196. The Song of the Drunkards

The Song of the Drunkards

Psa_69:12 : ’93I was the song of the drunkards.’94

Who said that? Was it David or was it Christ? It was both. These Messianic Psalms are like a telescope. Pull the instrument to a certain range, and it shows you an object near-by. Pull it to another range, and it will show you objects far away. David and Christ were both, each in his own time, the song of the drunkards. Holiness of doctrine and life always did excite wicked merriment. Although David had fully reformed and written a psalmody in which all subsequent ages have sobbed out their penitence, his enemies preferred to fetch up his old career, and put into metric measures sins long before forgiven. Christ, who committed no sin, was still more the subject of unholy song, because the better one is, the more iniquity hates him. Of the best Being whose voice ever moved the air or whose foot ever touched the earth it might be said:

The byword of the passing throng,

The ruler’92s scoff, the drunkard’92s song.

The earth was fitted up for the human race, in congratulation the morning stars sang a song. The Israelitish army safe on the bank of the Red Sea and the Egyptians clear under the returned water, Moses sang a song. One of the most important parts of this great old Book is Solomon’92s song. At the birth of our Lord the Virgin Mary and old Simeon and angelic prima donnas in hovering clouds sang a song. What enrichment has been given to the world’92s literature and enjoyment by the ballads, the canticles, the discants, the ditties, the roundelays, the epics, the lyrics, the dithyrambs. But my text calls attention to a style of song that I think has never been discoursed upon. You sometimes hear this style of music when passing a saloon, or a residence in which dissipation is ascendant, or after you have retired at night you hear it coming out of the street from those who, having tarried long at their cups, are on their way home’97the ballad of the inebriate, the serenade of the alcoholized, or what my text calls the Song of the Drunkards.

For practical and saving and warning and Christian purposes, I will announce to you the characteristics of that well-known cadence mentioned in my text. First, I remark that the Song of the Drunkards is an old song. Much of the music of the world and of the church is old music. First came the music of percussion, the clapping cymbal, which was suggested by a hammer on an anvil, and then the sighing of the wind across the reeds suggested the flute, and then the strained sinews of the tortoise across its shell suggested the harp. But far back of that, and nearly back as far as the moral collapse of our first parentage is the Song of the Drunkards. That tune was sung at least four thousand two hundred and forty-three years ago, when, the deluge past, Noah came out of the ark, and as if disgusted with too much prevalence of water, he took to strong drink and staggered forth, for all ages the first known drunkard. He sounded the first note of the old music of inebriety. An Arab author of A. D. 1310, wrote: ’93Noah, being come out of the ark, ordered each of his sons to build a house. Afterward they were occupied in sowing and in planting trees, the pippins and fruit of which they had found in the ark. The vine alone was wanting, and they could not discover it. Gabriel then informed them that the devil had desired it, and indeed had some right to it. Hereupon Noah summoned him to appear in the field, and said to him: ’91O accursed! Why hast thou carried away the vine from me?’92 ’91Because,’92 replied the devil, ’91it belonged to me.’92 ’91Shall I part it for you?’92 said Gabriel. ’91I consent,’92 said Noah, ’91and will leave him a fourth.’92 ’91That is not sufficient for him,’92 said Gabriel. ’91Well, I will take half,’92 replied Noah, ’91and he shall take the other.’92 ’91That is not sufficient yet,’92 responded Gabriel. ’91He must have two-thirds and thou one, and when thy wine shall have boiled on the fire until two-thirds are gone, the remainder shall be assigned for thy use.’92’93 A fable that illustrates how the vine has been devoted to Satanic use and ownership.

Benhadad and thirty-two allied kings, rioting in a pavilion, took up the same bacchanal. Nabal was rendering that drunkard’92s song when his wife, beautiful Abigail, came back from her expedition to save her husband. Herod was singing that song when the daughter of Herodias whirled in the dance before him. Belshazzar and a thousand lords renewed that song the night the handwriting came out on the plastering of the wall, and the tramp of the besieging host was heard on the palace stairs. Ahasuerus sang that song when, after seven days of carousal, he ordered Vashti to come into the presence of the roystering guests without her veil on’97a January storm trying to command a June morning. Oh, yes! The song of the drunkards is an old song. King Cyrus boasted that he could drink more wine than his brother. Drunkenness was so rife among the Laced’e6monians that Lycurgus had all the vines of the vineyards destroyed. Paul excoriates the Corinthians for turning the communion of the Lord’92s Supper at church into a carousal. Isaiah mentions the drunkards of Ephraim. So much were the Athenians given to wassail that a law was passed giving a man double punishment for crime while intoxicated, the first punishment for the crime, and the other for the intoxication. It was a staccato passage in that song when Alexander the Great arose from a banquet and struck a spear through the heart of Clitus while putting up the curtains, and horrified at what he had done, withdrew the sword from the dead body and attempted to take his own life. In the time of Oliver Cromwell the evil was so great that offenders were compelled to wear what was called ’93the drunkard’92s cloak,’94 a barrel with one end of it knocked out and a hole in the opposite end, the arms thrust through the holes at the sides of the barrel. Samuel Johnson made merry of his own inebriety. Oh, this old song! All the centuries have joined in. Among the first songs ever sung was the Song of the Drunkards.

Again, this Song of the Drunkards is an expensive song. The Sonntags and the Parepa Rosas and Nils-sons and the other renderers of elevated and divine solos received their thousands of dollars per night in colosseums and academies of music. Some of the people of small means almost pauperized themselves that they might sit a few evenings under the enchantment of those angels of sweet sounds. I paid seven dollars to hear Jenny Lind sing when it was not very easy to afford the seven dollars. Very expensive is such music, but the costliest song on earth is the drunkard’92s song. It costs ruin of body. It costs ruin of mind. It costs ruin of soul. Go right down among the residential streets of any city and you can find once beautiful and luxurious homesteads that were expended in this destructive music. The lights have gone out in the drawing-room, the pianos have ceased the pulsation of their keys, the wordrobe has lost its last article of appropriate attire. The Belshazzarean feast has left nothing but the broken pieces of the crushed chalices. There it stands, the ghastliest thing on earth, the remnant of a drunkard’92s home. The costliest thing on earth is sin. The most expensive of all music is the Song of the Drunkards. It is the highest tariff of nations’97not a protective tariff, but a tariff of doom, a tariff of woe, a tariff of death. This evil whets the knives of the assassins, cuts the most of the wounds of the hospital, makes necessary most of the almshouses, causes the most of the ravings of the insane asylum, and puts up most of the iron bars of the penitentiaries. It has its hand today on the throat of the American republic. It is the taskmaster of nations, and the human race crouches under its anathema. It murdered Abraham Lincoln, for John Wilkes Booth could not get his courage up until he had filled himself up to the chin with whiskey. The Song of the Drunkards has for its accompaniment the clank of chains, the chattering teeth of poverty, the rattle of executioner’92s scaffold, the creaking door of the deserted home, the crash of shipwrecks, and the groan of empires. The two billion twenty million dollars which rum costs this country in a year, in the destruction of grain and sugar, and the supporting of the paupers and invalids and the criminals which strong drink causes, is only a small part of what is paid for this expensive Song of the Drunkards.

Again, this Song of the Drunkards is a multitudinous song’97not a solo, not a duet, not a quartet, nor a sextet; but millions on millions are this hour singing it. Do not think that alcoholism has this field all to itself. It has powerful rivals in the intoxicants of other nations; hasheesh and arrak and pulque and absinthe and quavo and mastic and wedro. Every nation, barbaric as well as civilized, has its pet intoxicant. This Song of the Drunkards is rendered in Chinese, Hindu, Arabian, Assyrian, Persian, Mexican’97yea, all the languages. All zones join it. No continent would be large enough for the choir gallery if all those who have this libretto in their hands should stand side by side to chant the international chorus. Other throngs are just learning the eight notes of this deathful music which is already mastered by the orchestras in full voice under the batons in full swing. All the musicians assembled at Dusseldorf or Berlin or Boston Peace Jubilee, rendering symphonies, requiems, or grand marches of Mendelssohn or Wagner or Chopin or Handel, were insignificant in numbers as compared with the innumerable throngs, host beside host, gallery above gallery, who are now pouring forth the Song of the Drunkards.

Years ago, standing before a bulletin-board in New York on the night of a presidential election day, as the news came in and the choice of the American people was finally announced, there were people in the streets who sang roystering and frivolous songs; but in the street one man, in deep, strong, resonant voice, started, to the tune of ’93Old Hundred,’94 ’93Praise God, from whom all blessings flow,’94 and soon all up and down the street the voices joined in the doxology. May God speed the day when the song of rescue and salvation shall drown with an overwhelming surge this mighty Song of the Drunkards!

Again, the Song of the Drunkards is a suggestive song. You hear a nursery refrain, and right away you think of your childhood home, and brothers and sisters with whom you played, and mother, long since gone to rest. You hear a national air, and you think of the encampment of 1863, and the still night on the river bank, and the camp-fires that shook their reflections up and down the faces of the regiment. You hear an old church tune, and you are reminded of the revival scenes amid which you were brought to God. Nothing so brings up associations as a song sung or played upon instrument; and the drunkard’92s song is full of suggestion. As you hear it on the street quite late some night, you begin to say to yourself, ’93I wonder if he has a mother? Is his wife waiting for him? Will his children be frightened when he enters the front door and staggers, whooping, up the stairs? What chance is there for that young man, started so early on the down grade? In what business will he succeed? How long before that man will run through his property? I wonder how he got so far astray? Can any influence be wielded to fetch him back? He must have got among bad companions, who led him off.’94 So you will soliloquize, and guess about this man whose voice you hear on the street under the starlight.

Notice that the second noun of my text is in the plural. Not ’93Drunkard,’94 but ’93Drunkards.’94 It would be dull work to sing that song solitary and alone. It is generally a chorus. They are in groups. On that downward way there must be companionship. Here and there is a man so mean as always to drink alone; but generous men, big-hearted men, drinking at bar or in restaurant or in clubhouse, feel mortified to take the beverage unaccompanied. There must be some one with whom to click the rim of the glasses, some one’92s health to propose, some sentiment to toast. There must be two, and still better if four, and still better if six, to give zest to the Song of the Drunkards. Those who have gone down could mention the name of at least one who helped them down. Generally it is some one who was a little higher up in social life or in financial resources. Our friend felt flattered to have an invitation from one of superior name. Each one drank not only when he felt like it, but when the other felt like it. Neither wanted to seem lacking in sociality when he was invited. So a hundred thousand men every year are treated into hell. Together they are manacled of evil habit, together they travel toward their doom, together they make merry over the cowardice or puritanical sentiments of those who never indulge, together they join their voices in the Song of the Drunkards. If the one proposes to stop, the other will not let him stop. When men are getting down themselves they do not want their associates to turn back. Those who turn back will be the scoff and caricature of those who keep on, and there will be conspiracy to bring them back to their old places and their old environment, and so have them renew the Song of the Drunkards.

There was a tragedy in New York, September, 1845. A man of marvelous natural gifts, had, after arriving from his home in England, fallen into dissipated habits, and being a fine singer as well as impersonator, entertained many a barroom group at Newburyport, Boston, and New York; but by the grace of God and the kindness of one Joel Stratton, had been rescued and took the platform for temperance, and moved vast audiences toward a better life. ’93Destroy him!’94 said some of his old associates, and they laid a trap for his feet. ’93How do you do, Mr. Gough?’94 said some one on the street in New York. He pretended to be an old acquaintance, and said, ’93I suppose you are so pious now and have got to be so proud that you will not drink a glass of soda water with an old shipmate.’94 ’93Oh, yes,’94 said Mr. Gough, ’93I will drink a glass of soda water with anybody. I will drink a glass with you.’94 They went down Chambers Street to Chatham Street, and into a place where ’93Best Soda’94 was announced at the door. After some delay there was handed to him a glass of soda water said to be flavored with raspberry, but alas! it was rum, that flew to his brain and sent him through the street an insane man, and weeks passed before he came to himself and implored the pardon of the Christian church that he had joined, and resumed his wondrous career for God and righteousness. But all the grogshops and places of dissipation rang with merriment at the temporary downfall. All the grogshops and wine-cellars of America took up with new voice and new gusto and new enthusiasm and new diabolism the Song of the Drunkards.

There looms up in my memory one of the best and noblest friends I ever had. He had been for thirty years a consistent member of the church. I knew not that at about twenty-one years of age he had followed the sea and habits of inebriety had been fixed upon him. But converted to God he began a new life. Yet it was a thirty years’92 war against the old appetite; but about this struggle I knew nothing until he was dead. While absent during my summer vacation I received a telegram announcing his death and asking me to come and officiate at his obsequies. I arrived at the moment the service was to begin, and had not much time to make inquiries about his last hours. In my remarks, without any limitations, I extolled his virtues while living, and spoke of the heavenly raptures into which he had entered. Afterward, I found that he had died of delirium tremens in the hospital, because he was so violent he could not be sufficiently restrained in his beautiful home. He had been seized in the street with violent pains of body, and went into an apothecary store to get medical relief. Something there given him set on fire his old appetite for strong drink, and utterly irresponsible, he went from liquor store to liquor store, until, a raving maniac, the officers of the law bound him and took him to the hospital, where he died. Some time after I said to the doctor in the hospital, ’93Of what did he die?’94 and the answer was, ’93Congestion of the brain.’94 I said, ’93Doctor, I want to know the bottom facts, for I was his pastor and he was one of the best friends I ever had. Was it delirium tremens?’94 and the doctor responded ’93Yes.’94 Did I regret that at his obsequies I had extolled his virtues and spoken of the heavenly joys upon which he had entered? No. I do not think that my friend was any more responsible for the mode of his taking off than a typhoid fever patient in delirium is responsible for leaping out of the fourth-story window. But while we were heart-broken about his going away, I think that in the saloons, to those who heard of his membership of the church and the tragedy of his departure, he became, as did the David and the Christ of my text, the Song of the Drunkards.

Again, the Song of the Drunkards is easily learned. Through what long and difficult drill one must go to succeed as an elevated and inspiring singer. Emma Abbott, among the most eminent cantatrices that ever enchanted academies of music, told me on ocean ship’92s deck, in answer to my question, ’93Whither are you bound?’94 ’93I am going to Berlin and Paris to study music.’94 ’93What!’94 I said, ’93after all your world-renowned successes in music, going to study?’94 Then she told me through what hardships, through what self-denials, through what almost killing fatigues she had gone in order to be a singer, and that when, in her earlier days, a great teacher of music had told her there were certain notes she could never reach, she said, ’93I will reach them,’94 and through doing nothing else but practise for five years she did reach them. Oh, how many heroes and heroines of musical achieve-merit! There are songs which are easy to hear but most difficult to render. When Handel, with a new oratorio, entered a room where a group of musicians had assembled and said, ’93Gentlemen, you all read music?’94 they said, ’93Yes, we play in church.’94 ’93Very well,’94 said the great composer, ’93play this.’94 But the performance was so poorly done Handel stopped his ears and said, ’93You play in church! Very well; for we read the Lord is long suffering, of great kindness, and forgiving of iniquity, transgression, and sin. But you shall not play for me.’94 Pure music, whether fingered on instrument or trilled from human lips, is most difficult. But one of the easiest songs to learn is the Song of the Drunkards. Anybody can learn it. In a little while you can touch the highest note of conviviality or the lowest note of besottedness. Begin moderately, a sip here and a sip there. Begin with claret, go on with ale, and wind up with cognac. First take the stimulant at a wedding, then take it at meals, then take it between meals, then all the time keep your pulse under its stealthy touch. In six months the dullest scholar in this Apollyonic music may become an expert. First it will be sounded in a hiccough. After a while it will be heard in a silly ha! ha! Further on it will become a wild whoop. Then it will enable you to run up and down the five lines of the musical staff infernal. Then you will have mastered it’97the Song of the Drunkards.

The most skilful way is to adopt the modern theory and give the intoxicant to your children, saying to yourself, ’93They will in after life meet the intoxicants everywhere, and they must get used to seeing them and tasting them and controlling their appetites.’94 That is the surest way of teaching them the Song of the Drunkards. Keep up that mode of education, and if you have four boys, at least three of them will learn the drunkards’92 song, and lie down in a drunkard’92s grave, and if I ever laid a wager I would lay a wager that the fourth will lie down with the other three. Or, if the education of the children in this music should be neglected, it is not too late to begin at twenty-one years of age. The young man will find plenty of young men who drink. They are in every circle to be found. Surely, my boy, you are not a coward, and afraid of it? Surely you are not going to be hindered by sumptuary laws or the prejudices of your old father and mother? They are behind the times. Take something. Take it often. Some of the greatest poets and orators have been notorious imbibers. If you are to enter a parlor, it makes you more vivacious and Chesterfieldian. If you are to transact business, your customer is apt to buy more if you have taken with him a sherry cobbler. If you are to make a speech it will give you a glibber tongue. Gluck could compose his best music by having his piano taken into the midst of a meadow, and a bottle of champagne placed on each side of him. The earlier you begin to learn the Song of the Drunkards the easier it is; but none of you are too old to learn. You can begin at fifty or sixty, under prescription of a doctor, for it aids digestion or breaking up of infirmities, and close life by rendering the Song of the Drunkards so well that all Pandemonium will encore the performance and want it again and again.

Furthermore, the last characteristic of the drunkards’92 song is so tremendous that I can hardly bring myself to mention it. The drunkards’92 song is a continuous song. Once start that tune, and you keep it up. You have known a hundred men destroyed of strong drink. You cannot mention five who got fully started on that road and stopped. The grace of God can do anything, but it does not do everything. Religion saves some. Temperance societies save some. The Bowery Mission saves some. The Central Union Mission saves some. But one hundred thousand who are annually slain by strong drink are not saved at all. I have been at a concert which went on for two hours and a half, and many people got up and left because it was too long; but ninety-five per cent. of those who are singing the drunkards’92 song will to the last breath of their lungs and the last beat of their hearts keep on rendering it, and the galleries of earth and heaven and hell will stay filled with the astounded spectators. It is such a continuous and prolonged song that one feels like making the prayer which a reformed inebriate once made: ’93Almighty God! If it be thy will that man should suffer, whatever seemeth good in thy sight impose upon me. Let the bread of affliction be given me to eat. Take from me the friends of my confidence. Let the cold hut of poverty be my dwelling-place and the wasting hand of disease inflict its painful torments. Let me sow in the whirlwind and reap in the storm. Let those have me in derision who are younger than I. Let the passing away of my welfare be like the fleeting of a cloud and the shouts of my enemies like the rushing of waters. When I anticipate good, let evil annoy me. When I look for light, let darkness come upon me. Let the terrors of death be ever before me. Do all this, but save me, merciful God! Save me from the fate of a drunkard. Amen.’94

You see this sermon is not so much for cure as for prevention. Stop before you start, if you will forgive the solecism. The clock of St. Paul’92s cathedral struck thirteen one midnight, and so saved the life of a sentinel. The soldier was arrested and tried for falling asleep at his post one midnight; but he declared that he was awake at midnight, and in proof that he was awake he said that he had heard the unusual occurrence of the clock striking thirteen instead of twelve. He was laughed to scorn and sentenced to death; but three or four persons, hearing of the case, came up in time to swear that they, too, heard the clock strike thirteen that same midnight, and so the man’92s life was spared. My hearer, if you go on and thoroughly learn the drunkards’92 song, perhaps in the deep midnight of your soul there may sound something that will yet effect your moral and eternal rescue. But it is a risky ’93perhaps.’94 It is exceptional. Go ahead on that wrong road and the clock will more probably strike the twelve that closes your day of opportunity, than that it will strike thirteen, the sound of your deliverance.

A few Sabbaths ago on the steps of this church, a man whom I had known in other years confronted me. At the first glance, I saw that he was in the fifth and last act of the tragedy of intemperance. Splendid even in his ruin. The same brilliant eye, the same courtly manners, and the remains of the same intellectual endowments; but a wreck. I had seen that craft when it ploughed the waters, all sails set and running by true compass; wife and children and friends on board, himself commanding in a voyage that he expected would be glorious, putting into prosperous harbors of earth and at last putting into the harbor of heaven. But now a wreck, towed along by low appetites, that ever and anon run him into the breakers,’97a wreck of body, a wreck of mind, a wreck of soul. ’93Where is your wife?’94 ’93I do not know.’94 ’93Where are your children?’94 ’93I do not know.’94 ’93Where is your God?’94 ’93I do not know.’94 That man is coming to the last verse of that long cantata, that protracted threnody, that terrific Song of the Drunkards.

But if these words should come’97for you know the largest audience I reach I never see at all’97I say if these words should come, though at the ends of the earth, to any fallen man, let me say to him: be the exception to the general rule, and turn and live, while I recall to you a scene in England, where some one said to an inebriate, as he was going out of church where there was a great awakening, ’93Why do not you sign the pledge?’94 He answered, ’93I have signed it twenty times, and will never sign it again.’94 ’93Why. then,’94 said the gentleman talking to him, ’93do not you go up and kneel at that altar, amid those other penitents?’94 He took the advice and went and knelt. After a while a little girl, in rags and soaked with the rain, looked in the church door, and some one said, ’93What are you doing here, little girl?’94 She said, ’93Please, sir; I heard as my father is here. Why, that is my father up there kneeling now.’94 She went up and put her arms around her father’92s neck, and said, ’93Father, what are you doing here?’94 and he said, ’93I am asking God to forgive me.’94 Said she, ’93If he forgives you will we be happy again?’94 ’93Yes, my dear.’94 ’93Will we have enough to eat again?’94 ’93Yes, my dear.’94 ’93And will you never strike us again?’94 ’93No, my child.’94 ’93Wait here,’94 said she, ’93till I go and call mother.’94 And soon the child came with the mother, and the mother, kneeling beside her husband, said, ’93Save me, too! Save me, too!’94 And the Lord heard the prayers at that altar, and one of the happiest homes in England is the home over which that father and mother now lovingly preside. So, if in this sermon, I have warned others against a dissipated life, with the fact that so few return after they have once gone astray, for the encouragement of those who would like to return, I tell you God wants you to come back, every one of you, and to come back now; and more tenderly and lovingly than any mother ever lifted a sick child out of a cradle, and folded it in her arms, and crooned over it a lullaby, and rocked it to and fro, the Lord will take you up and fold you in the arms of his pardoning love.

There’92s a wideness in God’92s mercy,

Like the wideness of the sea.

There’92s a kindness in his justice,

Which is more than liberty.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage