A noted Bible scholar says:  “The Bible is not simply a schedule of sins and duties catalogued and labeled, but a revelation of immutable principles, in the application of which God tests the sincerity of our profession.”  To drink intoxicating liquor in this enlightened age, with all the woes of intemperance about us and responsibilities of life upon us, is a violation of every immutable principle laid down in the Bible.  First, it’s against the law of prudence, which says of two possible paths one should take the safer.  Which is the safer, moderation or total-abstinence?  Next, it’s against the law of humility, which teaches where mightier than we have fallen, we must distrust ourselves.  Have mightier than we fallen through strong drink?  Next, it’s against the law of human brotherhood, which makes it imperative upon the strong to bear the infirmities of the weak.  Is the drinker weak?  Next, it’s against the law of expediency; “it is good neither to eat flesh nor drink wine nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth.”  Do our brothers stumble over strong drink?  Last, it’s against the law of self-denial; “if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend.”  Does strong drink make our brother to offend?  On these immutable principles the cause of sobriety is built, and the gates of the devil of drink shall not prevail against it.

Young man, let me give you a bit of advice and assurance.  Never take a drink of intoxicating liquor as a beverage, and when you are as old as I am you will not regret it.  You cannot find me in all the world, one man between forty and eighty years of age, an abstainer all his life, who would change that record if he could.  Boys, that’s a very safe rule that has not a single exception.  But how many are there who regret they ever put the bottle to their lips?  “If I had only let strong drink alone” is the bitter wail of millions of men and women.  From pauper poverty and prison cells, electric chairs and dying drunkard’s lips comes the cry:  “Drink has been my curse!”

Does some young man in this audience say, “I can quit if I please?” Then I beg you to please, ere you reach the time when you will strive to quit, but in vain.  I know you don’t intend to go beyond your power of control; neither did the drunkards who have gone before you.  Do you suppose Edgar Allen Poe dreamt when he took his first drink in the social gathering of an old Virginia gentleman’s home that it would bring from his brilliant brain the weird strain: 

“Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Do you suppose Thomas F. Marshall, our gifted Kentucky orator, dreamt when he stood at the foot of the ladder of fame and all Kentucky pointed him to the golden glory of its summit, that his last words would be:  “And this is the end.  Tom Marshall dying; dying in a borrowed bed, under a borrowed sheet, and without a decent suit of clothes in which to be buried!”