whiskey; though, according to their own
confession, they have found it hard living with. Their rum and their
whiskey have cost them double and treble their other taxes--their sons
have become vile, their workmen turbulent, their tools have been broken,
and many of themselves are already sinking under its enfeebling
influence.

With such it is hard to reason. They have tried but one side, and are
incapable of judging the case. We can only tell them there is no danger.
Not a particle of nourishment does spirit afford them. The hard drinker
totters as he walks. The poor inebriate can neither stand nor go. We can
point them to hundreds and thousands of their own profession, honest
men, who solemnly testify that they are healthier and stronger, can
perform more labor, and endure the frosts of winter and heat of summer
better without it than with it. We can ask them whether they fully
believe that the God of heaven, a God of love, has put them under the
dire necessity of using daily an article which, with such awful
certainty, makes drunkards; and whether, when he has said, Woe to him
that giveth his neighbor drink, he has said, too, you must all drink it;
it is necessary for you. But such never can be taught and convinced but
by experience; and to such we would say, Try it for yourselves.

Our next opposition, gentlemen, is from a band clothed in
white--professors of our holy religion--enlisted soldiers of Christ,
engaged to every work of benevolence: they come--O tell it not in
Gath!--to intercede for the monster, and oppose our enterprise. Is not
this, you ask, a libel? Alas, too often, reports of temperance societies
tell of opposition from professors of religion.

What can be the meaning of this? Has not intemperance been the greatest
curse to the church? Has it not caused her to bleed at every pore? And
have not her members cried to heaven that the destroyer might perish?
And now, when God has put into their hands a weapon by which it may at
once be exterminated, will they hesitate? Will they hang back? Will they
say, we cannot make the sacrifice? O where lies this astonishing
witchery? What has put the church to sleep? What has made her angry at
the call to come out from the embrace of her deadliest foe? O what has
he, who drinks the cup of the Lord, to do with the cup of devils? Does
he need it to make him serious or prayerful, or to enable him better to
understand the word of God, or bear reproach for Christ, or di