not worked out that way. Less than five billion dol lars comes in as revenue a year from taxes. It costs the taxpayer more than 30 times as much as it takes in. This is folly of the highest order! Some one has said, “ The most sensitive nerve in the human body is the one that leads to the pocket book,” so it would seem to me that the temperance people ought to ring the changes on this aspect of the problem for those who cannot or will not see reasons for curtailing this tyrant. The home is the basic unit of society. Divorce is breaking up 400,000 homes each year in this coun try. Some authorities blame alcohol for a large per centage of these marriage failures. Judge Long of Oregon says that of one thousand cases under his observation, liquor is responsible for at least 40 per cent. Others have stated that alcohol accounts for up to 75 per cent o f the divorces. Crime costs the American public 27 billion dol lars a year. It is frightfully on the increase every year. Remember, during Prohibition crime de creased in the post war years after World War I. Roy Noonan o f the Minnesota Bureau o f Criminal Apprehension stated that crime increased in Min nesota in 1964 by 20 per cent. A few years ago Ced ric Adams, a Minneapolis Star columnist, inter viewed the wife of the Stillwater prison warden. She estimated that 80 per cent to 90 per cent of the prisoners behind bars were there because of liquor. I remember 20 years ago, as chaplain at the Fed eral prison, that the figure was 86 per cent o f our Federal prisoners were there because of alcoholic beverages. I recall how time and again men would tell me that if they didn’t drink they didn’t get into trouble, but whenever they drank they got in trou ble with the law! But remember, prisons and jails experienced a great lowering in population after prohibition. This represents not only great financial savings to society, but more important, it represents less sin, less heartache, and less personal human tragedy. Poverty, the object of much concern today, in many cases is the result of the use of alcohol. What locks many people into this state, perhaps more than anything else, is the use of alcoholic bever ages. People are looking everywhere, but the ob vious source of problem is here. Granted that all poverty would not be eliminated, yet it is my can did opinion that much o f poverty would be done away with and more permanently economically eliminated by dealing with the liquor problem than by any other one method. T h e S ocial D ev a sta t ion
who have had opportunity to observe, recognize that alcohol is inimical to true spirituality. The body is supposed to be the temple of the Holy Spirit. We are responsible to keep it clean and strong. The spirit of alcohal and the Holy Spirit are just plain incompatible. Don’t forget that drunkenness is a sin, according to the Bible. Yes, it is a sickness at a certain point, but it is a sick ness that is brought on by alcohol. We are respon sible lest we bring on this sickness, but we never need worry about this if we never take the first drink. Remember, the Bible states that the drunk ard does not have eternal life abiding in him. Upton Sinclair opens his book, The Cup of Fury, with an account of his family looking for his father who had apparently disappeared on another binge. He relates with vivid detail the finding of his father, his repentance and promise not to do this again, which is so characteristic of alcoholics. The son developed such an aversion to alcohol that he never used it as a beverage. The book he writes relates incident after incident in the lives of great liter ary people whom he knew personally who had such terrible battles with drink. Many of them apparently were hopeless alco holics. Some killed themselves with drink, others committed suicide, still others just lived lives of constant defeat and discouragement. Sinclair was constantly exposed to encouragement to drink. When at a banquet, for example, he would turn his glass upside down and was urged even then to drink he would politely decline. If pressed further his standard response would be, “ It killed my father and I don’t want anything to do with it.” Understandably, he would not be troubled any further. Recently I was called to the hospital bed o f a gentleman who had been an alcoholic for much of his adult life. The accident that brought him to the hospital was not so serious, but other physical com-, plications kept him there and ultimately resulted in his death. He had, however, had nine years of happiness completely delivered from his habit. They had been the happiest of his adult life, years that he had spent married to a woman who had been a girl friend of his youth. After telling me he had definitely received the Christ as his personal Saviour, he said to me, “Andy, drinking never did anyone any good. Take it from me. You can tell everyone that there is no trouble you can have but that drinking will make it worse.” I wish we could tell this to sufficiently great num bers o f people, and dramatically enough, that it could make a difference in our community, city, state and nation. We must not only point a man to his sin, but be sure to point him to the Saviour. HE Copyright 1967 The Evangelical Beacon. Used, ivith permission.
T h e S p ir itu a l D estruc tivene ss
I am sure that all who have had experience, or
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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