_Entire abstinence from ardent spirits is essential to personal security._ Such is the insidious operation of strong drink upon all the barriers we may set up against excess; so secretly does it steal upon the taste, excite the appetite, disorganize the nervous system, and undermine the deepest resolutions of him who imagines himself in perfect security; so numerous and awful have been its victories over every barrier, and every species of mental and bodily constitution, that we may lay it down as an assertion, which none who know the annals of intemperance will dispute, that no individual who permits himself to use ardent spirits moderately, has any valid security that he will not become a victim to its power.
[Footnote F: Under this standard you shall conquer.]
We know the remarks which instantly mount to the lips of many at the sight of such an assertion: "Surely the little we take can never hurt us. Look around and see how many have done the same, and continued the habit to the end of life, without having ever been betrayed into drunkenness." We do look around, and are constrained to remark, how many have seemed to live temperately to the end, who, if the reality were known, would be quoted as warnings against the insidiousness of the poison, instead of examples of the security with which it may be used in moderation. They were never delirious; but were they never fevered? Fever is often fatal, without delirium. Ah, did every disease with which human beings are fevered, and swollen, and slain, receive a candid name; were every gravestone inscribed with a true memorial, as well of the life, as the death of him at whose head it stands; could every consumption, and dropsy, and liver-complaint, disclose its secret history; did every shaking nerve, and palsied stomach, and aching temple, and burning brain, and ruptured blood-vessel, relate how it began, and grew, and triumphed, we should hear, indeed, of many who died in consumption, or dropsy, and other diseases, without any impulse towards the grave from the use of strong drink; but of how many, never regarded as intemperate, should we learn that the real, though slow and silent cause of their death was _drink_. They lingered long, and their malady was called a disease of the lungs; or they fell suddenly, and it was a case of apoplexy; or they were greatly swollen, and it was considered dropsy; they lost their powers of digestion, and were said to be troubled with dyspepsia; every vital function refused its natural action, and the poor victim was treated for a liver-complaint. But why? what produced the disease? Alcohol! They were poisoned. They died of the intemperate use of ardent spirits, however moderately they may have had the credit of indulging in them.