Religious and educational aspects of temperance / by various authors.

Date:
[1874?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Religious and educational aspects of temperance / by various authors. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    133/172 (page 129)
    the duty was earnestly urged upon me by the League, I accepted the office on these grounds : First, I had learned, in the time in which I had been attached to the cause of total abstinence, what Dr. Valpy French has so admirably stated, that education itself, in a general way, was by no means a check to the progress of intemperance. On the con- trary, I found that many of the most educated men, in a certain sense, were those who largely indulged in intemperance of a cer- tain kind, at all events, and that in fact they were the most dan- gerous of all the community in respect to the cause of temperance, because by their learning, and the ability with which they could put their words into the best case, they fostered and maintained that which was wrong. (Hear, hear.) Well, then, I thought that as a mere educational work for myself this exercise was good. But there was another matter which influenced me that has been referred to—I mean the effect which a manual of the kind sug- gested might have upon those who taught. I, as a teacher, have been all my life not merely a teacher. I never give a lecture, I never give a course of lectures, but what I come out of that lecture, or that course of lectures, as much in- structed from the labour pursued in gathering the materials for it as any of the people who have listened. So I thought if this book could be put into the hands of schoolmasters, and they them- selves should begin to learn from it, then a double object would be gained. There was another reason led me to the work, and that was the earnestness which has been shown for about twenty years past for the movement you are inaugurating to-night. So far back as 1857, Mr. Thomas Knox, of Edinburgh, gave expression to this earnestness in a series of admirable letters, the publication of which long preceded the report of Convocation, to which allusion has just been made. I find that through the whole of the tem- perance ranks there was even then this desire that something should be done towards the education of the young. Well, then, last and not least, the welfare of the young themselves came natu- rally before my mind ; and if I have done anything in this small effort—for it has not been a great effort, except in matters of arrangement and a little time—if it has helped ever so little this important cause, the reward I have obtained is far greater than anything which I can express. I would say, as I say in the pre- face of that book : “ It is but a spark given to make a larger flame, and that my best hope is that it may itself soon be lost in the great blaze which will be created by and through its lessons.” And if there is one thing that will give an impulse to this educa- tional movement, that will mark this event to-night, and make education in the paths of temperance easy, it is the fact that one of the most accomplished, one of the most learned, one of the most liberal and open-minded men at this time on the bench of bishops of this kingdom has presided over this meeting. (Cheers.)