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, passwords, signs, and strategems, 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 beneficent 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 some 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 would be the salvation of many of you.  The glorious work of Theobald Mathew can never be estimated.  At this hand four millions of people took the pledge, and multitudes in Ireland, England, Scotland, and America, have kept it till this day.  The pledge signed has been to thousands the proclamation of emancipation.

Again, we expect great things from asylums for inebriates.  They have already done a glorious work.  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 it; 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 had 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!  Tho the hands of blood pass up the bowl, and the soul trembles over the pit—­the drink!  Give it to me!  Tho it be pale with tears; tho the froth of everlasting anguish float on the foam—­give it to me!  I drink to my wife’s wo to my children’s rags; to my eternal banishment from God and hope and heaven!  Give it to me! the drink!”