Page:Sinner's sobs, or, The way to Sion, a sermon.pdf/22

 thus levels the noblest distinction between men and brutes; it is an ungrateful waste of the Creator's bounty; it is disobedience: our Lord having expressly commanded his disciples to take heed, lest at any times their hearts should be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness: it is a practice of which the natural effect is to stupify conscience; then vice rushes in like a flood, confidence is betrayed, anger storms, the defiled heart meditates fornication and adultery, the robber is wrought up to the ruffian pitch, duty and danger are equally despised.—Go to the drunkard's residence: what injustice, what barbarity, what, wretchedness, are exemplified there! Imagine the offender to be poor, and you complete the picture. He who should be the counsellor, the comfort, the ornament, of that family, is its tempter, its trouble, its reproach. His wife and children, when alone, enjoy a respite, and begin to brighten up; he returns, they tremble, and are again distracted. He has spent their money, he has quarrelled, he has met with mischief: sometimes he forgets it—and then he only disgusts them with buffoonery and nonsense; more frequently he remembers it—and then he wreaks upon then the spite and fury