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God Never Made Alcohol.

It is not in the purple cluster of luscious grapes, that hang invitingly on the pendant branch. It is not in the rich and crimson-cheeked fruit that has reached a vigorous maturity. It is not in the golden grain that bends to the reaper's hand. It is nowhere in living, growing nature, but in dead and decayed nature it is everywhere. It is the death principle and exists in putrefaction and rottenness, whether in the mashtub, the malthouse, a rotten apple, a decayed egg, or a dead horse.

Carbon and oxygen are found in putrefying bodies, and these, with hydrogen, make alcohol. In the absence of nitrogen, fermentation is putrefaction. In the decomposition of all animal matter, nitrogen is present, but not in the putrefaction of vegetable matter; this fact accounts for the offensive stench in the vicinity of dead animals.

But go into the brewery or distillery and throw a little nitrogen into the fermenting grain, then look up and count the coming buzzards.

From alcohol as a base, beginning with the grape, at an early date, men have invented a great variety of intoxicating drinks, but as all manner of intoxicants in all parts of the world are alike productive of wretchedness and crime, when used as a beverage, we are ready to affirm and stand by the affirmation, that to make and vend spirituous liquors for other than medical or mechanical purposes is wrong, socially, politically, and morally wrong.

That the brewer, the distiller, the wine-vat man, the wholesale dealer, and the retailer, whether in frescoed hall or underground den, are sinners in the prosecution of a vile and sinful business. If not sinners above all others, nor beyond repentance, they are at least conspicuous as leading sinners, and as the daring invader of man's inalienable rights, and as offenders in some sense against every clause in the decalogue.

In myriad forms temptations rise,
In every guise they woo us.
They flaunt their sweets before our eyes
And lure us to undo us.
They vainly lure, they vainly plead,
Their spells no longer bind us,
For by His help whose help we need
We've left them all behind us.