the path that leads to
eternal death. They are selling themselves, body, soul, and spirit, to
Satan. Under the influence of the drink they take, they are led to do
things from which, if they had not tasted the maddening drug, they
would have shrunk in horror. When they are under the influence of
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