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 other in 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?  For God’s sake get out of that business!  If a we 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!

Do not think that because human government may license you that therefore God licenses you.  I am surprized to hear men say that they respect the “original package” decision by which the Supreme Court of the United States allows rum to be taken into States like Kansas, which decided against the sale of intoxicants.  I have no respect for a wrong decision, I care not who makes it; the three judges of the Supreme Court who gave minority report against that decision were right, and the chief justice was wrong.  The right of a State to defend itself against the rum traffic will yet be demonstrated, the Supreme Court notwithstanding.  Higher than the judicial bench at Washington is the throne of the Lord God Almighty.  No enactment, national, State, or municipal, can give you the right to carry on a business whose effect is destruction.

God knows better than you do yourself the number of drinks you have poured down.  You keep a list; but a more accurate list has been kept than yours.  You may call it Burgundy, Bourbon, cognac, Heidsieck, sour mash, or beer.  God calls it “strong-drink.”  Whether you sell it in low oyster-cellar or behind the polished counter of a 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 ear; 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 away among the crags of death, will thunder, “Wo to him that giveth his neighbor drink!”