Reverend M'Ilvaine Denounces Intemperance, 1839

From The Temperance Volume; Embracing Seventeen Tracts of the American Tract Society. New York: Published by the Society, 1839, ps. 233, 238-241.

Address
to the
Young Men of the United States,
On
Temperance.

Written by Rev. C.P. M'ilvaine, D.D. in behalf of the New-York
Young Men's Temperance Society.

It cannot be denied that our country is most horribly scourged by intemperance. In the strong language of Scripture, it groaneth and travaileth in pain, to be delivered from the bondage of this corruption. Our country is free! with a great price obtained we this freedom. Yet we feel as if all the force of Europe could not get it from our embrace. Our shores would shake into the depth of the sea the invader who should presume to seek it. One solitary citizen&151;led away into captivity&151;scourged&151;chained by a foreign enemy, would rouse the oldest nerve in the land to indignant complaint, and league the whole nation on loud demand for redress. And yet it cannot be denied that our country is enslaved. Yes, we are groaning under a most desolating bondage. The land is trodden down under its polluting foot. Our families are continually dishonored, ravaged, and bereaved; thousands annually slain, and hundreds of thousands carried away into a loathsome slavery, to be ground to powder under its burdens, or broken under the wheel of its tortures. What are the statistics of this traffic? Ask the records of mad-houses, and they will answer, that one-third of all their wretched inmates were sent there by Intemperance. Ask the keepers of our prisons, and they will testify that, with scarcely an exception, their horrible population is from the schools of Intemperance. Ask the history of the 200,000 paupers now burdening the hands of public charity, and you will find that two-thirds of them have been the victims, directly or indirectly, of Intemperance. Inquire at the gates of death, and you will learn that no less than 30,000 souls are annually passed for the judgment-bar of God, driven there by Intemperance. How many slaves are at present among us? We ask not of slaves to man, but to Intemperance, in comparison with whose bondage the yoke of the tyrant is freedom. They are estimated at 480,000! And what does the nation pay for the honor and happiness of this whole system of ruin? Five times as much, every year, as for the annual support of its whole system of government. These are truths&151;so often published&151;so widely sanctioned&151;so generally received, and so little doubted, that we need not detail the particulars by which they are made out. What then is the whole amount of guilt of wo which they exhibit? Ask Him 'unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid.' Ask Eternity! . . . .

Another assertion is equally unquestionable. The time has come when a great effort must be made to exterminate this unequalled destroyer. It was high time this was done when the first drunkard entered eternity to receive the award of Him who has declared that no drunkard shall enter the kingdom of God. The demand for this effort has been growing in the peremptory tone of its call, as "the over-flowing scourge" has passed with constantly extending sweep throughout the land. But a strange apathy has prevailed among us. As if the whole nation had been drinking the cup of delusion, we saw the enemy coming in like a flood, and we lifted up scarcely a straw against him. As if the magicians of Egypt had prevailed over us by their enchantments, we beheld our waters of refreshment turned into blood, and a destroying sword passing through till "there was a great cry" in the land, for there was scarcely "a house where there was not one dead;" and still our hearts were hardened, and we would not let go the great sin for which these plagues were brought upon us. It seems as if some foul demon had taken his seat upon the breast of the nation, and was holding us down with the dead weight of a horrid nightmare, while he laughed at our calamity, and mocked at our fear&151;when our fear came as desolation, and our destruction as a whirlwind. Shall this state continue? Is not the desolation advancing? Have not facilities of intemperance&151;temptations to intemperance&151;examples to sanction intemperance, been fast increasing ever since this plague began? Without some effectual effort, is it not certain they will continue to increase, till intemperate men and their abettors will form the public opinion and consequently the public conscience and the public law of this land&151;till intemperance shall become like Leviathan of old, "king over all the children of pride," whose breath kindleth coals, and a "flame goeth out of his mouth?" Then what will effort of man prevail? "Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook? His heart is as firm as a stone, yea, as hard as a piece of the nether millstone; he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not. When he raiseth up himself the mighty are afraid."

It is too late to put off any longer the effort for deliverance. It is granted by the common sense, and urged by the common interest; every feeling of humanity and every consideration of religion enforces the belief that the time has come when a great onset is imperiously demanded to drive out intemperance from the land.

This, to be great, must be universal. The whole country is enslaved; and the whole country must rise up at once, like an armed man, and determine to be free. Of what lasting avail would it be for one section of territory, here and there, to clear itself, while the surrounding regions should remain under the curse? The temperance reformation has no quarantine to fence out the infected. Geographical boundaries are no barriers against contagion. Rivers and mountains are easily crossed by corrupting example. Ardent spirits, like all other fluids, perpetually seek their level. In vain does the farmer eradicate from his fields the last vestige of the noisome thistle, while the neighboring grounds are given up to its dominion, and every wind scatters the seed where it listeth. The effort against intemperance, to be effective, must be universal.