Farewell to the First Congregational Church in Norwalk, Conn. (bound with other addresses)

It was the hard lot of Jeremiah, like that of the other prophets, to be obliged to testify against the prevailing wickedness of his people ; to see, in the visions of the Lord, overwhelming judgments coming in the distance, and sweeping towards Israel hke the coming storm and tem- pest ; and in anguish of spirit to sound the alarm, while the people would not hear. He sees the armies of the avenger approaching ; the snorting of his horses is heard from Dan ; the whole land trembles at the sound of the neighing of his strong ones, for they have come and have devoured the land and' all that is in it-^the city and those that dwell therein. " When I would comfort myself against sorrow," cries the prophet, " then my heart is faint in me. Behold the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people, because of them that dwell in a far country. Is not the Lord in Zion ? Is not her King in her 3 Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images, and with strange vanities ? The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved ! For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt ; I am black ; astonishment hath taken hold on me. Is there no balm in Gilead ; is there no physician there ? why then' is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered 3 O that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!^ Such is the spirit which we must cherish, if ever called upon to speak of crying wrongs, and to warn a careless and guilty people that the cry of such wrongs ^ill surely ascend to heaven. I am therefore, to-daj', to speak or the slain of the daughtbr OF MY PEOPLE, and to point out the causes which should awaken such a lamentation in the heart of every one who loves mercy or who fears ^ the Lord. 4 A LAMENTATION FOE THE SLAIN. I. To speak of the slain. If a foreign war were raging in our land ; fields desolated, families distressed and broken, multitudes driven into the alms- houses . and prisons, thousands cai-ried into a miserable captivity, and thousands slaughtered every year — if this were to continue ten, twenty, thirty years, every benevolent man would be ready to cry out, Shall the sword devour for ever ! If the pulpits of the land-r- ■whose ministera are ministers of peace — should sound the alarm, and call upon the people to rise as one man, 'and to meet the invader in a contest for liberty or death, no friend of his country — no friend of the human race could think them going beyond the line of their duty. If it were no foreign invader, but a foe more dreadful — if it were vice, and avarice, and crime, combining to destroy more lives than were destroyed in any war that this country ever waged — wasting, devas- tating, and ruining thousands of our citizens, both body and soul — how can the ministers of the gospel altogether hold their peace at . such a time as this ! I come then to speak to you of the slain of the daughter of my people ; of men cut oflf in the midst of their days by a shameful and violent death, in which their own folly and guilt is stimulated by the cold avarice of others ; who stay not their work at the sight of the miseries of their victims ; who stay not for the distress of the families brought to suffering and poverty, by this traflBc, nor though their vic- tims are destroyed for time and for eternity. I have heretofore had occasion to show you, by reference to well known cases, that we average one such violent death in Norwalk year by year. One falls into a well, and his blood and brains are dashed on the stones ; another, another, another, another, and another perishes in the waters ; one by fire ; one by suicide ; another visits the place where ardent spirits are sold, and when his limbs are palsied, and those who have gathered the last cent of his earnings are wearied with making him their jest and their song, then they blacken his face and send him forth by night to perish by the way-side in the midst of the snow. The last week has seen another victim perishing in the waters, and adding one more to the number o^ the slain. O my brethren and friends, fomd me not to speak, while year after year, 1 am compelled to follow these victims of slaughter to the grave. Forbid me not to speak, while the Bible declares that drunkards shall not inherit the kingdom of God ; and while God himself pronounces a woe upon him who, through an evil covetousness, putteth the bottle to his neighbor and maketh him drunken ! For twenty yeai-s it has been my lot to visit the wrecks of this de- stroying traffic. Not all die by a violent death. Often have I been called to visit others upon their death-beds — sometimes to hear their blasphemies, and sometimes their cry of anguish ; but never did I know one ray of comfort by such a bed of death. For twenty years A LAMEHTATION FOK THE SLAIN. 5 I have witnessed the distress and shame, and often the bitter poverty, of the wives and children of the victims of this traffic. Often have I seen them suffering under anguish which scarcely the kindest comforts of the gospel and the utmost duty of submission to the will of God, had power to assuage. But never did I meet by such a bed-side, or as a comforter in the midst of such a family, one, who had, by the traffic iu strong drink, aided in producing the ruin. No one who traf- fics in the poison ever attends the body of the drunkard to the grave. The end of such a work of his hands, no man has the courage willingly to behold. ■ I have seen the aged mother, and the meek and affiicted wife, both suffering from sickness, from whom the son and husband had taken the supplies which the hand of charity furnished, had earned them down to the Bridge, and sold them for rum. I have seen a daughter, suffering and dying on a couch of straw, her bedstead standing on a few loose boards, while the rest of the floor and the ceiling had been consumed for fuel, and all else was open from the cellar to the roof. There she lay, in the cold of winter, in a dying state. Her attending physician had carried a blanket and an overcoat and spread them on her shivering limbs : and these the drunken father and mother had taken to Norwalk Bridge, and sold for rum. I followed her to the grave ; and not long after the father and the mother, both victims of strong drink. A few years since, a young man sent for me to visit him, in the fall of the year. He was in a consumption; which, he acknowledged, while his sobs choked his utterance, was brought upon him by excess- ive drinking and consequent exposure. Winter came on ; and the charities of the town consigned him to the care of a man who had been thriving and comfortable, but who had undertaken to keep a grocery and to sell rum, and had fallen a victim under its power. Character, comfort and property were at this time well nigh gone ; he dragged out a few years of sorrow and poverty, and then sunk into the grave. At the house of this person, some two miles north of this place, I visited that sick and broken-hearted young man. In a cold unfinished chamber, on a thin bed of straw, whose covering he had vainly tried to eke out by throwkg over it his wearing apparel — there without a fire, without an attendant, I found him on the coldest day of a severe winter. There, for the last time, I pointed him to the Saviour, and prayed with hinl : and that night he died. You remem- bSi' a man, who used almost nightly to be reeling and vociferating around the Bridge, for many yeare, and for whom his meek and suf- ( fering wife used nightly to send down their little boy, two miles, to follow his father, lest he should fall down and perish on the way home.- I saw that man on a bed of sickness, to which intoxicating drinks had brought him ; and then I earnestly but kindly warned him that now he must reform or die : for, in all probability, he could never live through another such a scene. The poor man, when scarcely recovered 6 A LAMENTATION FOE THE SLAIN. sufficiently to totter down to the Bridge, came down. Those who traffic in strong drink, saw his haggard looks and trembling Land. They knew his habits : they had known them for yeare. They had known the distress of his family. They knew his condition. But he had a little more money, and they filled for him once more the intoxi- cating cup. He went borne and died. After he was slain, I attended his funeral ; but no one of them who had received the price of his blood was there. The sun wofild go down ere I could tell you the histoiy of half the cases like these, which I have been perpetually called to witness here in Norwalk, during the last twenty yeare. Now another victim is gone. It is nearly twenty yeais since I first knew the anguish of his father and mother, who have gone down to their graves in sorrow. His worthy and excellent wife endured his conduct till it was neither decent nor safe to endure it any longer, and then left him. His chil- dren have drunk the cup of sorrow from their earhest yeare. He has been to them a living grief, and has gone down to the grave leaving them without comfort as they think of the past, and witiiout hope as they think of his eternal destiny. Strong drink was the cause of all. I had the confidence of that man, and often and earnestly entreated him to reform. Often has he wept, and promised reformation. But the cravings of a debased appetite were too strong : he fell lower and lower. Were those who received his scanty earnings ignorant of his infirmity ? Did they not know that they were ministering poison to a poor maniac, bereft of self-control ? They knew it well. They saw him, of late, day after day, overcome with drunkenness. But even in that state, they sold him the poison, and continued to sell, till their work was done, and their victim perished. I know not who sold him the last potion ; I desire not to know. It mattere little who sold him the last. But upon the heads of all them who have known his infirmity for months or years, rests the guilt of that man's blood. I cannot doubt that they must answer it at the bar of God. Oh that fearful appetite ; the fiuit of no natural desire, but of bodily disease 1 How my soul pities the man, who, while he has suspected no evil, and led perhaps by social or generous feelings, and by entertaining com- panions, has by degrees,- and uncossciously, kindled up within him, that quenchless thiret ! If there is a man on earth whom I honor, it is such a man, whose moral powers and principles are yet suf- ficient to resist this unnatural thirst ai5d fully to achieve the work of reform ! There are various stages in the way to ruin. The firet is that of habitual drinking, though not to intoxication. In the early part of this stage, men have ordinarily too much self-respect to visit the low dram- shops, where the tottering and slovenly drunkards are seen to enter. They go in private to the respectable grocery, or to the bar of the ele- gant hotel. The marks of overdrinking become at length visible in their countenances, and are known and read of all men, while for a A LAMENTA1E0K FOB THE SLAHT. 7