Drinking to Drown Care

“He is a viounteba7ik who strives to make men forget their spiritual sorrows instead of leading them to the true cicre. This is like a man in debt who drinks to drown his thoughts; but this neither pays the debt nor postpones the When conscience is uneasy, it is foolish as well as wicked to attempt to smother its cries with worldly merriment. Nay, let us hear it patiently. If we be in debt let us know it, and set about meeting our liabilities like honest men; but to burn the ledger and discharge the clerk is a madman’s way of going to work. O soul be true to thyself. Face thine own case, however bad it may be; for refusing to know and consider the sure facts will not alter or improve them. He is a cruel doctor who tells the afflicted patient that he ails nothing, and thus sets him for the time at his ease, at the terrible cost of future disease, rendered incurable by delay.

Lord, bring me to the bar of my conscience now, lest I stand condemned at thy bar of judgment hereafter.