n the morning of life,
while the dew of youth is yet upon your brow, I beg you to bind the
pledge of total-abstinence as a garland about your character and pray
God to keep you away from the tempter's path.

I wonder that young men will trifle with this great "deceiver." I
wonder too at so much ignorance on the question among intelligent
people. Some years ago after a temperance address a gentleman was
introduced to me as the finest scholar in the city. Next morning we
were on the same train, and referring to the lecture of the evening
before, he said: "I heard your address and was pleased with your
kindly spirit, but I beg to differ with you, believing as I do, that
when properly used, alcoholic liquor as a beverage is good for health
and strength." I felt disappointed to hear a great scholar make such a
statement, but I ventured the reply:

"If that is true God made a mistake, since He made the whole phenomena
of animal life to run by water power. He made it in such abundance it
takes oceans to hold it, rivers and rivulets to carry it to man, bird
and beast, while in all the wide world He never made a spring of
alcohol. If it's good for strength, why not give it to the ox, the
mule and the horse?" It takes a good deal of faith to trust a sober
mule; I'm sure I wouldn't want to trust a drunken one. There is not a
man in my presence who would buy a moderate drinking horse, and no one
would wilfully go through a lot where a drunken dog had right of way.
Yet we license saloons to turn drunken men loose in the street, some
of them as vicious as mad dogs.

Good for strength? When Samson had slain the regiment of Philistines
and was exhausted and athirst; when in his extremity he cried to the
Lord: "Thou hast given this great deliverance into the hand of thy
servant, and now shall I die from thirst." What was done to revive him
and renew his strength? Was strong drink recommended as a stimulant?
The Bible account informs us God "clave an hollow place in the jaw,
and water came thereout." Don't you think if alcoholic liquor had been
intended as a beverage for mankind, the great Creator would have made
a few springs of it somewhere? Bore into the earth you can strike oil,
but you can't strike whiskey. You can find sparkling springs of water
almost everywhere, but nowhere a beer brewery in nature. It's water,
blessed water all the time. On your right it bubbles in the brook; on
your left it leaps and laughs in the cascade; a