Among the laws given by the divine Lawgiver through Moses to the Jews, was the following: “If an ox gore a man or a woman that they die, then the ox shall be surely stoned; but the owner of the ox shall be quit. But if the ox were wont to push with his horn in time past, and it hath been testified to his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but he hath killed a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put to death.” Exod. 21: 28, 29.

The principle of this law is a very plain one, and a very broad one—here applied in a specific case, but extending to ten thousand others. It is this. Every man is responsible to God for the evils which result from his selfishness, or his indifference to the welfare of others.

Ages before this law was given, God says to Noah, “Your blood of your lives will I require: at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man.” A stigma shall be fixed upon man or beast that shall destroy him who is made after the similitude of God. But why, in the case first supposed, is the owner quit, or guiltless? Simply because the death is not in any way the result of his carelessness or of his selfishness. From any thing within his knowledge, he had no reason to expect such a result. But if the ox hath been wont to push with his horns, and he knew it, he shall be responsible for the consequences, whatever they may be; for he had every reason to expect that mischief would be done, and took no measures to prevent it. And if the ox kill a man or woman, the owner hath done the murder, and he shall be put to death. Why? The death was the result of his selfishness, or his indifference to the lives of others. And according to the law of God, his life shall go for it. The principle of this law is a principle of common-sense.

You see a fellow-creature struggling in the water. You know that he can never deliver himself. And you know that a very little assistance, such as you can render, will rescue him from a watery grave. You look on and pass by. True, you did not thrust him in. But he dies by your neglect. His blood will be upon your head. At the bar of God, and at the bar of conscience, you are his murderer. Why? You did not kill him. Neither did the owner of the ox lift a hand. But he shall surely be put to death. You had no malice, neither had he. You did not intend his death—at the very worst, you did not care. This is just his crime. He did not care. He turned loose a wild, fiery, ungovernable animal, knowing him to be such; and what mischief that animal might do, or what suffering he might cause, he did not care. But God held him responsible.

Every man is responsible for evils which result from his own selfishness or indifference to the lives of men. In other words, to make a man responsible for results, it is not necessary to prove that he has malice, or that he intended the results. The highwayman has no malice against him he robs and murders, nor does he desire his death, but his money; and if he can get the money, he does not care. And he robs and murders because he loves himself and does not care for others; acting in a different way, but on the same selfish principle with the owner of the ox; and on the very same principle is he held responsible.

In the trial of the owner of the ox, the only questions to be asked were these two: Was the ox wont to push with his horn in time past? Did the owner know it when he let him loose? If both these questions were answered in the affirmative, the owner was responsible for all the consequences. This is a rule which God himself has established.

Is intoxicating liquor wont to produce misery, and wretchedness, and death? Has this been testified to those who make and deal in it as a beverage? If these two things can be established, the inference is inevitable—they are responsible on a principle perfectly intelligible, a principle recognized and proclaimed, and acted upon by God himself.

Turn then your attention to these two facts. 1. Intoxicating liquor is wont to produce misery. 2. Those who make or traffic in it, know this.

1. Upon the first point it will be sufficient to remind you of the hopes which intoxicating liquor has blasted, and the tears it has caused to flow. Let any one of us count up the number of its victims which we have known—consider their character and standing in society—their once happy families and prospects, and what a fearful change has a few years’ use of strong drink produced. Very few but remember twenty, thirty, fifty, or one hundred families ruined in this way. Some of them were once our intimate friends—and their story is soon told.

They drank occasionally, for the sake of company, or merely for exhilaration. The relish for stimulants was thus acquired, and habits of dissipation formed. They became idle, and of course uneasy. And they continued to drink, partly to gratify taste and partly to quiet conscience. They saw the ruin that was coming upon them, and they made some earnest but ineffectual struggles against it. But the resistance became weaker and weaker—by and by the struggle is ended—they float with the current, and where are they? One has been found by the temperance reformation, a mere wreck in property, character, body, and mind, and reclaimed. Another is dead: his constitution could not bear his continued dissipation. Another died in a fit; another was found by the road-side one cold morning, a stiffened corpse. Another was thrown from his horse, and is a cripple for life, but still can contrive means to pay a daily visit to the dram-shop. Another is a mere vagabond, unprincipled and shameless—wandering from shop to shop, a fit companion for the lowest company, a nuisance to society and a curse to his kindred. Another is in the penitentiary for a crime which he committed in a drunken frolic.

Go into the crowded court-house and you may see another; his countenance haggard and ghastly, and his eye wildly rolling in despair. What has he done? One night, after spending all his money for drink, and loitering about till all the shops were closed, he returned to his miserable habitation. He found a few coals on the hearth, and his wife and children sitting by them. He threw one child this way and another that, for he was cold. His wife remonstrated, and withal told him that what little fire there was was none of his providing. With many a horrid oath he declared he would not be scolded after that sort. He would let her know who should govern, and by way of supporting his authority, beat her brains out with the last remaining stick of wood. He did not mean to kill her. Her dying struggles brought him to his senses, and he stood horror-struck. He would give almost any thing that the deed were not done. If that could restore her to life, he would be almost ready to give a pledge never to taste intoxicating liquor again. Now look at the wretchedness of his family. For years he has made very little provision for them; they have lived as they could, half naked and half starved, and not educated at all—with a most wretched example before their eyes. What encouragement had the wife or the children to attempt any thing—to make any exertion? The children are abused and trampled on at home, and they grow up without self-respect, without shame, and without principle. Can any thing good be expected of them? And if they do rise, it must be through a world of difficulty.

How many thousand families have been ruined in some such way as this. The father was a drunkard, and the mother—what could she do? She endured, hoping against hope—and for the children’s sake bore up against the current; and many a time disguised a sad despairing heart under a joyful countenance, till at length she died of a broken heart, or died by the hands of him who had sworn to protect her.

These, and things like these, are the effects of intoxicating liquor—not casual, accidental, but common, natural edicts, seen everywhere, in every town, in every neighborhood, and in every connection. Look which way we will, we see some of these effects. The greatest wretchedness which human nature in this world is called to endure, is connected with the use of inebriating drink. There is nothing else that degrades and debases man like it—nothing so mean that a drunkard will not stoop to it—nothing too base for him to do to obtain his favorite drink. Nothing else so sinks the whole man—so completely destroys not only all moral principle, but all self-respect, all regard to character, all shame, all human feeling. The drunkard can break out from every kind of endearing connection, and break over every kind of restraint; so completely extinct is human feeling, that he can be drunk at the funeral of his dearest relative, and call for drink in the last accents of expiring nature.

Now look at a human being, whom God has made for noble purposes, and endowed with noble faculties, degraded, disgraced, polluted, unfit for heaven, and a nuisance on earth. He is the centre of a circle—count up his influence in his family and his neighborhood—the wretchedness he endures, and the wretchedness he causes—count up the tears of a wretched wife who curses the day of her espousals, and of wretched children who curse the day of their birth. To all this positive evil which intoxicating liquor has caused, add the happiness which but for it this family might have enjoyed and communicated. Go through a neighborhood or a town in this way, count up all the misery which follows in the train of intoxicating liquor, and you will be ready to ask, Can the regions of eternal death send forth any thing more deadly? Wherever it goes, the same cry may be heard—lamentation, and mourning, and woe; and whatever things are pure, or lovely, or venerable, or of good report, fall before it. These are its effects. Can any man deny that “the ox is wont to push with his horn?”

2. Has this been testified to the owner? Are the makers and venders aware of its effects? The effects are manifest, and they have eyes, ears, and understandings, as well as others. They know that whatever profit they make is at the expense of human life or comfort; and that the tide which is swelled by their unhallowed merchandise sweeps ten thousand yearly to temporal and eternal ruin. But this is not all. The attention of the public has been strongly turned to this subject. The minds of men have been enlightened, and their responsibility pressed home upon them. The subject has been presented to them in a new light, and men cannot but see the absurdity of reprobating the tempted, while the tempter is honored—of blaming drunkards, and holding in reputation those whose business it is to make drunkards.

But are the makers of intoxicating liquor aware of its effects? Look at the neighborhood of a distillery—an influence goes forth from that spot which reaches miles around—a kind of constraining influence, that brings in the poor, and wretched, and thirsty, and vicious. Those who have money bring it—those who have none, bring corn—those who have neither, bring household furniture—those who have nothing, bring themselves and pay in labor. Now the maker knows all these men, and knows their temperament, and probably knows their families. He can calculate effects, and he sends them off, one to die by the way, another to abuse his family, and another just ready for any deed of wickedness. Will he say that he is not responsible, and like Cain ask, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” He knew what might be the result, and for a mere pittance of gain was willing to risk it. Whether this man should abuse his family, or that man die by the way, so his purpose was answered, he did not care. The ox was wont to push with his horn, and he knew it; and for a little paltry gain he let him loose, and God will support his law by holding him responsible for the consequences.

But a common excuse is, that “very little of our manufacture is used in the neighborhood; we send it off.” And are its effects any less deadly? In this way you avoid seeing the effects, and poison strangers instead of neighbors. What would you say to a man who traded in clothes infected with the smallpox, and who would say by way of apology, that he sent them off—he did not sell any in the neighborhood? Good man! he is willing to send disease and death all abroad; but he is too kind-hearted to expose his neighbors. Would you not say to him, you may send them off, but you cannot send off the responsibility? The eye of God goes with them, and all the misery which they cause will be charged to you. So we say to the man who sends off his intoxicating liquor.

“But if I do not make it and traffic in it, somebody else will.” What sin or crime cannot be excused in this way? I know of a plot to rob my neighbor; if I do not plunder him, somebody else will. Is it a privilege to bear the responsibility of sending abroad pestilence and misery and death? “Our cause is going down,” thought Judas, “and a price is set upon the head of our Master, and if I do not betray him somebody else will. And why may not I as well pocket the money as another?” If you consider it a privilege to pocket the wages of unrighteousness, do so. But do not pretend to be the friend of God or man while you count it a privilege to insult the one and ruin the other?

Says another, “I wish it were banished from the earth. But then what can I do?” What can you do? You can keep one man clear; you can wash your own hands of this wretched business. And if you are not willing to do that, very little reliance can be placed on your good wishes. He that is unjust in the least, is unjust also in much. I can hardly conceive any thing more inconsistent with every generous feeling, every noble principle, than the traffic in intoxicating liquor at the present day. The days of ignorance on this subject have passed by; every man acts with his eyes open.

Look at the shop and company of the retailer. There he stands in the midst of dissipation, surrounded by the most degraded and filthy of human beings, in the last stages of earthly wretchedness. His business is to kindle strife, to encourage profanity, to excite every evil passion, to destroy all salutary fears, to remove every restraint, and to produce a recklessness that regards neither God nor man. And how often in the providence of God is he given over to drink his own poison, and to become the most wretched of this wretched company. Who can behold an instance of this kind without feeling that God is just. “He sunk down into the pit which he made; in the net which he hid is his own foot taken.”

Another will say, “I neither make nor traffic in it.” But you drink it occasionally, and your example goes to support the use of it. You see its tremendous effects, and yet you receive it into your house and bid it God speed. As far as your influence supports it and gives it currency, so far are you a partaker of its evil deeds. If you lend your influence to make the path of ruin respectable, or will not help to affix disgrace to that path, God will not hold you guiltless. You cannot innocently stand aside and do nothing.

A deadly poison is circulating over the land, carrying disease and desolation and death in its course. The alarm has been given. Its deadly effects have been described, seen, and felt. Its victims are of every class; and however wide the difference in fortune, education, intellect, it brings them to the same dead level. An effort has been made to stay the plague, and a success surpassing all expectation has crowned the effort. Still, the plague rages to an immense extent. What will every good citizen do? Will he not clear his house, his shop, his premises of it? Will he not take every precaution to defend himself against it, and use his influence and his exertions to diminish its circulation and thus diminish human misery? If he fears God or regards man, can he stop short of this? Can he, in his recklessness and selfishness say, “Let others take care of themselves? I’ll make no promises—I’ll not be bound—I am in no danger?” If he can speak and act thus, and stands aloof, and continues to drink, is he not guilty, and with the distiller and vender accountable to God for the perpetuation of these mighty evils, which but for his coÖperation and agency must soon cease to exist? “I speak as unto wise men; judge ye what I say.”

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY.