"Better lay down that spade you are stealing, Paddy; if you
don't you'll pay for it at the day of judgment." "Be the powers, if
ye'll credit me so long I'll take another jist."
By the Washingtonians this system of consigning the habitual drunkard to
hopeless ruin is repudiated. They adopt a more enlarged philanthropy;
they go for present as well as future good. They labor for all now
living, as well as hereafter to live. They teach hope to all-despair
to none. As applying to their cause, they deny the doctrine of
unpardonable sin; as in Christianity it is taught, so in this they
teach--"While--While the lamp holds out to burn, The vilest sinner may
return." And, what is a matter of more profound congratulation, they, by
experiment upon experiment and example upon example, prove the maxim to
be no less true in the one case than in the other. On every hand we
behold those who but yesterday were the chief of sinners, now the chief
apostles of the cause. Drunken devils are cast out by ones, by sevens,
by legions; and their unfortunate victims, like the poor possessed who
were redeemed from their long and lonely wanderings in the tombs, are
publishing to the ends of the earth how great things have been done for
them.
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