Beverages
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Moderate Drinking the Highway to Drunkenness
Persons may become just as really intoxicated on wine and cider
as on stronger drinks, and the worst kind of inebriation is produced
by these so-called milder drinks. The passions are more perverse; the
transformation of character is greater, more determined and obstinate.
A few quarts of cider or wine may awaken a taste for stronger drinks,
and in many cases those who have become confirmed drunkards have
thus laid the foundation of the drinking habit. For some persons it is by
no means safe to have wine or cider in the house. They have inherited
an appetite for stimulants, which Satan is continually soliciting them
to indulge. If they yield to his temptations, they do not stop; appetite
clamors for indulgence, and is gratified to their ruin. The brain is
benumbed and clouded; reason no longer holds the reins, but they are
laid on the neck of lust. Licentiousness, adultery, and vices of almost
every type, are committed as the result of indulging the appetite for
wine and cider. A professor of religion who loves these stimulants,
and accustoms himself to their use, never grows in grace. He becomes
gross and sensual; the animal passions control the higher powers of
the mind, and virtue is not cherished.
Moderate drinking is the school in which men are receiving an
education for the drunkard’s career. So gradually does Satan lead away
from the strongholds of temperance, so insidiously do the harmless
wine and cider exert their influence upon the taste, that the highway
to drunkenness is entered upon all unsuspectingly. The taste for stim-
ulants is cultivated; the nervous system is disordered; Satan keeps
the mind in a fever of unrest, and the poor victim, imagining himself
perfectly secure, goes on and on, until every barrier is broken down,
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every principle sacrificed. The strongest resolutions are undermined;
and eternal interests are not strong enough to keep the debased appetite
under the control of reason.
Some are never really drunk, but are always under the influence of
cider or fermented wine. They are feverish, unbalanced in mind, not
really delirious, but in fully as bad a condition; for all the noble powers
of the mind are perverted. A tendency to disease of various kinds,
as dropsy, liver complaint, trembling nerves, and a determination of
blood to the head, results from the habitual use of sour cider. By
its use many bring upon themselves permanent disease. Some die of