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.

    149/172 (page 145)
    Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is with deliberate and entire sincerity that I call this a small and insignificant sacrifice. (Hear, hear.) In pamphlet after pamphlet and article after article, I see that total abstainers are sneered at and railed at as though they assumed to them- selves an amount of Pharisaic virtue. (Here let me pause to say that I greatly prefer the title “ total abstainer ” to the wretched and ridiculous word, however much it may have been honoured, of “teetotaler.”) N ow, so far as that charge has any ground at all, I think we may say in jeply, Do not misunderstand us. It may be true that some of us have used language simply from the intensity of our feelings—(hear, hear)— or from our conviction that nothing but enthusiasm can break the bonds of a colossal tyranny—language which sounds, perhaps, laudatory to ourselves and condemnatory of others ; but, so far as we have done so, we hope that that language may be attributed simply to our conviction of the dreadfulness of the necessity, and to our conviction of the sacred- ness of our crusade ; and so far from thinking that by becoming total abstainers we have done anything at all great or to be proud of, we are quite convinced that you would not bring that objection against us if you would turn to the subject your unprejudiced and deliberate atten- tion ; for when you had faced the overwhelming amount of evidence which is now so easily accessible to all, you would be ready at once to join us in so trivial and effective a self-denial. I call it a “ trivial self- denial ” because I am sure that no total abstainer would so libel the manhood of myriads of moderate-drinkers as to believe that if they thought it right they would find any sort of difficulty in giving up what is at the best a needless and, perhaps, not very noble luxury : I call the self-sacrifice “effective” because, as Sir Wilfred Lawson says—(loud cheers)—the mitred heads of the whole of the episcopate together could not discover any cause for drunkenness except drinking—(laughter)— and if every total abstainer was only able in different ranks of life to win over a few others by moral suasion and by manly argument to his own view of the case, then the national sin which now sullies the name of England would soon become an extinct and a forgotten shame. (Cheers.) But, ladies and gentlemen, leaving, therefore, on one side altogether the physiological aspect of the question, I do think that there are two strong reasons why we may begin to assume and to assure people that since alcohol is not, at any rate, as Dr. Richardson and Sir Henry Thompson have just demonstrated, a food, it had better be regarded either as an exceptional luxury or an occasional medicine ; those two reasons—and they are all that I shall dwell upon to night, without entering upon the great field of the subject of temperance and all the reasons for it—are public example, and personal security. (Cheers.) I think there is enough in these two grounds to persuade us that total abstinence is an absolute necessity for some, that it is a positive duty for a great many, and that at least as “ a counsel of perfection ”—at any rate in the present time, and in the present aspect of a great national struggle—it may be desirable for most to give up the habit of moderate drinking, and to take to total abstinence as the general habit of their lives. Now, I do think that there are circumstances at present which would give exceptional force in this matter to a public example. (Hear