with scorn and
contempt, regarding us as shameful and sordid creatures, day and night
bent upon making ourselves surfeited and stupid, possessing neither
reason nor intelligence.

The evil would be more tolerable, more excusable, if drinking and
carousing had any limit, if intoxication were but an occasional
thing--the case of a person inadvertently taking one drink too much,
or of taking a stimulant when tired from excessive labor and worry. We
excuse it in women who may chance to drink a little more at wedding
parties than they are accustomed to at home. But this excessive
guzzling kept up unceasingly day and night, emitting only to be filled
again, is wholly inconsistent with the character of a prince, a
nobleman, a citizen, yes, of a human being, not to mention the life of
a Christian; it is really more in keeping with the nature and work of
swine.

14. Now, when God and all mankind permit you to eat and to drink, to
enjoy good things, not merely what is necessary for actual
subsistence, but in a measure calculated to afford gratification and
pleasure, and you are yet not satisfied with that privilege--when such
is the case, your sordid and gluttonous tendencies are worthy one born
solely to consume beer and wine. But such are the excesses now to be
seen in the courts of princes--the banqueting and the drinking--that
one would think they meant to devour the resources of the country in a
single hour. Lords, princes, noblemen--the entire country, in
fact--are ruined, reduced to beggary, for the particular reason that
God's gifts are so inhumanly wasted and destroyed.

15. As I said before, the evil of drunkenness has, alas, gained such
ascendency as to be past restraint unless the Word of God may exert
some controlling influence among the few, the individuals who are
still human and who would be Christians. The masses will remain as
they are, particularly as the civil government makes no effort to
restrain the evil. It is my opinion that if God does not sometime
check the vice by a special judgment--and until he does it will never
be punished and restrained--even women and children will become
inebriate, and when the last day arrives no Christian will be found
but all souls will descend drunken into the abyss of hell.

16. Let all who desire to be Christians know that it is incumbent upon
them to manifest the virtue of temperance; that drunken sots have no
place among Christians, and cannot be saved until they a