laid down their lives rather than disobey. They did not commit
mortal sin, and say, "Oh! it is nothing. I will just swing the
censer to that image, or offer that sacrifice, for the fire is
too hot, or the sword is too keen, but I will still remain a
Christian in my heart." No, indeed! They were not Christians of
this sort; but they suffered by the fire, and by the sword, and
from the wild beasts, and all kinds of cruel deaths, and thus
manfully they earned the kingdom of heaven. These were
Christians; and they teach us what that sacred name of Christian
means.
{67}
What kind of Christians are we? Let each one ask himself this
question: Do I come up to the standard? Am I worthy of the name?
Have I any real, well-grounded hope of salvation? Am I, this
moment, in a state of salvation or of damnation? Have I the
principle, the fixed, well-grounded principle, which ought to
govern all the actions of a Christian? Have I considered this
matter, and looked it steadily in the face?
These are important questions, and now is the time to answer
them. If you have been Christian in name heretofore, but heathen
in life, do not let this Lent go by without a thorough change.
Arise out of this miserable state, and put on the Lord Jesus
Christ. Devote the whole of this Lent to this purpose. Say--I
have a most important business to transact, and it must be done
at once, before the Lent is over. Turn away from all sin with
horror, and to God with your whole heart. Drop all foolish
amusement. Drop all sinful company. Drop all excess in eating and
drinking. Drop, as far as possible, all anxiety about business,
or any worldly affairs, and give your attention to your poor
soul. Think, oh! think of eternity, of death, of judgment, of the
punishments denounced upon sinners. Do not let the thoughts of
these things leave your minds. Force yourselves to think upon
them--it is all-important to you. And pray: cry to God for mercy.
{68}
The promise is sure: "Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye
shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." Make such a
use of this season of penance as God and the Church wish you to,
and you will find it the best, the most profitable, the most
joyful of your whole life.
You will exclaim--I was poor, wretched, blind, now I see, now I
am rich in grace, now I am indeed happy, for God has spoken the
word of peace to my soul. Never, never more will I be so
ungrateful as to offend Him again.
-------------------
{69}
Sermon V.
The Sins And Miseries Of The Dram-seller.
Habacuc II. 15.
__"Woe to him that giveth drink to his friend,
and presenteth his gall, and maketh him drunk."__
I once made a journey to a strange country; and so utterly at
variance did all the social customs and personal lives of its
inhabitants seem to be with the ordinary habits of people of this
world, that I thought for a moment I must have stumbled upon
beings who had been transplanted from some other planet.
Among other remarkable features in their character, I noticed
that, instead of being as ambitious of obtaining a high
reputation amongst their neighbors as men generally are, the
inhabitants of that country were striving, as it appeared to me,
during every leisure hour they could spare from their daily
labor, to lower themselves in the estimation of others and become
degraded. Instead of riches, they sought poverty; instead of
learning, ignorance; instead of health, disease; and a premature
death rather than a long life.
{70}
The means to which they resorted to bring this about seemed
equally strange. By a sort of general consent, a certain number
of them were chosen to absorb all the respectability, property,
and comfort of the rest. These individuals distributed themselves
about in different quarters of the towns, and you could easily
have recognized their habitations from the rest for being the
finer buildings, which increased in size as the surrounding
dwellings of their neighbors became the more squalid, desolate,
and uninhabitable. They, with their wives and children, also
added the more to their comfort and luxury as the families about
them became the nakeder and the hungrier. So far was all this
carried, that, I observed, not a few, after having given up all
their own, would often go and steal from others, and carry not
only money, but even articles of furniture and clothing, to these
men, who seemed also to be very popular persons and great
favorites, if I might judge of the number of their clients and
the pleasure apparently derived from long visits to them, to the
loss of the company of their friends and families, and of their
natural rest after wearisome days of toil.
I wondered greatly at all this, and asked my guide to explain it
to me. "Do you not see," said he, "that these rich and powerful
persons are in possession of a wonderful elixir?
{71}
It is said to produce happiness for those who may obtain a little
of it, and these people are so anxious to be happy that they
eagerly give up all they have, and all they hope for in this
world and the next, in order to get some of it." "I do not see,"
I said, "that it makes those who use it happy; on the contrary,
they seem to me to be really bartering all their means of
happiness away, and getting nothing but misery in exchange." "You
need only look around you upon those comfortless homes and
diseased men and women, and glance at their daily lives, to
confirm the truth of your observation," he replied. "Then these
poor, misguided souls are only grasping at shadows of happiness,
and losing the reality in the meanwhile?" "You have spoken the
truth," said he; "and you need not be surprised at it, for the
country you are in is called the Land of the Shadow of
Happiness." "I will tarry no longer here," said I, "for the sight
sickens me. I will return quickly to my own country." "So you
may," said my guide; "but the seller of the shadow of happiness
lives and thrives with you also." "Does he?" I asked. "And what
may he be called?"
{72}
"The Dram-seller."
I awoke from my reverie, and found myself standing, not in a
strange land, but in the streets of my own city, before a fine
brick building, ornamented with cut stone, proudly rearing its
showy front, and looking down with contempt upon the humble homes
of the poor that surrounded it; and glittering in the sunshine
shone the gilded sign-board over its doors, "IMPORTED WINES AND
LIQUORS."
Yes, the dram-seller lives and thrives with us, too--the vender
of the shadow of happiness, and dealer in ignorance, disease,
degradation, poverty, ruined reputations, strifes, jealousies,
insanity, delirium tremens, and dishonored and early graves. The
drunkards whom he makes are wretched enough, and commit, through
their intemperance, the most grievous of crimes; but I know not
if the sins and miseries of the dram-seller be not worse and far
more hopeless of reparation than theirs. For in one it is often
the result of weak and uneducated minds, unable to use God's
gifts in moderation, or to bear up against the trials and
temptations of this life; but the other must be a cold,
heartless, calculating, money-worshipping soul, who can thus
fatten himself upon the sinful appetites of others, and from year
to year defraud his neighbor by the sale of his vile, adulterated
trash, and take the hard-earned dollars of his customers in
exchange for it without a blush.
{73}
The dram-seller and his traffic is a well-known and prominent
rock of scandal in the community, whether it be the secret sale
from one barrel of beer or liquor in the earth-floored shanty, or
the flourishing business of a well-stocked and gilded saloon.
What are the sins of the dram-seller? He sins against justice and
against charity.
He sins against justice. To all who have examined the matter, it
is a well-established fact that in every case this business is
necessarily connected with the sale of false, adulterated
articles, and with an unreasonable, unrighteous, and usurious
profit. And the only excuse any one connected with it has ever
been able to offer is, that they are obliged, if they sell at
all, to keep cheap liquors for poor people, or that, if the
article is adulterated, it is none of their business, for they
sell it, either just as they purchase it from large dealers, or,
at the worst, only add a certain modicum of water, as they say
__the raw spirit might do the poor people harm!__
But they know the fact as well as I know it, that scarcely one
drop is dealt out by them that is not more or less adulterated;
that their so-called wines never saw the juice of the grape; that
their brandies, and rums, and cordials are all composed of proof
spirit, coloring matter, drugs of the most poisonous character
and deadly strength, and water. I am in possession of a document
circulated privately among these manufacturers of "imported wines
and liquors," which purports to give recipes for making any kind
of wine, liquor, or cordial you can name, with the address of
certain houses where the drugs I have alluded to may be obtained.
{74}
A friend was invited by a dram-seller to visit his vaults. Taking
out the bung of a large hogshead, he drew up from the liquor by a
cord a gauze bag of very small dimensions, and, with a peculiar
wink of his eye, remarked, "You see, that's the way we manage
it." "Oh! that's the way you manage it, is it?" the friend
replied. "I am very glad to know it."
The cheap materials from which the drink ordinarily sold is
manufactured, and the large adulteration with water made on their
own premises by the retailers, enables them to make the most
exorbitant, usurious profits. The popular wonder is, how so many
can carry on the business and make money by it. That is the
reason.
If the character of the drink sold, or the adulteration of it,
were always harmless to the consumer, there might be a semblance
of palliation to this iniquity, though no just excuse even then;
for in such a case the consumer does not get either what he
supposes or the worth of his money.
{75}
But when we see the dreadful effects produced by these liquors,
the morbid cravings which they engender in those who partake of
them, the extra-ordinary prostration of mind and body caused by a
fit of intoxication on them, the physical and moral degradation
resulting from their constant use, there can be no excuse for the
dispensing of such noxious articles, and he who practises it is
guilty of a fraud--a fraud of the basest and most criminal
character upon the people, and makes himself a fit object for the
scorn and righteous indignation of a just community.
Am I not right in saying that the dram-seller sins against
justice?
2. The dram-seller sins against charity. He sins against himself,
his spiritual and temporal good, and that of his family.
The business is a proximate occasion of sin, and good morals can
never allow one to remain in that state. In the first place, it
is a proximate occasion of the sin of drunkenness for himself and
for the members of his household. The necessity of pleasing and
attracting his customers obliges him often to treat and be
treated during the day. The effect of this constant tippling is
very visible in the persons of those who have been some time in
the business, and the number of those who fall into the sin of
drunkenness from the proximity of the occasion furnished by the
sale is very great. It is not an unfrequent occurrence for them
to take the pledge, in order to prevent themselves from drinking
with their customers.
{76}
Their wives, children, and clerks are exposed to the same
occasion of sin. The language and character of the frequenters of
the dram-shop are demoralizing to the last degree, not only to
the man, but to the wife and children, and pave the way to every
conceivable crime.
How many a young man has engaged in this vile traffic, who
commenced it sober and virtuous, but who, by the occasions it
presented, soon became a degraded and irreclaimable sot! And when
he first thought of going into it, how his conscience reproved
him, how often he reflected that this was not a fit thing for a
good Catholic and practical Christian. When he met the priest in
the street the day or so after the opening of his store or
saloon, how he reddened up to the eyes, and was glad if he
perchance passed him without observing him his pastor, whose nod,
and smile, and shake of the hand, and cheery "God bless you!" he
used to be so anxious and happy to have from the hour of
childhood. But now his uneasy conscience keeps him away
altogether from the Sacraments, and often from Mass. If people
enquire what has become of him lately, or wonder that he is seen
no longer at the altar, the answer that he "has opened a liquor
store" is deemed a sufficient one.
{77}
And knowing the wrongs from it, I thank God that there is such a
sense of Christian propriety and rectitude in the public
conscience left amongst us, that will deem such, a response a
sufficient one.
I know that, as time goes on, and the greed of gain takes
possession of them, the conscience gets less clamorous: but it is
scarcely ever completely blunted. They are always rather ashamed
of the business, and never mention the fact of their being
engaged in it in an open, frank manner. A person, whom I did not
know, called upon me once to consult me upon an affair, and I had
occasion to ask him his profession. He replied, evasively, "I am
a member of the ---- Convention." "But your business is--"
"Oh!--ah! (hesitating) a grocery and liquor store."
But the sin which adds the last and most grievous stain upon the
dram-seller and his traffic is the heinous breach of Christian
charity against his neighbor. He wrongs his neighbor in his
property, his person, his soul, his family, and in all his social
relations. He makes bad husbands, bad wives, immoral children.
And all good citizens and practical Catholics will bear me out in
the assertion that the dram-shop is the gulf which swallows the
hard earnings of the laboring classes; the health, property,
happiness, life, and well-being of thousands of the community;
and is the responsible first cause of the increase of pauperism,
and crime, and the consequent burden of taxation upon the State.
{78}
Recent statistics show that, in the cities of New York and
Boston, there is a dram-shop for every one hundred inhabitants;
and that, in Boston alone, the arrests for public drunkenness in
one year were equal to one in ten of the entire population. This
is a horrible state of things. As a contrast, I remember
preaching a mission in a certain town where, by the exertions of
the parish priest, all Catholics, save one, had given up the
traffic. We found the sin of drunkenness in that place
comparatively rare. No one who has examined the matter will
pretend to dispute the fact that drunkenness increases in the
same ratio with the multiplication of the dram shop. It is
therefore a public nuisance, a crying scandal amongst us, a
proximate occasion of sin, an iniquitous trade in which no good
Christian can engage without putting the salvation of his soul in
peril.
Such or such a man and his family whom you could name were happy
enough before he got enticed into the dram-shop. It was a sight
to make the angels smile to witness the clean, bright home that
man found on his return from business. Every thing was there to
cheer him. The wife welcomed him with an unclouded brow. The
children dropped their playthings to run and embrace him. If he
had not luxury about him, he had plenty and comfort. Plenty of
furniture, plenty of clothes for his work, and a new suit for the
Sunday morning.
{79}
The table wanted nothing but the blessing upon the food whenever
the meal time came. The doctor's bill never came so very heavy,
and, if one of the family happened to be ill a little longer than
common, he felt a worthy pride in being able to go and pay the
doctor at his office, and exchange thanks. His name was good in
the bank whenever he wanted money; and, as year by year rolled
by, he was getting up in the world. Men talked of his "good
luck," as they called it. Friends whispered, about election
times, that he would make a capital fellow for this or that
vacant office in his township. No family stood higher in respect,
if they did in wealth, at the parish church than his. Happy and
beloved at home in the bosom of his family; honored and respected
abroad; at peace with God and man; what fiend will dare bring his
foul presence within the circle of so much joy? Alas! for the
dark day that he was bidden by the dram-seller to "be neighborly
and come in and take a friendly glass." Alas! for the fatal hour
when the tempter invited him to "come round of an evening, and be
sociable, and not to be such a man-baby tied to his wife's
apron-strings." Now it begins the oft-told, woeful tale. A
hurried supper, and out for the evening. Later and later he
returns, with the signs of liquor on him. He used to try to hide
it at first by washing his mouth with water and taking a smart
walk. But he takes too much now to care for Appearances; nor is
he able for the walk.
{80}
In order to smooth over matters, he takes an opportunity on his
wife's birthday, and brings out the bottle and proposes her
health, and makes her drink with him; and then a little taste of
the sugared drops at the bottom of the glass for the children. It
is brought out every day now; and when the night comes, the wife
sits up late, goes often to the window, watching his return, and
there's a heavy weight at her heart that forces from her eyes
many a bitter tear. The plague marches fast. He is drunk every
Saturday night, and seldom goes to Mass. Work or business is
neglected, and the time spent at the bar-room. The money leaks
away extraordinarily fast. Articles of furniture are
pawned--first for food, soon for drink. The wife helps on
destruction by trying to drown her sorrow in a glass of liquor
now and then. The best Sunday suit and the new bonnet and shawl
are no longer in the wardrobe. The children's bare feet peep out
of old shoes, and a strange sadness and silence has come over the
once merry little group. They seem to be getting old-fashioned in
their ways, and less like children. Is that the reason, I wonder,
why there are no new toys and presents now at Christmas or at
Easter, as in the days gone by? Soon comes debt.
{81}
He had to go in debt to procure the necessaries of life, but
spared a little of the borrowed money to get his daily drams at
the grog-shop. But debt must be paid, and, as he has nothing to
discharge it with, a few days of delay, and there is a sheriff's
execution in the house. All the furniture swept, away! From bad
to worse, from one step to an other: down goes the family to
beggary and vice. Frequent quarrels, blows, and curses pass
between husband and wife, the children and their parents. He gets
an odd job to do now and then, for he is turned out of his
regular situation, and drinks a part of the wages, not at his old
friend's, but at a low beer-shop; for one night, after the sale
of his house and lot, he demanded trust for liquor; but, as he
had spent his last dollar, his friend, the dram-seller, told him,
"__he__ kept a decent place, and wouldn't have any drunkards
around __him__," and kicked him out of doors, bidding him go
home and take care of his wife and family! The wife begs around
for broken victuals, with a downcast face, and her old hood
pulled far over her forehead to hide a black eye and her untidy
hair.
The boy, his eldest boy, that was to be sent to college, was sent
up last week to prison for shoplifting; and the girl--where is
she gone? Answer me, dram-shop, where is the girl gone? And now I
have more to ask of you, O mouth of hell! Where is the house and
lot gone to?
{82}
Where is the furniture gone to? Where now are the good husband,
the happy father, the thrifty wife, the faithful mother, the
innocent children, the food on the table, the fire on the hearth,
the comfort and joy and good name and trust and neighborly
confidence, and the good Christians, the pious Catholics, that
used to be at Mass every Sunday morning in their places? Answer
me. Do you not hear a righteous God, your judge, demanding in
tones of wrath, "Dram-shop, where are my children? You--you have
robbed me of my beautiful flock!" O cruel dram-seller! O
dram-shop! scandal of our times, look upon the ruin you have
wrought! See the black cloud which hangs over your dwelling. It
is a threatening mass of darkness and woe, made up of heavy
curses, of sighs from broken hearts, the gloom of grievous
bitterness of spirit; and that cloud is pregnant with hidden
lightnings and thunders of the wrath of God descending upon you.
"Woe to him that giveth drink to his friend, and presenteth his
gall, and maketh him drunk, that he may behold him stripped and
naked. Thou art filled with shame instead of glory; drink thou
also, and fall fast asleep; the cup of the right hand of the Lord
shall compass thee, and shameful vomiting shall be on thy glory."
[Footnote 15]
[Footnote 15: Habac. ii. 15, 16.]
{83}
Your sin is the sin of Ephraim, whom the prophet reproved. You
make to yourself an idol of gain. "And Ephraim said, But yet I am
become rich. I have found me an idol: all my labors shall not
find me the iniquity that I have committed." [Footnote 16] To
that idol you have sacrificed men, women, and children, and
brought upon many a wretched soul temporal and eternal
ruin--robbing heaven of saints, and filling up the caverns of
hell.
[Footnote 16: Osec xii. 8.]
[USCCB: Hosea xii. 9.]
Hear what God answers to Ephraim: "I will meet them as a bear
that is robbed of her whelps; I will rend the inner parts of
their bodies, and I will devour them as a lion; the beast of the
field shall tear them." [Footnote 17]
[Footnote 17: Osec xiii. 8.]
[USCCB: Hosea xiii. 8.]
Your very daily walks must be misery to you, one would suppose.
For how can you put on those fine clothes, and see your children
clad in warm coats and caps and shoes, and your wife parading
that beautiful new silk dress and expensive jewelry, when you
know that they were bought with money that ought to have been
used to clothe a family that goes about our streets in
destitution and nakedness so pitiable that it makes the heart
ache? How can you sit down and ask God's blessing upon your
plentifully supplied table, if you ever do it now, when the hand
that gave you the money to purchase all these luxuries snatched
the piece of bread from the mouths of his starving, hungry
children?
{84}
How can you dare go to sleep in your soft, warm bed, listening to
that cutting winter's blast as it goes howling past your windows
down the street, and forces its way in the open crevices of the
drunkard's shanty, freezing the half-clad forms of his neglected
little ones, huddled in the corner upon a filthy wisp of straw?
Have you a human heart yet left beating in your bosom? Do you
know anything of a husband's affection or of a father's love? Oh!
then you must be a miserable man. How do your neighbors speak of
you? "Oh! he's a rum-seller." And the tone in which it is spoken
is a plain index of the contempt they attach to the name. Your
wife is designated as "a rum-seller's wife," and of your children
it is remarked, "Their father sells liquor." And it is a common
reply of many of the most degraded drunkards, that "although they
have drunk pretty hard, they thank God __they__ never sold
liquor."
Can I ask you to quit it? Yes, I can demand of you to quit it.
You admit, and the common sense of the entire community admits,
that those low groggeries, in which drunken bacchanalian orgies
are of daily and nightly occurrence, ought to be stopped, and
that no man who keeps such a place is fit for absolution--that
is, none such can claim the right to the sacraments of the
Church, living or dying; in a word, cannot save his soul if he be
not ready to abandon it.
{85}
But you tell me that your establishment is not of such a
character; you keep a decent house. I would like you to bring me
one single liquor-seller who does not say the very same. The
business is notoriously vicious and hurtful, and success in it is
dependent upon an increase of sin and misery among the people. It
is a stumbling-block in the way of the salvation of men addicted
to drink, and woe be to that man who dares assume the
responsibility for the loss of a soul!
I have a right, then, in the name of the general well-being of
the community, in the name of Christian charity, by virtue of the
warning of our Lord Jesus Christ, that it were "better for a man
to have a mill-stone hanged about his neck, and he be cast into
the depth of the sea, rather than scandalize one of the children
of God," [Footnote 18] to demand of every man who aids, abets, or
by his own act takes part in this abominable scandal, to quit it
on peril of damnation.
[Footnote 18: St. Matt, xviii. 6.]