al
themselves. Even drunkards are now stating it to their fellow-drunkards,
that church-members are not better than they. And to prove it, are
quoting the fact, that although they are not drunkards, and perhaps do
not get drunk, they, for the sake of money, carry on the business of
making drunkards. And are not the men and their business of the same
character? "The deacon," says a drunkard, "will not use ardent spirit
himself: he says, 'It is poison!' But for six cents he will sell it to
me. And though he will not furnish it to his own children, for he says,
'It will ruin them!' yet he will furnish it to mine. And there is my
neighbor, who was once as sober as the deacon himself, but he had a
pretty farm, which the deacon wanted, and for the sake of getting it he
has made him a drunkard. And his wife, as good a woman as ever lived,
has died of a broken heart, because her children would follow their
father." No, you cannot convince even a drunkard, that the man who is
selling him that which he knows is killing him, is any better than the
drunkard himself. Nor can you convince a sober man, that he who, for the
sake of money, will, with his eyes open, make drunkards of sober men, is
any less guilty than the drunkards he makes.

Is this writing upon their employment "Holiness unto the Lord," without
which no one, from the Bible, can expect to be prepared for the holy
joys of heaven? As ardent spirit is a poison which, when used even
moderately, tends to harden the heart, to sear the conscience, to blind
the understanding, to pollute the affections, to weaken and derange and
debase the whole man, and to lessen the prospect of his eternal life, it
is the indispensable duty of each person to renounce it. And he cannot
refuse to do this without becoming, if acquainted with this subject,
knowingly accessory to the temporal and eternal ruin of his fellow-men.
And what will it profit him to gain even the whole world by that which
ruins the soul?

My friend, you are soon to die, and in eternity to witness the
influence, the whole influence, which you exert while on earth, and you
are to witness its consequence in joy or sorrow to endless being.
Imagine yourself now, where you soon will be, _on your death-bed_. And
imagine that you have a full view of the property which you have caused
to be wasted, or which you have gained without furnishing any valuable
equivalent; of the health which you have destroyed, and the characters
which