Somebody's Son

A RUN AW AY horse was one day seen dashing through the streets of New Haven at a terrific rate, dragging a wagon that contained a small lad who was screaming with fright. The wagon brought up against the sidewalk with a fearful crash. A crowd hurried to the spot. One old lady, with cap-strings flying, rushed out into the street, although her daughter exclaimed, “Mother, mother, don’t get into the crowd; you cant do any good.” Seeing her agitation, a lady who was passing by kindly inquired, “Is he your son?” “Oh no!” replied the true-hearted matron, “but he is somebody’s son”

The good mother was ready enough to lend a hand to save somebody’s boy who was in danger of death; but we fear that there is many a matron and many a daughter, who, during the approaching holiday festivities, “will lend a hand to lead somebody’s sons right toward destruction! They are already planning a Christmas party or a New Tear’s entertainment: and in their liberal bill of fare will be included a full supply of champagne and sherry, perhaps, too, of hot punch and brandy. These are days of fast living; money comes easy: who cares? Grood friends! there are many of us who care for our children if we do not for your purses; and before you set forth those attractive poisons, suffer me to make an honest appeal in behalf of one hundred thousand tempted young men.

I. Let me say to you that true hospitality does not require intoxicating liquors on such occasions — nor on any occasion. ~Ye honor the kindly spirit which, on the birthday of the year, prepares a liberal entertainment. We honor the hospitality which flings wide the door to all who wish to come in and enjoy it. But the well furnished markets and groceries of every town have an ample store of l: creature-comforts” without drawing upon the liquor-cellars and the wine-vaults. There are many drinks both palatable and proper that never cause redness of the eyes, or thickness of speech, or delirium of the brain. Under their influence, young men do not reel on the side- walks, or mistake the door-plates of their friends, or venture on silly impertinences toward the ladies who entertain them. Under their influence nobody’s son is carried home drunk — to shame and rend a parent’s heart. But the pernicious custom of wine-giving and punch-brewing on New Year’s Day produces many a sad scene of excess and inebriation. On all festive occasions temptation grows strong, and self-restraint grows weak. On every New Year’s Day, hospitable private dwellings are turned into drinking-houses. Young men enter them with flushed faces, and with tongues quite too rapid for propriety. Many a merchant’s clerk has whetted an evil appetite that has cost him a valuable situation. A returned officer who went out last New Year’s Day to receive the congratulations of his friends, found the decanters more fatal than rebel shells, and when he reeled home, his shamestricken family would rather have received him wounded and bleeding from the battle-field. He was somebody’s son — and somebody’s husband too. Friends! you have no moral right thus to tamper with other people’s appetites, or to rob other households of their hopes and their happiness. “Woe unto him that putteth the bottle to his neighbor!”

II. As a second reason against offering strong drinks on holidays or at any social entertainment, we would urge that many persons are confirmed by them in habits of intoxication. Social drinking, yes, and drunkenness, were never more prevalent than now. There are members of my own church, probably, too, of most other churches, who are already sliding insensibly over that u glass railroad” whose smooth track leads downward to perdition. Thousands of young men are facing an enemy more deadly than ever frowned from the heights of Fredericksburg. With such young men a contest is now waging between conscience and appetite. They see their danger. They realize, in their calm moments, that they will soon lose their self-control, and are perilling their places, their health, their lives, and their undying souls. These young men enter your dwellings with a sharp conflict going on between their sense of right and their appetite or their regard for fashion. If no intoxicating cup is held out to them, they are comparatively safe. They will not seek the drink, unless the drink seeks them. But one glass may ruin them. On the summit of a hill in a Western state is a court-house so situated that the rain-drops that fall on one side of the roof descend into Lake Erie, and thence through the St. Lawrence into the Atlantic; the drops on the other side trickle down from rivulet to river until they reach the Ohio and the Mississippi and enter the ocean by the Gulf of Mexico. A faint breath of wind determines the destination of these rain-drops for three thousand miles. So a single act determines sometimes a human destiny for all time and for eternity! A fashionable young man partially reformed from drinking habits came home to his father’s house, rejoicing in his emancipation. His gay, light-hearted sister thoughtlessly proposed a glass of wine “to drink his safe return.” He was excited and off his guard: he yielded, and the single glass rekindled a thirst that carried him back again into drunkenness. The hand that should have sustained him laid him low. If all the ruined men who have first received the fatal glass from woman’s hand could utter their testimony, how many a drunkard’s grave would become vocal with terrible upbraidings! Surely one would think that woman had already suffered enough from the poison of this adder to make her refuse to touch the cup that conceals his serpent fang.

Mothers! fathers! it is not only somebody’s son who is in danger. There is a boy nearer home who is watching your example. The darling who nestled in your own arms may be the victim of the glass you offer to others. And how dare you warn your own children against dissipation when they see the decanter on your own sideboard, and are confronted by the tempter on your own tables? You may remember the anecdote which Dr. Lyman Beecher loved to tell of the London clergyman who, while walking the street, saw a loaded dray coming on rapidly toward a little school-girl who was just crossing the way. The foremost horse was almost upon her. Forgetting self he rushed into the street — caught the child in his arms — bore her safely to the sidewalk, and, as her bonnet fell aside and she looked up with her pale face to see her deliverer, the good man looked down into the face of his own little daughter! In attempting to save somebody’s child he saved his own. Banish then the wine-cup from your house, and you may preserve not only somebody’s son from redemption, but also the lad whom your dear wife taught to say his prayers at her knee. God send to you a Happy New Year! and may we all make it a day of new consecration to temperance, to liberty, to patriotism, and to the cause of Christ.