Southern Christian Advocate

TEMPERANCE.

From the Temperance Herald.

A SERMON,

Delivered to a select Congregation in Illinois.

THE DEER LICK.

My text is selected from that portion of the prairie called the Deer Lick; and my design is,
I. To explain the text.
II. To state and illustrate the doctrine. And,
III. To make a practical application.
1. I am to explain the text.
A lick is a salt spring, so called from the circumstance that the earth about it is so impregnated with saline particles as to be licked by the deer, the bison, and other animals. These licks abound on the waters of the Kanawha in Virginia, the Muskingum in Ohio, near Shawneetown in Illinois, on the Licking in Kentucky, and generally in the Western States. Who that has travelled from Maysville to Lexington, and has stopped to quaff a tumbler of the Blue Lick water, will ever forget its taste or its smell? Blessing! if all the delicious things in a drug-shop--asafetida and castor oil, epsom salts and rhubarb, were beaten together in a vast mortar, they would make a composition nothing like it.
A lick is also any place without salt, visited by animals for the sake of gratifying their taste.-- Licks of this description are numerous in the west; and though they abhor water as nature does a vacuum, there are many of them on our principal water courses.
They may be known by certain infallible signs.
One is that the animals visiting them are of one kind only, and that peculiar. They have two legs, and yet have neither wings nor feathers.
Another is that these animals are inclined to be both noisy and filthy; noisy as the moon-eyed bird of the forest, and fetid as the African goat.
Another is that beaten paths usually lead to them.
Another is that these licks usually have accommodations neither for man nor beast, both of which they are required to keep by law.
Another is that those who lick there often got licked themselves.
2. I am to state and illustrate the doctrine.
The doctrine of the text is, with a little change in the orthography, that the lick is dear.
It is dear, whether we consider its cost or its consequences.
Look at its cost. He who licks at the rate of 12 cents a day, licks away 43 dollars and 80 cents in a year; which in 20 years, without interest, amounts to the round sum of 876 dollars! Enough to build a comfortable house, buy a good farm, or educate a son at college.
He who licks at the rate of one pint a day swallows 46 gallons in a year; and in 20 years 920 gallons, or 28 barrel, and 24 gallons! And this, at one dollar a gallon, would purchase 786 acres of Congress land!
To lick so much must cost time--at least one hour a day--365 hours in a year; about one whole year in 20. And who can afford to part with so much time, without a compensation of some four or five hundred dollars?
But the cost of licking is nothing, compared with the consequences.
It leads to insanity. I have seen the animals which lick there raving mad. Of 495 patients in one insane hospital, 267 were known to have brought on their derangement in this way.
It leads to crime. Almost all the criminal cases which come before our courts are occasioned in the same way.
It leads to disease and premature death. So every intelligent physician will testify who has not been poisoned at the lick. This is the testimony of 75 physicians in Boston, of 45 in Cincinnati, and of the great body of physicians throughout the United States.
It leads to wretchedness. There is no fiction here. Look into the family whose head is in the habit of frequenting the lick, and if you find wretchedness any where on earth, you find it there: wretchedness alive, and no mistake.
It leads to ruin, temporal and eternal. What is one of those animals, which staggers and vomits about the lick, good for? Neither for the land nor for the dunghill. Neither for this world nor for the next. He is not fit even to wallow with the decent swine. When a mule has served his generation faithfully in pulling a dray, and can stand on all fours no longer, his hide is of some value; but not so with the animals ruined at the lick. Both living and dead they are a curse to themselves and others.
Thus, whether we consider the cost or the consequences of licking, it is extremely dear.
3. The application.
I take it for granted that none of my hearers are in the habit of frequenting the lick; yet there are those who do, and to such you have duty to perform.
Tell the mechanic, that if he would save his cash, his character, his health, and his happiness--if he would have a good house to cover his gray hairs--a good wife whose heart will beat in unison with his own--and good children to rock the cradle of his declining years,--tell him to keep away from the lick.
Tell the farmer if he would not earn wages to put into a bag with holes--that if he would not sow to the wind and reap the whirlwind--if he would not till the mortgaged farm of the sluggard, and leave his children to inherit only the reputation which drunkenness bequeaths,--tell him to avoid the lick.
Tell the professional man to beware of the lick, to shun it as he would the poisonous tree of Java, or the Sirocco of the desert,--that, instead of becoming more learned, wiser, or better, he will be soon the reverse for going there.
Entreat the old to take the old road round rather than go by the lick; and in the words of the wise man, exhort the young,--"Hearken unto me now therefore, O ye children, and attend to the words of my mouth. Let not thy heart decline to her ways, go not astray in her paths. For she hath cast down many wounded; yea, many strong men have been slain by her. Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death."