A few years have passed, and he is only the wreck of a man. Seating

himself at the game ere he throws the first card, he stakes the last

relic of his wife, and the marriage-ring which sealed the solemn vows

between them. The game is lost, and, staggering back in exhaustion,

he dreams. The bright hours of the past mock his agony, and in his

dreams, fiends, with eyes of fire and tongues of flame, circle about

him with joined hands, to dance and sing their orgies with hellish

chorus, chanting--"Hail! brother!" kissing his clammy forehead until

their loathsome locks, flowing with serpents, crawl into his bosom

and sink their sharp fangs and suck up his life's blood, and coiling

around his heart pinch it with chills and shudders unutterable.

Take warning! You are no stronger than tens of thousands who have, by

this practice, been overthrown. No young man in our cities can escape

being tempted. _Beware of the first beginnings!_ This road is a

down-grade, and every instant increases the momentum. Launch not upon

this treacherous sea. Split hulks strew the beach. Everlasting storms

howl up and down, tossing the unwary crafts into the Hell-gate. I

speak of what I have seen with my own eyes. I have looked off into the

abyss and have seen the foaming, and the hissing, and the whirling

of the horrid deep in which the mangled victims writhed, one

upon another, and struggled, strangled, blasphemed, and died--the

death-stare of eternal despair upon their countenances as the waters

gurgled over them.

To a gambler's death-bed there comes no hope. He will probably die

alone. His former associates come not nigh his dwelling. When the

hour comes, his miserable soul will go out of a miserable life into

a miserable eternity. As his poor remains pass the house where he was

ruined, old companions may look out a moment and say--"There goes the

old carcass--dead at last," but they will not get up from the table.

Let him down now into his grave. Plant no tree to cast its shade

there, for the long, deep, eternal gloom that settles there is shadow

enough. Plant no "forget-me-nots" or eglantines around the spot, for

flowers were not made to grow on such a blasted heath. Visit it not in

the sunshine, for that would be mockery, but in the dismal night, when

no stars are out, and the spirits of darkness come down horsed on the

wind, _then_ visit the grave of the gambler!

SOME OF THE CLUB-HOUSES.

Iniquity never gives a fair fight. It springs out from ambush upon

the unsuspecting. Of the tens of thousands who have fallen into bad

habits, not one deliberately leaped off, but all were caught in some

sly trap. You may have watched a panther or a cat about to take its

prey. It crouches down, puts its mouth between its paws, and is hardly

to be seen in the long grass. So iniquity always crouches down in

unexpected shapes, takes aim with unerring eye, and then springs

upon you with sudden and terrific leap. In secret places and in

unlooked-for shapes it murders the innocent.

Men are gregarious. Cattle in herds. Fish in schools. Birds in flocks.

Men in social circles. You may, by the discharge of a gun, scatter

a flock of quails, or by the plunge of the anchor send apart the

denizens of the sea; but they will gather themselves together again.

If you, by some new power, could break the associations in which men

now stand, they would again adhere. God meant it so. He has gathered

all the flowers and shrubs into associations. You may plant one

"forget-me-not" or "hearts-ease" alone, away off upon the hillside,

but it will soon hunt up some other "forget-me-not" or "hearts-ease."

Plants love company; you will find them talking to each other in the

dew. A galaxy of stars is only a mutual life-insurance company. You

sometimes see a man with no out-branchings of sympathy. His nature is

cold and hard, like a ship's mast, ice-glazed, which the most agile

sailor could never climb. Others have a thousand roots and a thousand

branches. Innumerable tendrils climb their hearts, and blossom all the

way up; and the fowls of heaven sing in the branches.

In consequence of this tendency, we find men coming together in

tribes, in communities, in churches, in societies. Some gather

together to cultivate the arts; some to plan for the welfare of the

State; some to discuss religious themes; some to kindle their mirth;

some to advance their craft. So every active community is divided into

associations of artists, of merchants, of bookbinders, of carpenters,

of masons, of plasterers, of shipwrights, of plumbers. Do you cry out

against it? Then you cry out against a tendency divinely implanted.

Your tirades will accomplish no more than if you should preach to a

busy ant-hill or bee-hive a long sermon against secret societies.

Here we find in our path the oft-discussed question, whether

associations that do their work with closed doors, and admit their

members by pass-words, and greet each other with a secret grip, are

right or wrong. I answer that it depends entirely upon the nature of

the object for which they meet. Is it to pass the hours in revelry,

wassail, blasphemy, and obscene talk, or to plot trouble to the State,

or to debauch the innocent? Then I say, with an emphasis that no man

can mistake, "NO." But is the object the improvement of the mind,

or the enlargement of the heart, or the advancement of art, or

the defence of the government, or the extirpation of crime, or the

kindling of a pure-hearted sociality? Then I say, with just as much

emphasis, "YES."

There is no need that we who plan for the conquest of right over wrong

should publish to all the world our intentions. The general of an

army never sends to the opposing troops information as to the coming

attack. Shall we who have enlisted in the cause of God and humanity

expose our plans to the enemy? No! We will in secret plot the ruin of

all the enterprises of Satan and his cohorts. When they expect us by

day, we will fall upon them by night. While they are strengthening

their left wing, we will double up their right. By a plan of battle

formed in secret conclave, we will come suddenly upon them, crying:

"The sword of the Lord and of Gideon!"

Secrecy of plot and execution are wrong only when the object and

influence are nefarious. Every family is a secret society; every

business firm, and every banking and insurance institution. Those men

who have no capacity to keep a secret are unfit for positions of trust

anywhere. There are thousands of men whose vital need is culturing in

capacity to keep a secret. Men talk too much--and women too. There

is a time to keep silence, as well as a time to speak. Although not

belonging to any of the great secret societies about which there has

been so much violent discussion, I have only words of praise for

those associations which have for their object the reclamation of

inebriates, or like the score of mutual benefit societies, called by

different names, that provide temporary relief for widows and orphans,

and for men incapacitated by sickness or accident for earning a

livelihood.

I suppose there are club-houses in our cities to which men go with

clear consciences, and from which they come after an hour or two

of intellectual talk, and cheerful interview, to enjoy the domestic

circle. But that this is not the character of scores and hundreds of

club-houses we all know. Can I, then, pass this subject by without

exposition of the monstrous evil? There are multitudes who are

unconsciously having their physical, moral, and eternal well-being

endangered by club-room dissipation. Was it right to expose the plot

of Guy Fawkes, by which he would have destroyed the Parliament of

England? And am I wrong in disclosing a peril which threatens not only

your well-being here, but your throne in heaven?

I deplore this ruin the more because this style of dissipation is

taking down our finest men. The admission-fee sifts out the penurious

and takes only those who are called the best fellows. Oh! how changed

you are! Not so kind to your wife as you used to be; not so patient

with your children. Your conscience is not so much at rest. You laugh

more now, and sing louder than once, but are not half so happy. It is

not the public drinking-saloon that is taking you down, nor theatrical

amusements, nor the houses of sin that have cost thousands of other

men their eternity: but it is simply and undeniably your club-room.

You do not make yourself as agreeable in your family as once. You go

home at twelve o'clock with an unnatural flush upon your cheek and

a strange color in your eye that you got at the club. You merely

acknowledge that you feel queer. You say that champagne never

intoxicates; that it only exhilarates, makes the conversation fluent,

shakes up the humor, and has no bad effect except a headache next day.

Be not deceived. Champagne may not, like whiskey, throw a man under

the table; but if, through anything you drink, you gain an unnatural

fluency of speech and glow of feeling, you are simply drunk.

If those imperilled were heartless young men, stingy young men, I

would not be so sorry as I am; but there are many of them generous to

a fault, frank, honest, cheerful, talented. I begrudge the devil such

a prize. After a while these persons will lose all the frankness and

honor for which they are now distinguished. Their countenances will

get haggard, and instead of looking one in the eye when they talk,

they will look down. After a while, when the mother kindly asks, "What

kept you out so late?" they will make no answer, or will say "That is

my business!" They will come cross and befogged to the store and

bank, and ever and anon neglect some duty, and after a while will be

dismissed: and then, with nothing to do, will rise in the morning at

ten o'clock, cursing the servant because the breakfast is cold, and

then go down town and stand on the steps of a fashionable hotel, and

criticise the passers-by. While the young man who was a clerk in a

cellar has come up to be the first clerk, and he who a few years ago

ran errands for the bank has got to be cashier, and thousands of other

young men of the city have gone up to higher and more responsible

positions, he has been going down, until there he passes through the

street with bloated lip, and bloodshot eye, and staggering step, and

hat mud-spattered and set sidewise on a shock of greasy hair, the

ashes of his cigar dashed upon his cravat. Here he goes! Look at him,

all ye pure-hearted young men, and see the work of the fashionable

club-room. I knew one such who, after the contaminations of his

club-house, leaped out of the third-story window to put an end to his

wretchedness.

Many who would not be seen drinking at the bar of a restaurant, think

there is no dishonor and no peril connected with sitting down at a

marble stand in an elegantly furnished parlor, to which they go with a

private key, and where none are present except gentlemen as elegant

as themselves. Everything so chaste in the surroundings! Soft carpets,

beautiful pictures, cut glass, Italian top tables, frescoed walls. In

just such places there are thousands of young men, middle-aged men,

and old men, preparing themselves for overthrow.

In many of these club-rooms the talk is not as pure and elevated as

it might be. How is it, men and brothers, at half-past eleven o'clock,

when the tankards are well emptied, and the smoke curls up from every

lip? Do they ever swear? Are there stories told unworthy a man who

venerates the name of his mother? Does God, whose presence cannot be

hindered by bolt, and who comes in without a pass-word, and is making

up His record for the judgment-day, approve of the blasphemies you

utter?

You think that there is no special danger, yet acknowledge that you

have felt _queer_ sometimes. Your head was not right, and your stomach

was disturbed. I will tell you what was the matter. _You were drunk_.

You understood not that protracted hiccough; it was the drunkard's

hiccough. You could not explain that nausea; it was the drunkard's

vomit. The fact is that some of you, who have never in your own eyes

or in the eyes of others fully sacrificed your respectability, have

for six months been written down in God's book as drunkards.

How far down need a man go before he becomes an inebriate? Must he

fall into the ditch? No! Must he get into a porter-house fight? No!

Must he be senseless in the street? Must he have the delirium

tremens? No! He may wear satin and fine linen; he may walk with hat

scrupulously brushed; may swing a gold-headed cane, and step in boots

of French leather, dismount from a carriage, or draw tight rein over

a swift, sleek, high-mettled, full-blooded Arabian span, but yet be

so thoroughly under the power of strong drink that he is utterly

offensive to his Maker and rotten as a heap of compost.

The fact that this whole land to-day swelters with drunkenness I

charge upon the drinking club houses. They wield an influence that

makes it respectable, and I will not put my head to the pillow

to-night until I have written against them one burning anathema

maranatha! When I see them dragging down scores of our young men, and

slaying professed Christians at the very altar, and snatching off

the garlands of life from those who would otherwise reign forever and

forever, I tell you I hate them with a perfect hatred, and pray for

more height, and depth, and length, and breadth of capacity with which

to hate them.

Along this blossoming and over-arched pathway, and through this long

line of temptations that throw their garlands upon the brow, and ring

their music into the ear, go a great host.

No one can estimate the homes that have been shattered by the

dissipations of the club-house. There are weak women who would never

consent to a husband's absence in the evening, however important the

duty that takes him away. Any man who wishes to take his share of the

public burdens and is willing to work for the political, educational,

and social advancement of the community must of necessity spend some

of his evenings away from home. There are associations and churches

that have a right to demand a share of a man's presence and means, and

that is a weak woman who always looks offended when her husband goes

out in the evening.

But club-houses become a pest when they demand all a man's evenings;

and that is a result we are called to deplore. Every head of a

household is called to be its educator, its companion, its religious

instructor and exemplar; not only to furnish the wardrobe and to make

the money to pay the bills when they come in, but to give his

highest intellectual energies and social faculties to the amusement,

instruction, and improvement of the household.

But I describe the history of thousands of households when I say that

the tea is rapidly taken, and while yet the family linger the father

shoves back his chair, has "an engagement," lights his cigar and

starts out, not returning until after midnight. That is the history of

three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, except when he is sick

and cannot get out.

How about home duties? Have you fulfilled all your vows? Would your

wife ever have married you with such a prospect? Wait until your sons

get to be sixteen or seventeen years of age, and they too will shove

back from the tea-table, have an "engagement," light their cigars, go

over to their club-houses, their night-key rattling in your door after

midnight--the effect of your example. And as your son's constitution

may not be as strong as yours, and the liquor he drinks more terribly

drugged, he will catch up with you on the road to death although you

got the start of him. And so you will both go to hell together! A

revolving Drummond-light on the front of a locomotive casts its gleam

through the darkness as it is turned around; so I catch up the lamp of

God's truth and turn it round until its tremendous glare flashes into

all the club-houses of our cities.

Flee the presence of the dissipating club-houses. "Paid your money?"

Sacrifice that rather than your soul. "Good fellows," are they? They

cannot stay what they are under such influences. Mollusca live two

hundred fathoms down in the Norwegian seas. The Siberian stag grows

fat on the stunted growth of Altaian peaks. The Hedysarium thrives

amid the desolation of Sahara. Tufts of osier and birch grow on the

hot lips of volcanic Schneehalten. But good character and a useful

life thrive amid club-room dissipations--_Never!_

The best way to make a wild beast cower is to look him in the eye, but

the best way to treat the temptations I have described is to turn your

back and fly! O! my heart aches! I see men struggling to get out of

the serfdom of bad habits, and I want to help them. I have knelt with

them and heard their cry for help. I have had them put one hand

on each of my shoulders, and look me in the eye, with an agony of

earnestness that the judgment shall have no power to make me forget,

and from their lips, scorched with the fires of ruin, have heard

them cry "God help me!" There is no rescue for such, save in the Lord

Almighty.

Well, what we do, we had better do right away. The clock ticks now and

we hear it. After a while the clock will tick and we shall not hear

it. Seated by a country fireside, I saw the fire kindle, blaze, and go

out. I gathered up from the hearth enough for profitable reflections.

Our life is just like the fire on that hearth. We put on fresh fagots,

and the fire bursts through and up, and out, gay of flash, gay of

crackle--emblem of boyhood. Then the fire reddens into coals. The

heat is fiercer; and the more it is stirred, the more it reddens. With

sweep of flame it cleaves its way, until all the hearth glows with

the intensity--emblem of full manhood. Then comes a whiteness to the

coals. The heat lessens. The flickering shadows have died along the

wall. The fagots drop apart. The household hover over the expiring

embers. The last breath of smoke has been lost in the chimney. Fire is

out. Shovel up the white remains. ASHES!

FLASK, BOTTLE, AND DEMIJOHN.

[NOTE.--This chapter, in its first shape, was given some currency

under the title of "The Evil Beast." I have, however, so revised and

added to that Lecture, that, as here given, it is essentially a new

presentation of the dreadful Abomination of Rum, and it is in

this present shape that I wish the public to receive it as a full

expression of my views thereon. T.D.W.T.]

There has in all ages and climes been a tendency to the improper use

of stimulants. Noah, as if disgusted with the prevalence of water in

his time, took to strong drink. By this vice Alexander the Conqueror

was conquered. The Romans, at their feasts, fell off their seats with

intoxication. Four hundred millions of our race are opium-eaters.

India, Turkey, and China have groaned with the desolation; and by it

have been quenched such lights as Haller and De Quincey. One hundred

millions are the victims of the betel-nut, which has specially

accursed the East Indies. Three hundred millions chew hashish, and

Persia, Brazil, and Africa suffer the delirium. The Tartars employ

murowa; the Mexicans the agave; the people of Guarapo an intoxicating

quality taken from sugar-cane; while a great multitude, that no man

can number, are the disciples of alcohol. To it they bow. In its

trenches they fall. In its awful prison they are incarcerated. On its

ghastly holocaust they burn.

Could the muster-roll of this great army be called, and they could

come up from the dead, what eye could endure the reeking, festering

putrefaction and beastliness! What heart could endure the groans of

agony!

Drunkenness: Does it not jingle the burglar's key? Does it not whet

the assassin's knife? Does it not cock the highwayman's pistol? Does

it not wave the incendiary's torch? Has it not sent the physician

reeling into the sick-room; and the minister, with his tongue thick,

into the pulpit? Did not an exquisite poet, from the very height of

reputation, fall, a gibbering sot, into the gutter, on his way to be

married to one of the fairest daughters of New England, and at the

very hour when the bride was decking herself for the altar; and did he

not die of delirium tremens, almost unattended, in a New York hotel?

Tamerlane asked for one hundred and sixty thousand skulls, with which

to build a pyramid to his own honor. He got the skulls, and built the

pyramid. But if the bones of all those who have fallen as a prey to

dissipation could be piled up, it would make a monster pyramid. Talk

not of Waterloo and Austerlitz, for they were not fields of blood

compared with this great Golgotha.

Who will gird himself for the journey, and try with me to scale this

mountain of the dead--going up miles high on human carcasses, to find

still other peaks far above, mountain above mountain, white with the

bleached bones of drunkards!

Hang not your head or shut your eyes until we have seen it. We must

get a sight at the monster before we can shoot him.

I will begin at our national and State capitals. Like government,

like people. Henry VIII. blasts all England with his example of

uncleanness. Catharine of Russia drags down a whole empire with her

nefarious behavior. No Christian man can be indifferent to what

every hour of every day goes on at Washington. While the Presidential

Impeachment trial advanced, some of the men who were to render their

solemn verdict on the subject were reeling in and out of the Senate

chamber,--the intoxicated representatives of a free Christian people.

It was a great question whether several members of that high court

could be got sober in time to vote.

Only recently a Senator from New England rises up with tongue so

thick, and with utterance so nonsensical, that he is led into the

anteroom. He was a good "Republican."

One of the Middle States has a representative who very rarely appears

in his seat, for the reason that he is so great an inebriate that he

can neither walk nor ride. He is a good Democrat.

As God looks down on our State and national legislatures, he holds us

responsible. We cast the votes. We lift up the legislators.

Will the time never come when this nation shall rise up higher than

partisanship, and cast its suffrage for sober men?

The fact is that the two millions of dollars which the liquor dealers

raised for the purpose of swaying State and national legislation has

done its work, and the nation is debauched. Higher than legislatures

or the Congress of the United States is the Whiskey Ring!

The Sabbath has been sacrificed to the rum traffic. To many of our

people the best day of the week is the worst. Bakers must keep their

shops closed on the Sabbath. It is dangerous to have loaves of bread

going out on Sunday. The shoe-store is closed; severe penalty will

attack the man who sells boots on the Sabbath. But down with the

window-shutters of the grog shops. Our laws shall confer particular

honors upon the rum traffickers. All other traders must stand aside

for these. Let our citizens who have disgraced themselves by trading

in clothing, and hosiery, and hardware, and lumber, and coal, take

off their hats to the rum-seller, elected to particular honor. It is

unsafe for any other class of men to be allowed license for Sunday

work. But swing out your signs, oh ye traffickers in the peace of

families, and in the souls of immortal men! Let the corks fly, and the

beer foam, and the rum go tearing down the half-consumed throat of the

inebriate. God does not see, does he? Judgment will never come, will

it?

People say--"Let us have some law to correct this evil." We have more

law now than we execute. In what city is there a mayoralty that dare

do it? There is no advantage in having the law higher than public

opinion. What would be the use of the Maine Law in New York? Neal Dow,

the Mayor of Portland, came out with a _posse_ and threw the rum of

the city into the street. From the alms-house a woman came out and

said, "Oh! if this had only been done ten years ago, my husband would

not have died a drunkard, and I would not have been a widow in the

almshouse."

But there are not enough police in the city of New York to stand by

its Mayor in such an undertaking; public opinion is not educated.

I do not know but that God is determined to let drunkards triumph; and

the husbands and sons of thousands of our best families be destroyed

by this vice, in order that our people, amazed and indignant, may rise

up and demand the extermination of this municipal crime.

There is a way of driving down the hoops of a barrel until the hoops

break.

We are in this country, at this time, trying to regulate this evil

by a tax on whiskey. You might as well try to regulate the Asiatic

cholera, or the small-pox, by taxation. The men who distil liquors

are, for the most part, unscrupulous; and the higher the tax, the more

inducement to illicit distillation. New York produces forty thousand

gallons of whiskey every twenty-four hours; and the most of it escapes

the tax. The most vigilant officials fail to discover the cellars, and

vaults, and sheds where this work is done.

Oh, the folly of trying to restrain an evil by government tariffs! If

every gallon of whiskey made, if every flask of wine produced, should

be taxed a thousand dollars, it would not be enough to pay for the

tears it has wrung out of the eyes of widows and orphans, nor for the

blood it has dashed on the altars of the Christian Church, nor for the

catastrophe of the millions it has destroyed forever.

Oh! we are a Christian people! From Boston a ship sailed for

Africa, with three missionaries, and twenty-two thousand gallons

of New-England rum on board. Which will have the most effect: the

missionaries, or the rum?

Rum is victor. Some time when you have leisure, just go down any

of our streets, and count the number of drinking places. Here they

are--first-class hotels. Marble floors. Counter polished. Fine picture

hanging over the decanters. Cut glass. Silver water-coolers. Pictured

punch-bowls. High-priced liquors. Customers pull off their gloves,

and take up the glasses, and click them, and with immaculate

pocket handkerchief wipe their mouth, and go up-stairs, or into the

reading-room, and complete extensive bargains.

Here it is--the restaurant. All sorts of viands, but chiefly all

styles of beverage. They who frequent this place have fairly started

on the down grade. Having drunk once, they lounge at the corner of the

bar until a friend comes up, and then the beverage is repeated. After

a while they sit at the little table by the wall and order a rarer

wine; for they feel richer now, and able to get almost anything.

Towards bed-time they take out their watch and say they must go home.

They start, but cannot stand straight. With a gentleman at each arm,

they start up the street. More and more overcome, the man begins to

whoop, and shout, and swear, and refuse to go any farther. Hat falls

off. Hair gets over his eyes. Door-bell of fine house rings. Wife

comes down the stairs. Daughters look over the banisters. Sobbing in

the dark hall. Quick--shut the front door, for I do not want to look

in. God help them!

Here it is--a wine-cellar. Going into the door are depraved men and

lost women. Some stagger. All blaspheme. Men with rings in their ears

instead of their nose; and blotches of breast-pin. Pictures on the

wall cut out of the _Police Gazette_. A slush of beer on floor and

counter. A pistol falls out of a ruffian's pocket. By the gas-light a

knife flashes. Low songs. They banter, and jeer, and howl, and vomit.

An awful goal, to which hundreds of people better than you have come.

All these different styles of drinking-places are multiplying. They

smite a young man's vision at every turn. They pour the stench of

their abomination on every wave of air.

I sketch two houses in this street. The first is bright as home can

be. The father comes at nightfall, and the children run out to meet

him. Luxuriant evening meal, gratulation, and sympathy, and laughter.

Music in the parlor. Fine pictures on the wall. Costly books on the

stand. Well-clad household. Plenty of everything to make home happy.

House the second. Piano sold yesterday by the sheriff. Wife's furs at

pawnbroker's shop. Clock gone. Daughter's jewelry sold to get flour.

Carpets gone off the floor. Daughters in faded and patched dresses.

Wife sewing for the stores. Little child with an ugly wound on her

face, struck in an angry blow. Deep shadow of wretchedness falling in

every room. Doorbell rings. Little children hide. Daughters turn

pale. Wife holds her breath. Blundering steps in the hall. Door opens.

Fiend, brandishing his fist, cries--"Out! Out! What are you doing

here!"

Did I call this house the second? No; it is the same house. Rum

transformed it. Rum imbruted the man. Rum sold the shawl. Rum tore

up the carpets. Rum shook its fist. Rum desolated the hearth. _Rum_

changed that paradise into a hell!

I sketch two men that you know very well. The first graduated from one

of our literary institutions. His father, mother, brothers and sisters

were present to see him graduate. They heard the applauding thunders

that greeted his speech. They saw the bouquets tossed to his feet.

They saw the degree conferred and the diploma given. He never looked

so well. Everybody said, "What a noble brow! What a fine eye! What

graceful manners! What brilliant prospects!" All the world opens

before him and cries, "Hurrah! Hurrah!"

Man the second. Lies in the station-house to-night. The doctor has

just been sent for to bind up the gashes received in a fight. His hair

is matted, and makes him look like a wild beast. His lip is bloody and

cut.

Who is the battered and bruised wretch that was picked up by the

police and carried in drunk, and foul, and bleeding? Did I call

him man the second? He is man the _first_! Rum transformed him. Rum

destroyed his prospects. Rum disappointed parental expectation. Rum

withered those garlands of commencement-day. Rum cut his lip. Rum

dashed out his manhood. RUM, accursed RUM!

This foul thing gives one swing to its scythe, and our best merchants

fall; their stores are sold, and they slink into dishonored graves.

Again it swings its scythe, and some of our best physicians fall into

sufferings that their wisest prescriptions cannot cure.

Again it swings its scythe, and ministers of the gospel fall from the

heights of Zion with long-resounding crash of ruin and shame.

Some of your own household have already been shaken. Perhaps you

can hardly admit it; but where was your son last night? Where was he

Friday night? Where was he Thursday night? Wednesday night? Tuesday

night? Monday night?

Nay, have not some of you, in your own bodies, felt the power of this

habit? You think that you could stop? Are you sure you could? Go on

a little further, and I am sure you cannot. I think, if some of you

should try to break away, you would find a chain on the right wrist,

and one on the left; one on the right foot, and another on the left.

This serpent does not begin to hurt until it has wound around and

round. Then it begins to tighten, and strangle, and crush until the

bones crack, and the blood trickles, and the eyes start from their

sockets, and the mangled wretch cries "O God! O God! Help! Help!" But

it is too late; and nothing but the fires of woe can melt the chain

when once it is fully fastened.

The child of a drunkard died. My friend, a minister of the Gospel, sat

in a carriage with the drunkard, and the coffin of the little child.

On the way to the grave, the drunkard put his hand on the lid of his

child's coffin and swore that he never would drink again. Before the

next morning had come he was dead drunk!

I spread out before you the starvation, the cruelty, the ghastliness,

the woes, the terror, the anguish, the perdition of this evil, and

then ask, Are you ready, fully and forever, to surrender our churches,

our homes, our civilization, our glorious Christianity? One or the

other must surrender. It can be no "drawn battle."

But how are we to contend?

First, by getting our children right on this subject. Let them grow up

with an utter aversion to strong drink. Take care how you administer

it even as medicine. If you find that they have a natural love for

it, as some have, put in a glass of it some horrid stuff and make it

utterly nauseous. Teach them as faithfully as you do the catechism,

that rum is a fiend. Take them to the alms-house and show them the

wreck and ruin it works. Walk with them into the homes that have been

scourged by it. If a drunkard hath fallen into a ditch, take them

right up where they can see his face, bruised, savage and swollen, and

say, "Look, my son: Rum did that!"

Looking out of your window at some one who, intoxicated to madness,

goes through the street, brandishing his fist, blaspheming God,--a

howling, defying, shouting, reeling, raving and foaming maniac,--say

to your son, "Look; that man was once a child like you." As you go by

the grog-shop, let your boy know that that is the place where men are

slain, and their wives made paupers, and their children slaves. Hold

out to your children all warnings, all rewards, all counsels, lest in

after days they break your heart, and curse your gray hairs.

A man laughed at my father for his scrupulous temperance principles,

and said--"I am more liberal than you. I always give my children the

sugar in the glass after we have been taking a drink."

Three of his sons have died drunkards; and the fourth is imbecile

through intemperate habits.

Again, we will battle this evil at the ballot-box. How many men are

there who can rise above the feelings of partisanship, and demand that

our officials shall be sober men?

I maintain that the question of sobriety is higher than the question

of availability; and that however eminent a man's services may be, if

he have habits of intoxication, he is unfit for any office in the gift

of a Christian people. Our laws will be no better than the men who

make them.

Spend a few days at Harrisburg, or Albany, or Washington, and you will

find out why, upon these subjects, it is impossible to get righteous

enactments.

Again, we will war upon this evil by organized societies. The

friends of the rum traffic have banded together; annually issue their

circulars; raise fabulous sums of money to advance their interests;

and by grips, pass-words, signs, and stratagems set at defiance public

morals. Let us confront them with organizations just as secret,

and, if need be, with grips, and pass-words, and signs maintain our

position. There is no need that our philanthropic societies tell all

their plans.

I am in favor of all lawful strategy in the carrying on of this

conflict. I wish to God we could lay under the wine-casks a train,

which, once ignited, would shake the earth with the explosion of this

monstrous iniquity.

Again: we will try the power of the pledge. There are thousands of men

who have been saved by putting their names to such a document. I know

it is laughed at; but there are men who, having once promised a thing,

do it. "Some have broken the pledge." Yes; they were liars. But all

men are not liars. I do not say that it is the duty of all persons

to make such signature; but I do say that it will be the salvation of

many of you.

The glorious work of Theobald Mathew can never be estimated. At

his hand four millions of people took the pledge, including eight

prelates, and seven hundred of the Roman Catholic clergy. A multitude

of them were faithful.

Dr. Justin Edwards said that ten thousand drunkards had been

permanently reformed in five years.

Through the great Washingtonian movement in Ohio, sixty thousand took

the pledge. In Pennsylvania, twenty-nine thousand. In Kentucky, thirty

thousand, and multitudes in all parts of the land. Many of these had

been habitual drunkards. One hundred and fifty thousand of them, it is

estimated, were permanently reclaimed. Two of these men became foreign

ministers; one a governor of a State; several were sent to

Congress. Hartford reported six hundred reformed drunkards; Norwich,

seventy-two; Fairfield, fifty; Sheffield, seventy-five. All over the

land reformed men were received back into the churches that they had

before disgraced; and households were re-established. All up and

down the land there were gratulations, and praise to God. The pledge

signed, to thousands has been the proclamation of emancipation.

I think that we are coming at last to treat inebriation as it ought to

be treated, namely, as an awful disease, self-inflicted, to be sure,

but nevertheless a disease. Once fastened upon a man, sermons will not

cure him; temperance lectures will not eradicate the taste; religious

tracts will not remove it; the Gospel of Christ will not arrest it.

Once under the power of this awful thirst, the man is bound to go on;

and if the foaming glass were on the other side of perdition, he would

wade through the fires of hell to get it. A young man in prison had

such a strong thirst for intoxicating liquors, that he cut off his

hand at the wrist, called for a bowl of brandy in order to stop the

bleeding, thrust his wrist into the bowl, and then drank the contents.

Stand not, when the thirst is on him, between a man and his cups!

Clear the track for him! Away with the children: he would tread their

life out! Away with the wife: he would dash her to death! Away with

the Cross: he would run it down! Away with the Bible: he would tear

it up for the winds! Away with heaven: he considers it worthless as a

straw! "Give me the drink! Give it to me! Though hands of blood pass

up the bowl, and the soul trembles over the pit,--the drink! give it

to me! Though it be pale with tears; though the froth of everlasting

anguish float in the foam--give it to me! I drink to my wife's woe; to

my children's rags; to my eternal banishment from God, and hope, and

heaven! Give it to me! the drink!"

Again: we will contend against these evils by trying to persuade

the respectable classes of society to the banishment of alcoholic

beverages. You who move in elegant and refined associations; you

who drink the best liquors; you who never drink until you lose

your balance: consider that you have, under God, in your power the

redemption of this land from drunkenness. Empty your cellars and

wine-closets of the beverage, and then come out and give us your hand,

your vote, your prayers, your sympathies. Do that, and I will promise

three things: First, That you will find unspeakable happiness in

having done your duty; secondly, you will probably save somebody,

perhaps your own child; thirdly, you will not, in your last hour, have

a regret that you made the sacrifice, if sacrifice it be.

As long as you make drinking respectable, drinking customs will

prevail; and the ploughshare of death, drawn by terrible disasters,

will go on turning up this whole continent, from end to end, with the

long, deep, awful furrow of drunkards' graves.

Oh, how this Rum Fiend would like to go and hang up a skeleton in your

beautiful house, so that when you opened the front door to go in you

would see it in the hall; and when you sit at your table you would see

it hanging from the wall; and when you open your bed-room you would

find it stretched upon your pillow; and waking at night you would feel

its cold hand passing over your face and pinching at your heart!

There is no home so beautiful but it may be devastated by the awful

curse. It throws its jargon into the sweetest harmony. What was it

that silenced Sheridan's voice and shattered the golden sceptre with

which he swayed parliaments and courts? What foul sprite turned the

sweet rhythm of Robert Burns into a tuneless ballad? What brought

down the majestic form of one who awed the American Senate with his

eloquence, and after a while carried him home dead drunk from the

office of Secretary of State? What was it that crippled the noble

spirit of one of the heroes of the last war, until the other night,

in a drunken fit, he reeled from the deck of a Western steamer and was

drowned! There was one whose voice we all loved to hear. He was one of

the most classic orators of the century. People wondered why a man

of so pure a heart and so excellent a life should have such a sad

countenance always. They knew not that his wife was a sot.

"Woe to him that giveth his neighbor drink!" If this curse was

proclaimed about the comparatively harmless drinks of olden times,

what condemnation must rest upon those who tempt their neighbors

when intoxicating liquor means copperas, nux vomica, logwood, opium,

sulphuric acid, vitriol, turpentine, and strychnine! "Pure liquors:"

pure destruction! Nearly all the genuine champagne made is taken by

the courts of Europe. What we get is horrible swill!

I call upon woman for her influence in the matter. Many a man who had

reformed and resolved on a life of sobriety has been pitched off into

old habits by the delicate hand of her whom he was anxious to please.

Bishop Potter says that a young man who had been reformed sat at a

table, and when the wine was passed to him refused to take it. A lady

sitting at his side said, "Certainly you will not refuse to take a

glass with me?" Again he refused. But when she had derided him for

lack of manliness he took the glass and drank it. He took another and

another; and putting his fist hard down on the table, said, "Now I

drink until I die." In a few months his ruin was consummated.

I call upon those who are guilty of these indulgences to quit the path

of death. O what a change it would make in your home! Do you see how

everything there is being desolated! Would you not like to bring back

joy to your wife's heart, and have your children come out to meet you

with as much confidence as once they showed? Would you not like to

rekindle the home lights that long ago were extinguished? It is not

too late to change. It may not entirely obliterate from your soul the

memory of wasted years and a ruined reputation, nor smooth out from

anxious brows the wrinkles which trouble has ploughed. It may not call

back unkind words uttered or rough deeds done--for perhaps in those

awful moments you struck her! It may not take from your memory the

bitter thoughts connected with some little grave: but it is not too

late to save yourself and secure for God and your family the remainder

of your fast-going life.

But perhaps you have not utterly gone astray. I may address one who

may not have quite made up his mind. Let your better nature speak out.

You take one side or the other in the war against drunkenness.

Have you the courage to put your foot down right, and say to your

companions and friends: "I will never drink intoxicating liquor in all

my life, nor will I countenance the habit in others." Have nothing to

do with strong drink. It has turned the earth into a place of skulls,

and has stood opening the gate to a lost world to let in its victims,

until now the door swings no more upon its hinges, but day and night

stands wide open to let in the agonized procession of doomed men.

Do I address one whose regular work in life is to administer to this

appetite? I beg you--get out of the business. If a woe be pronounced

upon the man who gives his neighbor drink, how many woes must be

hanging over the man who does this every day, and every hour of the

day!

A philanthropist, going up to the counter of a grog-shop, as the

proprietor was mixing a drink for a toper standing at the counter,

said to the proprietor, "Can you tell me what your business is good

for?" The proprietor, with an infernal laugh, said, "_It fattens

graveyards!_"

God knows better than you do yourself the number of drinks you have

poured out. You keep a list; but a more accurate list has been kept

than yours. You may call it Burgundy, Bourbon, Cognac, Heidsick, Hock;

God calls it strong drink. Whether you sell it in low oyster cellar or

behind the polished counter of first-class hotel, the divine curse is

upon you. I tell you plainly that you will meet your customers one day

when there will be no counter between you. When your work is done on

earth, and you enter the reward of your business, all the souls of

the men whom you have destroyed will crowd around you and pour their

bitterness into your cup. They will show you their wounds and say,

"You made them;" and point to their unquenchable thirst, and say, "You

kindled it;" and rattle their chain and say, "You forged it." Then

their united groans will smite your ears; and with the hands out of

which you once picked the sixpences and the dimes, they will push you

off the verge of great precipices; while, rolling up from beneath, and

breaking among the crags of death, will thunder:

"_Woe to him that giveth his neighbor drink!_"

THE HOUSE OF BLACKNESS OF DARKNESS.

Men like to hear the frailties and faults of others chastised. With

what blandness and placidity they sit and hear the religious teacher

excoriate the ambition of Ahab, the treachery of Judas, the treason

of Athaliah, and the wickedness of the Amalekites. Indeed, I have

sometimes felt sorry for the Amalekites, for in all ages, and on all

occasions, they are smitten, denounced, and pursued. They have had

their full share of censure and excoriation. It is high time that

in our addresses in pulpits, and in domestic circles, we turn our

attention to the driving out of these worse Amalekites which are

swarming in society to-day, thicker than in the olden time. The

ancient Amalekites lived for one or two hundred years; but these

are not weakened after a thousand years. Those traversed only a few

leagues of land; these stalk the earth and ford the sea. Those had

each a sword or spear; these fight with a million swords, and strike

with a million stings, and smite with a million catastrophes. Those

were conquered with human weapons; but to overcome these we must bring

out God's great fieldpieces, and employ an enginery that can sweep

from eternity to eternity.

There is one subject which we are expected, in all our teachings, to

shun, or only to hint at: I mean the wickedness of an impure life.

Though God thunders against this appalling iniquity from the heavens

curse after curse, anathema after anathema, by our unwillingness to

repeat the divine utterance we seem to say, "Lord, not so loud! Speak

about everything else; but if this keeps on there will be trouble!"

Meanwhile the foundations of social life are being slowly undermined;

and many of the upper circles of life have putrefied until they have

no more power to rot.

If a fox or a mink come down to the farmyard and carry off a chicken,

the whole family join in the search.

If a panther come down into the village and carry off a child, the

whole neighborhood go out with clubs and guns to bring it down.

But this monster-crime goes forth, carrying off body and soul; and

yet, if we speak, a thousand voices bid us be silent.

I shall try to cut to the vitals of the subject, and proceed with the

_post-mortem_ of this carcass of death. It is time to speak on this

subject. All the indignation of the community upon this subject is

hurled upon woman's head. If, in an evil hour, she sacrifice her

honor, the whole city goes howling after her. She shall take the whole

blame. Out with her from all decent circles! Whip her. Flay her.

Bar all the doors of society against her return. Set on her all the

blood-hounds. Shove her off precipice after precipice. Push her down.

Kick her out! If you see her struggling on the waves, and with her

blood-tipped fingers clinging to the verge of respectability, drop a

mill-stone on her head.

For a woman's sin, men have no mercy; and the heart of other women is

more cruel than death.

For her, in the dark hour of her calamity, the women who, with the

same temptation, might have fallen into deeper damnation, have no

commiseration and no prayer.

The heaviest stroke that comes down upon a fallen woman's soul is the

merciless indignation of her sisters.

If the multitudes of the fallen could be placed in a straight line, it

would reach from here to the gates of the lost, and back again.

But what of the destroyer?

We take his arm. We flatter his appearance. We take off our hats.

He is admitted to our parlors. For him we cast our votes. For him

we speak our eulogies. And when he has gone we read over the heap of

compost: "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. They rest from

their labors and their works do follow them."

In the fashionable city to-day there walk a thousand libertines. They

are a moving pest. Their breath is the sirocco of the desert. Their

bones have in them the decay of the pit. They have the eye of

a basilisk. They have been soaked in filth, and steeped in

uncleanliness, and consumed in sin, and they are all adrip with the

loathsomeness of eternal death. I take hold of the robe of one of

these elegant gentlemen, and pull it aside, and say, "Behold a Leper!"

First, if you desire to shun this evil, you will have nothing to do

with bad books and impure newspapers. With such an affluent literature

as is coming forth from our swift-revolving printing-presses, there

is no excuse for dragging one's self through sewers of unchastity. Why

walk in the ditch, when right beside the ditch is the solid flagging?

It seems that in the literature of the day the ten plagues of Egypt

have returned, and the frogs and lice have hopped and skipped over our

parlor tables.

Waiting impatiently in the house of some parishioner, for the

completion of a very protracted toilet, I have picked up a book from

the parlor table, and found that every leaf was a scale of leprosy.

Parents are delighted to have their children read, but they should be

sure as to what they read. You do not have to walk a day or two in an

infected district to get the cholera or typhoid fever; and one wave

of moral unhealth will fever and blast an immortal nature. Perhaps,

knowing not what you did, you read a bad book. Do you not remember it

altogether? Yes; and perhaps you will never get over it.

However strong and exalted your character, _never read a bad book_. By

the time you get through the first chapter you will see the drift; If

you find the marks of the hoofs of the devil in the pictures, or in

the style, or in the plot, away with it. You may tear your coat, or

break a vase, and repair them again, but the point where the rip or

fracture took place will always be evident. It takes less than an

hour to do your heart a damage which no time can entirely repair. Look

carefully over your child's library; see what book it is that he reads

after he has gone to bed, with the gas turned upon the pillow. Do

not always take it for granted that a book is good because it is

a Sunday-school book. As far as possible know _who_ wrote it, who

illustrated it, who published it, who sold it.

Young man, as you value Heaven, never buy a book from one of those men

who meet you in the square, and, after looking both ways, to see

if the police are watching, shows you a book--very cheap. Have

him arrested as you would kill a rattle-snake. Grab him, and shout

"Police! police!"

But there is more danger, I think, from many of the family papers,

published once a week; in those stories of vice and shame, full

of infamous suggestions, going as far as they can without exposing

themselves to the clutch of the law. I name none of them; but say that

on some fashionable tables there lie "family newspapers" that are the

very vomit of the pit.

The way to ruin is cheap. It costs three dollars to go to

Philadelphia; six dollars to Boston; thirty-three dollars to Savannah;

but, by the purchase of a bad paper for ten cents, you may get a

through ticket to hell, by express, with few stopping-places, and

the final halting like the tumbling of the lightning train down the

draw-bridge at Norwalk--sudden, terrific, deathful, never to rise.

O, the power of an iniquitous pen! If a needle puncture the body at a

certain point, life is destroyed; but the pen is a sharper instrument,

for with its puncture you may kill the soul. And that very thing many

of our acutest minds are to-day doing. Do not think that this which

you drain from the glass, because it is sweet, is therefore healthful:

some of the worst poisons are pleasant to the taste. The pen which

for the time fascinates you may be dipped in the slime of unclean

literature.

Look out for the books that come from France. It has sent us some

grand histories, poems, and pure novels, but they are few in number

compared with the nastiness that it has spewed out upon our shore.

Do we not read in our Bibles that the ancient flood covered all the

earth? I would have thought that France had escaped, for it does not

seem as if it had ever had a thorough washing.

In the next place, if you would shun an impure life, avoid those who

indulge in impure conversation. There are many people whose chief

mirthfulness is in that line. They are full of innuendo, and phrases

of double meaning, and are always picking out of the conversation of

decent men something vilely significant. It is astonishing in company,

how many, professing to be _Christians_, will tell vile stories; and

that some Christian women, in their own circles, have no hesitation at

the same style of talking.

You take a step down hill, when, without resistance, you allow any one

to put into your ear a vile innuendo. If, forgetting who you are,

any man attempts to say such things in your presence, let your

better nature assert itself, look the offender full in the face, and

ask--"What do you mean by saying such a thing in my presence!" Better

allow a man to smite you in the face than to utter such conversation

before you. I do not care who the men or women are that utter impure

thoughts; they are guilty of a mighty wrong; and their influence upon

our young people is baleful.

If in the club where you associate; if in the social circle where you

move, you hear depraved conversation, fly for your life! A man is

no better than his talk; and no man can have such interviews without

being scarred.

I charge our young men against considering uncleanness more tolerable,

because it is sanctioned by the customs, habits, and practices of

what is called high life. If this sin wears kid gloves, and patent

leathers, and coat of exquisite fit, and carries an opera-glass of

costliest material, and lives in a big house, and rides in a splendid

turn-out, is it to be any the less reprehended? No! No!

I warn you not so much against the abomination that hides in the lower

courts and alleys of the town, as against the more damnable vice that

hides behind the white shutters and brownstone fronts of the upper

classes.

God, once in a while, hitches up the fiery team of vengeance, and

ploughs up the splendid libertinism, and we stand aghast.

Sin, crawling out of the ditch of poverty and shame, has but few

temptations; but, gliding through the glittering drawing-room with

magnificent robe, it draws the stars of heaven after it.

Poets and painters have represented Satan as horned and hoofed. If I

were a poet I should describe him with manners polished to the

last perfection, hair flowing in graceful ringlets, eye a little

blood-shot, but floating in bewitching languor; hands soft and

diamonded; step light and artistic; voice mellow as a flute; boot

elegantly shaped; conversation facile, carefully toned, and Frenchy;

breath perfumed until it would seem that nothing had ever touched his

lips save balm and myrrh. But his heart I would encase with the scales

of a monster, then fill with pride, with beastliness of desire,

with recklessness, with hypocrisy, with death. Then I would have

him touched with some rod of disenchantment until his two eyes would

become the cold orbs of the adder; and on his lip would come the foam

of raging intoxication; and to his feet the spring of the panther;

and his soft hand should become the clammy hand of a wasted

skeleton; while suddenly from his heart would burst in crackling and

all-devouring fury the unquenchable flames; and in the affected lisp

of his tongue would come the hiss of the worm that never dies.

But, until disenchanted, nothing but myrrh, and balm, and ringlet, and

diamond, and flute-like voice, and conversation aromatic, facile, and

Frenchy.

There are practices in respectable circles, I am told by physicians,

which need public reprehension. Herod's massacre of the innocents was

as nothing compared with that of millions and millions by what I shall

call _ante-natal_ murders. You may escape the grip of the law, because

the existence of such life was not known by society; but I tell

you that at last God will shove down on you the avalanche of his

indignation; and though you may not have wielded knife or pistol in

your deeds of darkness, yet, in the day when John Wilkes Booth and

Antony Probst come to judgment, you will have on _your_ brow the brand

of _murderer_.

Hear me when I repeat, that the practices of high life ought not to

make sin in your eyes seem tolerable. God is no respecter of persons;

and robes and rags will stand on the same platform in the day when the

archangel, with one foot on the sea and the other on the land, swears,

by Him that liveth forever and ever, that Time shall be no more.

O, it is beautiful to see a young man living a life of purity,

standing upright where thousands of other young men fall. You will

move in honorable circles all your days; and some old friend of your

father will meet you and say: "My son, how glad I am to see you look

so well. Just like your father, for all the world. I thought you would

turn out well when I used to hold you on my knee. Do you ever hear

from the old folks?"

After a while you yourself will be old, and lean quite heavily on your

cane, and take short steps, and hold the book off to the other side

of the light. And men will take off their hats in your presence. Your

body, unharmed by early indulgences, will get weaker, only as the

sleepy child gets more and more unable to hold up its head, and falls

back into its mother's lap: so you shall lay yourself down into the

arms of the Christian's tomb, and on the slab that marks the place

will be chiselled: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see

God."

But here is a young man who takes the other route. The voices of

uncleanness charm him away. He reads bad books. Lives in vicious

circles. Loses the glow from his cheek, the sparkle from his eye, and

the purity from his soul. The good shun him. Down he goes, little by

little. They who knew him when he came to town, while yet lingering

on his head was a pure mother's blessing, and on his lip the dew of a

pure sister's kiss, now pass him, and nay, "What an awful wreck!"

His eye bleared with frequent carousals. His cheek bruised in the

grog-shop fight. His lip swollen with evil indulgences. Look out what

you say to him. For a trifle he will take your life. Lower down and

lower down, until, outcast of God and man, he lies in the alms-house,

a blotch of loathsomeness and pain. Sometimes he calls out for God;

and then for more drink. Now he prays; now curses. Now laughs as

fiends laugh. Then bites his nails to the quick. Then runs both hands

through the shock of hair that hangs about his head--like the mane

of a wild beast. Then shivers--until the cot shakes--with unutterable

terror. Then, with uplifted fist, fights back the devils, or clutches

the serpents that seem winding him in their coil. Then asks for water,

which is instantly consumed by his cracked lips. Going his round some

morning, the surgeon finds him dead.

Straighten the limbs. You need not try to comb out or shove back the

matted locks. Wrap him in a sheet. Put him in a box. Two men will

carry it down to the wagon at the door. With chalk, write on the top

of the box the name of the exhausted libertine.

Do you know who it is?

That is _you_, O man, if, yielding to the temptations to an impure

life, you go out, and perish.

There is a way that seemeth bright, and fair, and beautiful; but the

end thereof is BLACKNESS OF DARKNESS FOREVER.

THE GUN THAT KICKS OVER THE MAN WHO SHOOTS IT OFF.

Blasphemy is a crime that aims at God, but does its chief harm to the

one that fires it off.

So I compare it to a piece of imperfect firearms to which the marksman

puts his eye, and, pulling the trigger, by the rebound finds himself

in the dust.

I tell you a story, Oriental and marvellous. History speaks of the

richest man in all the East. He had camels, oxen, asses, sheep, and

what would make any man rich even if he had nothing else--seven sons

and three daughters. It was the custom of this man's children to

have family reunions. One day he is at home, thinking of his darling

children, who are keeping banquet at their elder brother's house.

Yonder comes a messenger in hot haste, evidently, from his looks,

bearing evil tidings. Recovering himself sufficiently to speak, he

says: "The oxen and the asses have been captured by a foraging party

of Sabeans, and all the servants are butchered except myself." Another

messenger is coming. He says that the sheep and the shepherds have

been struck by lightning. Another messenger is coming. He says that

the Chaldeans have come and captured the camels, and killed all but

himself. Another messenger, who says: "While thy sons and daughters

were at the feast, a hurricane struck the corner of the tent, and they

are all dead!" But his misfortunes are not yet completed. The old man

is smitten with the elephantiasis, or black leprosy. Tumors from head

to foot; face distorted; forehead ridged with offensive tubercles;

eyelashes fall out; nostrils excoriated; voice destroyed; intolerable

exhalation from the whole body; until, with none to dress his sores,

he sits down in the ashes, with nothing but broken pieces of pottery

to use in the surgery of his wounds. At this point, when he needed

all consolation and encouragement, his wife comes to him, and says,

virtually: "This is intolerable! Our property gone, our children

slain, and now this loathsome, disgusting disease is upon you. Why

don't you swear? Curse God and die!"

But profanity would not have removed one tumor from his agonized body;

would not have brought to his door one of the captured camels; would

not have restored any one of the dead children. Swearing would have

made the pain more unbearable, the pauperism into which he had plunged

more distressing, the bereavement more excruciating.

And yet, from the swearing and blasphemy with which our land is

cursed, one would think there were some great advantage to be reaped

from the practice. There is to-day in all our land no more prevalent

custom, and no more God-defying abomination, than profane swearing.

You can hardly walk our streets five minutes without having your ears

stung and your sensibilities shocked. The drayman swearing at his

horse; the tinman at his solder; the sewing-girl imprecating her

tangled thread; the bricklayer cursing at his trowel; the carpenter at

his plane; the sailor at the tackling; the merchant at the customer;

the customer at the merchant; the printer at the miserable proofsheet;

the accountant at the troublesome line of figures;--swearing in the

cellar and in the loft, before the counter and behind the counter, in

the shop and on the street, in low saloon and fashionable bar-room.

Children swear, men swear, ladies (!) swear. Profanity from the lowest

haunt calling upon the Almighty, to the fashionable "O Lord!" of the

glittering drawing-room.

This whole country is blasted with the evil. Coming from the West,

a gentleman sat behind two persons conversing. Profanities were so

frequent in the conversation of the two persons in front, that the

gentleman behind took out his pencil and paper and made a record. The

profanities filled several sheets in the course of two days, at the

close of which time the gentleman handed the manuscript to the persons

conversing. The men said: "Is it possible that we have uttered so

many profanities in the course of two days?" The gentleman said:

"Yes."--"Then," said one of the men, "I shall never swear again."

I make no abstract discussion. I hate abstractions. I had rather come

right out and have a talk with you about a habit that you admit to be

wrong. This habit has grown from the fact that the young often think

it an evidence of manliness. There are thousands of boys and youth

who indulge in it. I hear children along the street, but just able to

walk, practising this iniquity. They cannot talk straight, but they

get enough distinctness to let you know that they are damning their

own souls and the souls of others. Oh! it is horrible to see a little

child, the first time it lifts its feet to walk, set them down on

the burning pavement of hell! Between sixteen and twenty years of age

there is apt to come a time when a young man is as much ashamed of

not being able to deliver an oath as he is of the dizziness that comes

from his first cigar. He has his hat and coat and boots of the

right pattern, and there is but one thing more now to bring him into

_fashion_, and that is a capacity to swear.

So there are some of our young men surrounded by an atmosphere of

profanities. Oaths sit on their lips, they roll under their tongues,

and nest in the shock of hair. In elegant drawing-rooms they abstain

from such utterances, but fill club-room and street with their

immoralities of speech. You suggest the wrongfulness of the habit, and

they thrust their finger in the sleeve of their vest, and swagger, and

say: "Who cares!" They have no regard for God, but great respect for

the ladies. Ah! there is no manliness in that.

The most ungentlemanly thing a man can do is to swear. This habit is

becoming more and more prevalent because of the immorality of parents

and employers. There are very many fathers who indulge in this habit.

They feel moved to utter themselves in this way, but first look around

to see if their children are present. They have no idea that their

children know anything about it. The probability is that if you swear,

your children swear. They were in the next room and heard you, or

somebody told them about your habit. Your child is practising to do

just as you do. He is laughed at, at first, for his awkwardness, but

after a while he will swear as well as you.

Then look at the example of master carpenters, masons, roofers, and

hatters. You know how some of you go around the building, and, when

the work of your journeyman and subordinates does not please you, what

do you say? It is not praying, is it? Forthwith, your journeymen

and subordinates learn the habit. Hence our hat-shops, and

house-scaffoldings, and side-walks, and wharves, and dockyards, and

cellars, and lofts ring with blasphemies.

Men argue that, if it is right for a man worth fifty or a hundred

thousand dollars to swear, it can be overlooked in men who have merely

their day's wages. Because they are poor must they be denied this one

luxury?

This habit becomes more prevalent because of the infirmities of

temper. There are many men who, when at peace, are most fastidious

of speech, but when aroused into the violence of passion, blaze with

imprecation. The Oriental's wife spoken of would not have liked her

husband to be profane under ordinary circumstances, but now that the

camels are gone, and the sheep are gone, and the property is gone,

and the boils have come, she says: "Why don't you swear? Curse God

and die!" Others, all the year round, have not the froth of profanity

wiped from their lips, but try to expend all the fury of a twelvemonth

in one red-hot paragraph of five minutes. A man apologized for his

occasional swearing by saying that, once in a year, in this way

he cleared himself out. There are men who have no control of their

blasphemous utterances, who want us to send them to Congress. Others

have blasphemed in senatorial places, pretending afterwards that it

was a mere rhetorical flourish.

Many fall into this habit through the frequent use of what are called

by-words. I suppose that all have favorite phrases of this kind in

which there is no harm; but a profusion of this style of speech often

ends in bald profanity. It is, "I declare!" "My stars!" "Mercy on me!"

"Good gracious!" "By George!" "By Jove!" and "By heavens!" and no harm

is intended; but it is a very easy transition from this kind of

talk to that which is positively obnoxious. The English language is

magnificent, and capable of expressing every shade of feeling and

every degree of energy and zeal; and there is no need that we take

to ourselves unlawful words. If you are happy, Noah Webster offers

to your tongue ten thousand epithets in which you may express your

exhilaration; and if you are righteously indignant, there are in

his dictionary whole armories of denunciation and scorn, sarcasm and

irony, caricature and wrath. Utter yourself against some meanness or

hypocrisy in all the blasphemies that ever smoked up from perdition,

and I will go on to denounce the same meanness and hypocrisy with a

hundred-fold more stress and vehemency in words across which no slime

has ever trailed, and through which no infernal fires have shot their

forked tongues,--words pure, innocent, all-impressive, God-honored,

Anglo-Saxon,--in which Milton sang, and Bunyan dreamed, and

Shakespeare wrote.

But whatever be the source of this habit, it is on the increase. At

sixteen, boys swear with as much facility as the grandfather did at

sixty. Our streets are cursed by it from end to end. Our hotels, from

morning until midnight, resound with it. Men curse on the way to the

bar to get their morning dram; curse the news-boy who cries the paper;

curse the breakfast for being cold; curse at the bank, and curse at

the store; curse on the way to bed; curse at the stone against which

they strike their foot; and curse at the splinter that gets under the

nail. If you do not know that this is so, it is because your ear has

been hardened by the perpetual din of profanities that are enough to

bring down upon any city the hurricane of fire that consumed Sodom.

The habit is creeping up into the higher circles. Every woman despises

flat and unvarnished imprecations; but in the most elevated circles

there are women who swear without knowing it. They have read Bulwer,

and George Sand, and the exaggerated style of some of our imported as

well as home-made periodical literature, until they do not actually

know what is decency of speech. With fairy fan to their lips they

utter their oaths, and, under chandeliers which discover not the

faintest blush, recklessly speak the holiest of names. This is helped

on by the second glass of wine, that is _perfectly harmless_; and

though no one dare charge her, being so finely dressed, with anything

like intoxication, yet there comes a glassiness to the eye, and a glow

to the cheek, and a style of speech to the tongue that were not known

before she took the second glass that was _perfectly harmless_.

One wild, terrific wave of blasphemy is sweeping over the land. See

the effects of this widespread profanity in the increasing perjury.

If men in ordinary conversation so commonly use the name of God, is it

wonderful that in the jury-box, and in the alderman's office, and

in the custom-house so many swear falsely? Notice the way an oath is

administered. They toss the Bible at a man, and in the most trivial

way say: "So help you God--kiss the book." I suppose enough lies are

every day told in the custom-house to sink it. Smuggling, although it

be done against positive oath, is in some circles considered a grand

joke; and you say some day to your friend, "How can you sell those

goods so cheaply?" and your friend says with an eye-twinkle, "The

Custom-House tariff was not as high on those things as it might have

been." Men more easily break their solemn oaths than formerly. What

strange verdicts juries do sometimes render! What peculiar charges

judges do sometimes make! What unaccountable slowness sheriffs and

their deputies sometimes exhibit in the execution of their writs! What

erratic railroad enterprises suddenly pass at our State capitals! What

wonderful changes Congress makes in the tariff on liquors!

What is an oath? Anything solemn? Anything appealing to the Almighty?

Anything stupendous in man's history? No! It is "kissing the book!"

In a land where the name of God so often becomes the foot-ball of what

are called respectable circles, how can we expect that it can excite

any veneration when, in the presence of county clerk, or alderman, or

judge, or legislative assembly, it is used in solemn adjuration? This

habit lowers, bedwarfs, and destroys the entire moral nature. You

might as well expect to raise harvests and vineyards on the side of

belching Stromboli as to have any great excellency grow upon your soul

when it so often overflows with the scoriæ of this awful propensity.

You will never swear yourself up. You will swear yourself down. The

Mohammedans, when they find a slip of paper they cannot read, put

it aside, for fear the name of God is on it. That, you say, is one

extreme. We go to the other.

You are willing to acknowledge this a miserable habit, and would like

to have some recipe for its cure.

Reflect much upon the uselessness of the habit. Did a volley of oaths

ever start a heavy load? Did curses ever unravel a tangled skein? Did

they ever extirpate the meanness of a customer? Did they ever collect

a bad debt? Did they ever cure a toothache? Did they ever stop a

twinge of the gout? Did they ever save you a dollar, or put you a step

forward in any great enterprise? or enable you to gain a position, or

to accomplish anything that you ever wanted to do? How much did

you ever make by swearing? What, in all the round of a lifetime of

profanity, did you ever _gain_ by the habit?

Reflect, also, upon the fact that it arouses God's indignation. The

Bible reiterates, in paragraph after paragraph, and chapter after

chapter, the fact that all swearers and blasphemers are accursed now,

and are to be forever miserable. There is no iniquity that has been so

often visited with the immediate curse of God.

At New Brunswick, a young man was standing on the railroad track

blaspheming. The cars passed, and he was found on the track with his

tongue cut out. People could not understand how, with comparatively

little bruising of the rest of his body, his tongue could have been

cut out. Not long ago, in Chicago, a man told a falsehood, and said

that he hoped, if what he said was not true, God would strike him

dead. He instantly fell. There was no longer any pulse. There was no

reason for his death, except that he asked God to strike him dead,

and God did it. In Scotland a club was formed, in which the members

competed as to which could use the most horrid oaths. The man who

succeeded best in the infamy was made president of the club. His

tongue began to swell. It protruded from his mouth. He could not draw

it in. He died within three days. Physicians were astounded. There was

nothing like it in all the books. What was the matter with him? _He

cursed God, and died!_ Near Catskill, N.Y., during a thunder-storm, a

group of men were standing in a blacksmith-shop. There came a crash

of thunder, and the men were startled. One man said that he was not

afraid; and he made a wager that he dared go out in front of the shop,

while the lightnings were flying, and dare the Almighty. He went

out; shook his fist at the heavens, crying, "Strike, if you dare!"

Instantly a thunder-bolt struck him. He was dead. He cursed God, and

died!

God will not abide this sin. He will not let it escape. There is a

kind of manifold paper by which a man may, with a heavy pencil, write

upon a dozen sheets at once--the writing going down through all the

sheets. So every oath and blasphemy goes through, and is written

indelibly on every leaf of God's remembrance. Ah! how much our Father

bears! Can you make an estimate of how many blasphemies will roll up

from the streets and saloons of our cities to-night? If you go out

and look up you cannot see them. There will be no trail of fire on the

sky. But the air is full of them. The name of Christ is not so often

spoken in worship as in derision. God will be cursed to-night by

hundreds of lips. The grog-shops will curse him. The houses of shame

will curse him. Five Points will curse him. Bedford street will curse

him. Chestnut street will curse him. Madison square will curse him.

Beacon street will curse him. Every street in all our cities will

curse him.

This blasphemy is an abomination that no words of mine can describe.

And God hears it. They curse His name. They curse his Sabbath. They

curse his Bible. They curse his people. They curse his Only Begotten

Son. Yes; they swear by the name of Jesus! It makes my hair rise, and

my flesh creep, and my blood chill, and my breath catch, and my foot

halt.

Dionysius had a cave where men were incarcerated. At the top of the

cave was an aperture to which he could put his ear, and could hear

every sigh, every groan, every word of the inmates. This world is so

arranged that all its voices go up to heaven. God puts down his ear

and hears every word of praise offered, and every word of blasphemy

spoken.

Our cities must come to judgment. All these oaths must be answered

for. They die on the air, but they have an eternal echo. Listen

for the echo. It rolls back from the ages to come. Listen:--"_All

blasphemers shall have their place in the lake that burneth with fire

and brimstone_." Some have thought that a lost soul in the future

world will do that which it was most prone to do in this world. If so,

then think of a man blaspheming God through all eternity!

This habit grows upon a man, until at last it pushes him off forever.

I saw a man die with an oath between his teeth. Voltaire rose from

his dying pillow, and, supposing that he saw Christ in the room, cried

out, "Crush the wretch!" A celebrated officer during the last war fell

mortally wounded, and the only word he sent to his wife was: "Tell her

I fought like hell!"

There are thousands of men who are having all their moral nature

pulled down by the fiery fingers of this habit. At last, pinched,

shrivelled, and consumed, they will get down on their beds to die, and

at the step of the doctor in the hall, or the shutting of the front

door, they will start up, thinking they hear the sepulchral gates

creak open.

Who is this God that you should maltreat his name? Has he been

haunting you, starving you, or freezing you all your life? No! He is

your Father, patient and loving. He rocked your cradle with blessings,

from the time you were born. He clothes you now, and always has

clothed you. You never had a sickness but he was sorry for you. He has

brooded over you with wings of love. He has tried to press you to his

heart of kindness and compassion. He wants to forgive you. He wants to

help you. He wants to make you happy. He watched last night over your

pillow while you slept. He will watch to-night. He was your father's

God, and your mother's. He has housed them safe from the blast, and he

wants to shelter you. Do you trifle with his name? Do you smite him in

the face? Do you thrust him back by your imprecations?

Who is this Jesus Christ that I hear men swearing by? Who is he? Some

destroyer, that they so treat his name? What foul thing hath he done,

that our great cities speak his name in thousand-voiced jeer and

contempt? Who is he? A Lamb, whose blood simmered in the fires of

sacrifice, to save you. A Brother, who put down his crown of glory

that you might take it up. For many years he has been striving, night

and day, to win your affections. There is nothing in heaven that he

is not willing to give you. He came with blistered feet and streaming

eyes, with aching head and broken heart to relieve you. On the craft

of a doomed humanity he pushed out into the sea, to pick you off the

rock. Who will ever again malign his name? Is there a hand that will

ever again be lifted to wound him? If so, let that hand, blood-dipped,

be lifted now. Which one of my readers will ever again utter his

sacred name in imprecation? If any, now let them speak. Not one! Not

one!

One summer among the New England hills there was an evening memorable

for storm and darkness. The clouds, which had been all day gathering,

at last unlimbered their batteries. The Housatonic, that flows

in silence save as the paddles of pleasure-parties rattle in the

row-lock, was lashed into foam and its waves staggered, not knowing

where to lay themselves. The hills jarred at the rumbling of God's

chariots. Blinding sheets of rain drove the cattle to the bars, and

beat against the window-pane as if to dash it in. The corn-fields

crouched in the fury, and the ripened grain-fields threw their crowns

of gold at the feet of the storm-king. After the night shut in, it

was a double night. Its black mantle was rent with the lightnings, and

into its locks were twisted the leaves of uprooted oaks, and shreds

of canvas torn from the masts of the beached shipping. It was such a

night as makes you thank God for shelter, and bids you open the door

to let in even the spaniel howling outside with the terror. We went

to sleep under the full blast of heaven's great orchestra, and the

forests with uplifted voice, in choiring hosts that filled all the

side of the mountains, praising the Lord.

We waked not until the fingers of the sunny morn touched our eyelids.

We looked out and. Housatonic slept as quiet as a baby's dream.

Pillars of white cloud set up along the heavens looked like the

castles of the blest, built for hierarchs of heaven on the beach of

the azure sea. The trees sparkled as though there had been some great

grief in heaven, and each leaf had been God-appointed to catch an angel's

tear. It seemed as if God our Father had looked down upon earth, his

wayward child, and stooped to her tear-wet cheek, and kissed it.

Even so will the darkness of our country's crime and suffering be

lifted. God will roll back the night of storm, and bring in the

morning of joy. Its golden light will gild the city spire, and strike

the forests of Maine, and tinge the masts of Mobile; and with one end

resting upon the Atlantic beach and the other on the Pacific coast,

God will spring a great rainbow arch of peace, in token of everlasting

covenant that the land shall never again be deluged with crime.

LIES: WHITE AND BLACK.

There are ten thousand ways of telling a lie. A man's entire life may

be a falsehood, while with his lips he may not once directly falsify.

There are those who state what is positively untrue, but afterwards

say, "may be," softly. These departures from the truth are called

"white lies;" but there is really no such thing as a white lie. The

whitest lie that was ever told was as black as perdition. No

inventory of public crimes will be sufficient that omits this gigantic

abomination. There are men, high in Church and State, actually useful,

self-denying, and honest in many things, who, upon certain subjects,

and in certain spheres, are not at all to be depended upon for

veracity. Indeed, there are multitudes of men who have their notions

of truthfulness so thoroughly perverted, that they do not know when

they _are_ lying. With many it is a cultivated sin; with some it seems

a natural infirmity. I have known people who seemed to have been born

liars. The falsehoods of their lives extended from cradle to grave.

Prevarication, misrepresentation, and dishonesty of speech appeared

in their first utterances and was as natural to them as any of

their infantile diseases, and was a sort of moral croup or spiritual

scarlatina. But many have been placed in circumstances where this

tendency has day by day, and hour by hour, been called to larger

development. They have gone from attainment to attainment, and from

class to class, until they have become regularly graduated liars.

The air of the city is filled with falsehoods. They hang pendent from

the chandeliers of our finest residences; they crowd the shelves of

some of our merchant princes; they fill the side-walk from curb-stone

to brown-stone facing. They cluster around the mechanic's hammer,

and blossom from the end of the merchant's yard-stick, and sit in

the doors of churches. Some call them "fiction." Some style them

"fabrication." You might say that they were subterfuge,

disguise, delusion, romance, evasion, pretence, fable, deception,

misrepresentation; but, as I am ignorant of anything to be gained by

the hiding of a God-defying outrage under a lexicographer's blanket, I

shall chiefly call them what my father taught me to call them--_lies_.

I shall divide them into agricultural, mercantile, mechanical, and

ecclesiastical lies; leaving those that are professional, social, and

political for some other chapter.

First, then, I will speak of those that are more particularly

_agricultural_. There is something in the perpetual presence of

natural objects to make a man pure. The trees never issue "false

stock." Wheat-fields are always honest. Rye and oats never move out

in the night, not paying for the place they have occupied. Corn shocks

never make false assignments. Mountain brooks are always "current."

The gold on the grain is never counterfeit. The sunrise never flaunts

in false colors. The dew sports only genuine diamonds.

Taking farmers as a class, I believe they are truthful, and fair in

dealing, and kind-hearted. But the regions surrounding our cities

do not always send this sort of men to our markets. Day by day there

creak through our streets, and about the market-houses, farm wagons

that have not an honest spoke in their wheels, or a truthful rivet

from tongue to tail-board. During the last few years there have been

times when domestic economy has foundered on the farmer's firkin.

Neither high taxes, nor the high price of dry-goods, nor the

exorbitancy of labor, could excuse much that the city has witnessed

in the behavior of the yeomanry. By the quiet firesides of Westchester

and Bucks counties I hope there may be seasons of deep reflection and

hearty repentance.

Rural districts are accustomed to rail at great cities as given up to

fraud and every form of unrighteousness; but our cities do not absorb

all the abominations. Our citizens have learned the importance of

not always trusting to the size and style of apples in the top of a

farmer's barrel, as an indication of what may be found farther down.

Many of our people are accustomed to watch to see how correctly a

bushel of beets is measured; and there are not many honest milk-cans.

Deceptions do not all cluster around city halls. When our cities sit

down and weep over their sins, all the surrounding counties ought to

come in and weep with them.

There is often hostility on the part of producers against traders,

as though the man who raises the corn were necessarily more honorable

than the grain dealer, who pours it into his mammoth bin. There ought

to be no such hostility. The occupation of one is as necessary as that

of the other. Yet producers often think it no wrong to snatch away

from the trader; and they say to the bargain-maker, "You get your

money easy." Do they get it easy? Let those who in the quiet field and

barn get their living exchange places with those who stand to-day amid

the excitements of commercial life, and see if they find it so very

easy. While the farmer goes to sleep with the assurance that his corn

and barley will be growing all the night, moment by moment adding to

his revenue, the merchant tries to go to sleep, conscious that that

moment his cargo may be broken on the rocks, or damaged by the wave

that sweeps clear across the hurricane deck; or that the gold gamblers

may, that very hour, be plotting some monetary revolution, or the

burglars be prying open his safe, or his debtors fleeing the town, or

his landlord raising the rent, or the fires kindling on the block that

contains all his estate. _Easy!_ is it? God help the merchants! It is

hard to have the palms of the hand blistered with out-door work; but a

more dreadful process when, through mercantile anxieties, the brain is

consumed!

In the next place we notice _mercantile_ lies, those before the

counter and behind the counter. I will not attempt to specify the

different forms of commercial falsehood. There are merchants who

excuse themselves for deviation from truthfulness because of what

they call commercial custom. In other words, the multiplication and

universality of a sin turns it into a virtue. There have been large

fortunes gathered where there was not one drop of unrequited toil

in the wine; not one spark of bad temper flashing from the bronze

bracket; not one drop of needle-woman's heart-blood in the crimson

plush; while there are other great establishments in which there is

not one door-knob, not one brick, not one trinket, not one thread of

lace, but has upon it the mark of dishonor. What wonder if, some day,

a hand of toil that had been wrung, and worn out, and blistered until

the skin came off, should be placed against the elegant wall-paper,

leaving its mark of blood,--four fingers and a thumb; or that,

some day, walking the halls, there should be a voice accosting the

occupant, saying, _Six cents for making a shirt_; and, flying the

room, another voice should say, _Twelve cents for an army blanket_;

and the man should try to sleep at night, but ever and anon be

aroused, until, getting up on one elbow, he should shriek out, _Who's

there?_

There are thousands of fortunes made in commercial spheres that are

throughout righteous. God will let his favor rest upon every scroll,

every pictured wall, every traceried window; and the joy that flashes

from the lights, and showers from the music, and dances in the

children's quick feet, pattering through the hall, will utter the

congratulation of men and the approval of God.

A merchant can, to the last item, be thoroughly honest. There is never

any need of falsehood. Yet how many will, day by day, hour by hour,

utter what they _know_ to be wrong. You say that you are selling at

less than cost. If so, then it is right to say it. But did that thing

cost you less than what you ask for it? If not, then you have lied.

You say that article cost you twenty-five dollars. Did it? If so,

then all right. If it did not, then you have lied. Suppose you are

a purchaser. You are "beating down" the goods. You say that that

article, for which five dollars is charged, is not worth more than

four. Is it worth no more than four dollars? Then all right. If it be

worth more, and, for the sake of getting it for less than its value,

you wilfully depreciate it, you have lied. _You_ may call it a sharp

trade. The recording angel writes it down on the ponderous tomes

of eternity--"Mr. So and So, merchant on Water street, or in Eighth

street, or in State street; or Mrs. So and So, keeping house on Beacon

street, or on Madison avenue, or Rittenhouse square, told one

lie." You may consider it insignificant, because relating to an

insignificant purchase. You would despise the man who would falsify

in regard to some great matter, in which the city or the whole country

was concerned; but this is only a box of buttons, or a row of pins,

or a case of needles. Be not deceived. The article purchased may be so

small you can put it in your vest pocket, but the sin was bigger than

the Pyramids, and the echo of the dishonor will reverberate through

all the mountains of eternity.

You throw out on your counter some specimens of handkerchiefs. Your

customer asks, "Is that all silk? no cotton in it?" You answer, "It

is all silk." Was it all silk? If so, all right. But was it partly

cotton? Then you have lied. Moreover, you lost by the falsehood. The

customer, though he may live at Lynn, or Doylestown, or Poughkeepsie,

will find out that you defrauded him, and next spring, when he again

comes shopping, he will look at your sign and say: "I will not try

there. That is the place where I got that handkerchief." So that, by

that one dishonest bargain, you picked your own pocket and insulted

the Almighty.

Would you dare to make an estimate of how many falsehoods in trade

were yesterday told by hardware men, and clothiers, and fruit-dealers,

and dry-goods establishments, and importers, and jewellers, and

lumbermen, and coal-merchants, and stationers, and tobacconists? Lies

about saddles, about buckles, about ribbons, about carpets, about

gloves, about coats, about shoes, about hats, about watches, about

carriages, about books,--about everything. In the name of the Lord

Almighty, I arraign commercial falsehoods as one of the greatest of

abominations in city and town.

In the next place, I notice _mechanical_ lies. There is no class of

men who administer more to the welfare of the city than artisans. To

their hand we must look for the building that shelters us, for the

garments that clothe us, for the car that carries us. They wield

a widespread influence. There is much derision of what is called

"_muscular Christianity_;" but in the latter day of the world's

prosperity, I think that the Christian will be muscular. We have the

right to expect of those stalwart men of toil the highest possible

integrity. Many of them answer all our expectations, and stand at the

front of religious and philanthropic enterprises. But this class, like

the others that I have named, has in it those who lack in the element

of veracity. They cannot all be trusted. In times when the demand for

labor is great, it is impossible to meet the demands of the public, or

do work with that promptness and perfection that would at other times

be possible. But there are mechanics whose word cannot be trusted

at any time. No man has a right to promise more work than he can do.

There are mechanics who say that they will come Monday, but they do

not come until Wednesday. You put work in their hands that they tell

you shall be completed in ten days, but it is thirty. There have been

houses built of which it might be said that every nail driven, every

foot of plastering put on, every yard of pipe laid, every shingle

hammered, every brick mortared, could tell of falsehood connected

therewith. There are men attempting to do ten or fifteen pieces of

work who have not the time or strength to do more than five or six

pieces; but by promises never fulfilled keep all the undertakings

within their own grasp. This is what they call _"nursing" the job_.

How much wrong to his soul and insult to God a mechanic would save, if

he promised only so much as he expected to be able to do. Society has

no right to ask of you impossibilities.

You cannot always calculate correctly, and you may fail because you

cannot get the help that you anticipate. But now I am speaking of the

wilful making of promises that you know you cannot keep. Did you say

that that shoe should be mended, that coat repaired, those brick

laid, that harness sewed, that door grained, that spout fixed, or that

window glazed, by Saturday, knowing that you would neither be able

to do it yourself nor get any one else to do it? Then, before God

and man, you are a liar. You may say that it makes no particular

difference, and that if you had told the truth you would have lost the

job, and that people expect to be disappointed. But that excuse will

not answer. There is a voice of thunder rolling among the drills, and

planes, and shoe-lasts, and shears, which says: "All liars shall have

their place in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone."

I next notice _ecclesiastical_ lies; that is, falsehoods told for

the purpose of advancing churches and sects, or for the purpose of

depleting them. There is no use in asking many a Calvinist what an

Arminian believes, for he will be apt to tell you that the Arminian

believes that a man can convert himself; or to ask the Arminian

what the Calvinist believes, for he will tell you that the Calvinist

believes that God made some men just to damn them. There is no need of

asking a pedo-Baptist what a Baptist believes, for he will be apt to

say that the Baptist believes immersion to be positively necessary to

salvation. It is almost impossible for one denomination of Christians,

without prejudice or misrepresentation, to state the sentiment of

an opposing sect. If a man hates Presbyterians, and you ask him what

Presbyterians believe, he will tell you that they believe that there

are infants in hell a span long.

It is strange also how individual churches will sometimes make

misstatements about other individual churches. It is especially so in

regard to falsehoods told with reference to prosperous enterprises.

As long as a church is feeble, and the singing is discordant, and the

minister, through the poverty of the church, must go with threadbare

coat, and here and there a worshipper sits in the end of a pew having

all the seat to himself, religious sympathizers of other churches will

say, "What a pity!" But, let a great day of prosperity come, and even

ministers of the gospel, who ought to be rejoiced at the largeness and

extent of the work, denounce, and misrepresent, and falsify,--starting

the suspicion, in regard to themselves, that the reason they do not

like the corn is because it is not ground in their own mill.

How long before we shall learn to be fair in our religious criticisms!

The keenest jealousies on earth are church jealousies. The field of

Christian work is so large that there is no need that our hoe-handles

hit.

May God extirpate from the world ecclesiastical lies, commercial lies,

mechanical lies, and agricultural lies, and make every man, the world

over, to speak truth with his neighbor!

A GOOD TIME COMING.

As on some bitter cold night, while threshing our hands about to keep

our thumbs from freezing, we have looked up and seen the northern

lights blazing along the sky, the windows of heaven illumined at

the news of some great victory, so from beyond this bitter night of

abomination a brightness strikes through from the other side.

I have thought that it would be well, in these chapters on the sins of

the times, to lift before you a vision of what our cities will be

when the work of good men shall have been concluded and our population

redeemed. I doubt not that sometimes men have shut this book, thinking

that the gigantic wrongs we depict may never be discomfited. Lest you

be utterly disheartened, I will show you that we fight in a war in

which we will be completely victorious. This is to be no drawn battle;

for, when it is done, the result will not be disputed by a man on

earth, or an angel in heaven, or a devil in hell. We shall have

captured every one of the strongholds of darkness. You and I will

live to see the day when gambling-hells will be changed into places of

Christian merchandise, and houses of sin swept and garnished for the

residence of the purest home circles.

Beethoven was deaf, and could not hear the airs he composed; but when

the song of universal disenthralment arises, and white Circassian

stands up by the side of black Ethiopian, and tropical groves wave to

the Lebanon cedars, we shall, standing somewhere, know it and see it,

and hear it. If gone from earth, we will be allowed to come out on the

hills and look.

We do not talk about impossibilities. We do not propose a medicine

about which we have to say that it will "kill or cure." For this balm

that oozes from the tree of heaven will inevitably cure.

I remark that this coming time of municipal elevation will be a time

of financial prosperity. Many seem to suppose that when the world's

better days come, the people will forsake their industries, and give

themselves to perpetual psalm-singing, and, being all absorbed in

spiritual things, will become reckless as to dress and dwelling; and

very rigid laws then governing the commercial world, all enterprise

and speculation will cease, and all hilarity be stricken out of the

social circle. There is no warrant for such an absurd anticipation. I

suppose that when society is reconstructed, where there is now, in the

course of a year, one fortune made, there will be a hundred fortunes

made. Every one knows that the commercial world thrives in proportion

as there is confidence between man and man; and the extirpation of all

double-dealing and fraud from society will increase this confidence,

and hence greater prosperity. The heavy commercial disasters that have

smitten this land were the work of godless speculators and infamous

stock-gamblers. It is crime that is the mightiest foe to business;

but when the right shall hurl back into ruin the plots of bad men,

and purify the commercial code, and thunder down fraudulent

establishments, and put into the hands of honest men the keys of

commercial prosperity, blessed will be the bargain-makers of the city.

That will be a prosperous time, for taxes will be a mere nothing.

Every style of business is taxed now to the utmost. City taxes, county

taxes, State taxes, United States taxes, license taxes, manufacturing

taxes, stamp taxes,--taxes! taxes! taxes! Our citizens must make a

small fortune every year to meet these exactions. What hand fastens

to all of our great industries this tremendous load? Crime! We have

to pay the board of every man and woman who, by intemperance, is

cast into the alms-house. We have to support the orphans of those who

plunge themselves into their graves by beastly indulgences. We support

from our pockets the large machinery of municipal government, which is

vast just in proportion as the criminal proclivities of the city

are great. What makes necessary hospitals, houses of refuge,

police-stations, and alms-houses, the Tombs, Sing Sing, and

Moyamensing?

In that good time coming there shall be no exhaustive taxation; no

orphans homeless, for parents will be able to leave their children

a competency; no prisons, for crime will have given place to virtue.

Then the vast swindles which now, from time to time, disgrace our

cities, will be unheard of. No voting of public money that, on its way

to some city improvement, falls into the pockets of those who voted

it. No courts of Oyer and Terminer, at vast expense to the people. No

empanelling of juries to inquire into theft, arson, murder, slander,

and black-mail. In that day of redemption there will be better

factories, grander architecture, finer equipages, larger estates,

richer opulence.

Again: when our cities are purified the churches will be multiplied,

purified, and strengthened. Now, denominations, and the individuals of

the different sects, are often jealous of each other. Christians are

not always kindly disposed toward each other; and ministers of the

gospel sometimes forget the bond of brotherhood. In that day they will

be sympathetic and helpful. There may be differences of opinion and

sentiment, but no acerbity, no hypercriticism, and no exclusiveness.

In that day all the churches will be filled with worshippers. We

have not to-day, in the cities, church-room for one-fourth of our

population; and yet there is a great deal more room than the people

occupy. The churches do not average an attendance of five hundred

people. The vast majority do not attend public worship. But in the

day of which I speak there will be enough church-room to hold all the

people, and the room will be occupied. In that time what rousing songs

will be sung! What earnest sermons will be preached! What fervent

prayers will be offered! In these days a _fashionable_ church is a

place where, after a careful toilet, a few people come in, sit down,

and what time they can get their minds off their stores, or away from

the new style of hat in the seat before them, listen in silence to the

minister--warranted to hit no man's sins--and to the choir, who are

agreed to sing tunes that nobody knows; and, having passed away an

hour in dreamy lounging, go home refreshed.

I pronounce much of what is called "church music," in our day, a

mockery and a farce. Though I have neither a cultured voice nor a

cultured ear, no man shall do my singing. When the storms, and the

trees, and the dragons are called on to praise the Lord, I feel that

I must sing, for I know more about music than do the dragons. Nothing

can take the place of artistic music. The dollar that I pay to hear

Parepa or Nilsson sing is far from being wasted. But, when the hymn

is read, and the angels of God stoop from their thrones to bear up

on their wings the praise of the great congregation, let us not drive

them away with our indifference. I have preached in churches where

fabulous sums of money were paid to performers, and the harmony was

exquisite as any harmony that ever went up from an Academy of Music;

and yet, for all the purposes of devotion, I would prefer the hearty,

out-breaking song of a backwoods Methodist camp-meeting. When these

fancy starveling songs get up to the gate of heaven, how do you

suppose they look, standing beside the great doxologies of the

glorified? Let an operatic performance, floating upward, get many

hours the start, and it shall be caught and passed by the shout of the

Sailors' Bethel, or the hosanna of the Sabbath-school children.

I know a church where there was no singing except that done by the

choir, save one old Christian man; and they waited upon him by

a committee, and asked him if he would not stop singing, for he

disturbed the choir!

The day cometh when all the churches will rejoice in this department

of service, rightly conducted, and when from all the great audiences

of attentive worshippers will rise a multitudinous anthem.

"O God! let all the people praise thee!" Again: when the city is

redeemed, the low haunts of vice and pollution will be extinguished.

Mr. Etzler, of England, proposes, by the forces of tide, and wind,

and wave, and sunshine, to reconstruct the world. In a book of

much genius, which rushed rapidly from edition to edition, he

says:--"Fellow-men: I promised to show the means of creating a

paradise within ten years, where everything desirable for human life

may be had by every man in superabundance, without labor and without

pay; where the whole face of nature shall be changed into the most

beautiful forms, and man may live in the most magnificent palaces,

in all imaginable refinements of luxury, and in the most delightful

gardens; where he may accomplish without labor, in one year, more than

hitherto could be done in thousands of years; may level continents;

sink valleys; create lakes; drain lakes and swamps, and intersect the

land everywhere with beautiful canals and roads for transporting heavy

loads of many thousand tons, and for travelling a thousand miles in

twenty-four hours; may cover the ocean with floating islands, movable

in any desired direction, with an immense power and celerity, in

perfect security, and with all the comforts and luxuries; bearing

gardens and palaces, with thousands of families, and provided with

rivulets of sweet water; may explore the interior of the globe, and

travel from pole to pole in a fortnight; provide himself with means

yet unheard of for increasing his knowledge of the world, and so his

intelligence; leading a life of continual happiness, of enjoyment yet

unknown; free himself from almost all the evils that afflict mankind

except death, and even put death far beyond the common period of human

life, and, finally, render it less afflicting. From the houses to be

built will be afforded the most enrapturing views to be fancied;

from the galleries, from the roof, and from its turrets may be seen

gardens, as far as the eye can see, full of fruits and flowers,

arranged in the most beautiful order, with walks, colonnades,

aqueducts, canals, ponds, plains, amphitheatres, terraces, fountains,

sculptured works, pavilions, gondolas, places for public amusement,

to delight the eye and fancy. All this to be done by urging the water,

the wind, and the sunshine to their full development." Mr. Etzler

gives plates of the machinery by which all this is to be done. He

proposes the organization of a company; and says small shares of

twenty dollars will be sufficient--in all from two hundred thousand to

three hundred thousand dollars--to create the first establishment for

a whole community, of from three to four thousand individuals. "At the

end of five years we shall have a principal of two hundred millions

of dollars; and so paradise will be wholly regained at the end of the

tenth year."

There is more reason in this than in many of the plans proposed; but

mechanical forces can never recreate the world. I shall take no shares

in the large company that is proposed; my faith is that Christianity

will yet make the worst street of our cities better than the best

street now is.

Archimedes consumed the enemies of Syracuse by a great sun-glass. As

the ships came up the harbor, the sun's rays were concentrated upon

them: now the sails are wings of fire; the masts fall, and the vessels

sink. So, by the great sun-glass of the Gospel, the rays of heaven

will be concentred upon all the filth and unchastity and crime of our

great towns, and under the heat they will blaze and expire. When the

day comes that I have shown will come, suppose you that there will

be any midnight brawls? any shivering mendicants, kicked off from the

marble steps? any droves of unwashed, uncombed, unfed children? any

blasphemers in the street? any staggering past of inebriates? No! No

wine-cellars. No lager-beer saloons. No distilleries where they make

the XXX. No bloated cheeks. No blood-shot eyes. No fist-battered

foreheads. The grandchildren of that woman who now walks up the street

with a curse, as the boys stone her, will be philanthropists, and heal

the sick, and manage great commercial enterprises.

When our cities are so raised, we shall have a different style of

municipal government. The great question, in regard to the execution

of the law, now is: "What is popular?" Our city governments

slumber--great carcasses of insufficiency, sending up their stench

into the nostrils of high heaven, while there are thousands of

gambling-houses, and drinking-saloons, and more places of damnable

lust than the decency of the country has time to count. Do you tell me

that the authorities do not know it? They do know it. All the police

know it. The sheriff and his deputies know it. The aldermen know it.

The mayors know it. Everybody who keeps his eyes and ears open knows

it. In the name of God I impeach the municipal authorities of many of

our cities, that they neglect to execute the law. You cannot charge

it upon any one party. Within the past few years both parties, and

all kinds of parties, have been in power; but the work has never been

done. You have but to pass the City Hall, or look in upon the rooms of

some of our city officials, to see to what sort of men our cities have

been abandoned. Look at the swearing, bloated, sensual wretches who

stand on the outside of the New York City Hall, picking their teeth,

waiting for some crumbs of emolument to fall at their feet; and then

tell me how far it is from New York to Sodom. Who are those wretched

women sent up in the city van to the police-court, apprehended for

drunkenness? They will be locked up in jail; but what will be done

with the groggeries that made them drunk? Who are these men in the

city-prison? That man stole a pair of shoes; that boy, one dollar from

the counter; that girl snatched a purse--all villanies of less than

twenty or thirty dollars' damage to the community; but for

that gambler, who last night took that young man's thousand

dollars--nothing! For that man who broke in upon the purity of a

Christian household, and by a perfidy and adroitness that beat the

strategy of hell, flung that girl into the chasm of earthly

despair, from which her lost soul goes shrieking to the bottomless

pit--nothing! For those who "fleeced" a young man, and induced him to

filch from his employers vast sums of money, until, in his agony, he

came to an officer of the church, and frantically asked what he should

do--nothing!

Verily, small crimes ought to be punished; but it were more just if

our authorities would turn out from our jails and penitentiaries the

small villains, the petty criminals, the infantile offenders, the

ten-dollar desperadoes, and fill their places with some of these

monsters of abomination, who drive their roan span through our fine

streets until honest men have to fly to escape being run over; and

if they would turn out from their incarceration the poor girls of

the town, and put in some of the magnificent ladies who cover up the

sidewalk with their unpaid-for fineries, and with scornful look, in

the church-aisle, pass the daughters of poverty, who with their

faded dress and plain hat _dare_ to come to worship God in the same

sanctuary.

But all these wrongs shall be righted. Our streets shall hear the

tramp of a regenerated multitude. Three hundred and sixty bells were

rung in Moscow when the prince was married; but when righteousness

and peace shall "kiss each other" in all the earth, ten thousand bells

will strike the jubilee. Poverty enriched. Hunger fed. Disease cured.

Crime purified. The cities saved.

THE END.