cause was a drunkard's example. Read the records of the fearful sacrifice of human life in shipwrecks, collisions, fires, and explosions, and you will find that drink was at the bottom of most of them. From the same prolific source flow murders, suicides, and a thousand nameless sins. Alas, have not I seen it all in my own school companions, the dearest friends of my school days! There was one drunkard among them, who after five years at a university has opened a saloon. Of his companions one was tried for his life for malpractice and murder, another is serving a term for forgery, and a third ended his drunken career in a ditch. Truly is drink the ruin of youth, the scourge of manhood, and the dishonor of old age — the devil's way to man and man's way to the devil.
Brethren, in God's name try to avoid this shocking vice. If you are a total abstainer, not from necessity but through choice, continue to persevere, and be sure you are doing a good work for God, your neighbor, and yourself. If you are a moderate drinker, oh beware, beware, for the one cause of drunkenness is drinking, and " he that contemneth small things shall fall by little and little." The drink-habit partakes of the nature of a snake and of a tiger. It may steal on you silently and slowly wind itself around you and crush you in its embrace; or in the day of trouble or sorrow or mental anxiety it may come upon you at a single bound and destroy you in an instant. But if you are a habitual drunkard, oh for the love of God and your own soul abandon your sinful folly while there is yet time. And you,
