Basic HTML Version
Public-Health Problem
37
concerned, his appetite is uncontrollable. He cannot be reasoned
with or persuaded to deny himself.—
The Ministry of Healing, 344
.
Body and Soul in Slavery
—Drinking houses are scattered all
over the cities and towns.... The traveler enters the public house with
his reason, with ability to walk in an upright manner; but look at
him as he leaves. The luster is gone from his eye. The power to
walk uprightly is gone; he reels to and fro like a ship at sea. His
reasoning power is paralyzed, the image of God is destroyed. The
poisoning, maddening draft has left a brand upon him.... Body and
soul he is in slavery, and he cannot distinguish between right and
wrong. The liquor dealer has put his bottle to his neighbor’s lips,
and under its influence he is full of cruelty and murder, and in his
madness actually commits murder.
He is brought before an earthly tribunal, and those who legalized
the traffic are forced to deal with the results of their own work. They
authorized by law the giving to this man a draft that would turn him
from a sane man into a madman, and yet now it is necessary for
them to send him to prison and to the gallows for his crime. His
wife and children are left in destitution and poverty, to become the
[38]
charge of the community in which they live. Soul and body the man
is lost,—cut off from earth, and with no hope of heaven....
No Strength to Resist Temptation
—The victims of the drink
habit become so maddened under the influence of liquor that they
are willing to sell their reason for a glass of whisky. They do not
keep the commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before
Me.” Their moral power is so weakened that they have no strength
to resist temptation, and their desire for drink is so strong that it
eclipses all other desires, and they have no realization of the fact
that God requires them to love Him with all their hearts. They are
practical idolaters; for whatever alienates the affections from the
Creator, whatever weakens and deadens moral power, usurps His
throne, and receives the service that is due to Him alone. In all these
vile idolatries Satan is worshiped.
He who tarries at the wine is playing the game of life with Satan.
He it is who made evil men his agents, so that those who begin the
drink habit may be made into drunkards. He has his plans laid that
when the brain is confused with liquor, he will drive the drunkard
to desperation, and cause him to commit some atrocious crime. In