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.

    46/172 (page 42)
    years; but, alas ! should even these be persuaded, under any pretext, to take one spoonful of brandy or one glass of wine, the old craving might be reawakened, and their rapid descent to degradation would ensue as a certainty. I speak from experience, and could give you many instances, for I have seen and known such cases. Every man or woman who has ever had that fatal craving is never safe. It is an incurable disease, and the only way in which it can be held in abeyance is by absolute and rigid abstinence—an abstinence which must defy medical orders, resist the foolish persuasions of unwise friends, and in God’s imparted strength be content to suffer all things rather than swallow one drop of that fearful liquid, which has well been described as the “ devil in solution.” Mr. Gough, after twenty-six years of total abstinence, asserted publicly that he would not dare to allow one drop of intoxicating drink to pass his lips, and his daily prayer to God was that He would keep him from “the drink”—he never prayed to be kept from drunkenness, but from the cause of drunkenness. This, believe me, dear Christian friends, must be our attitude also toward the destroyer. Never let us patronise the drink traffic ! Never let us take between our lips that which causes men to blaspheme God, which prompts them to all vice and to cruelties which are too horrible to think of, which causes a father to dash his infant child to pieces on the hearthstone, which prompts a mother to rob her children of their clothing that she may pawn it for gin, which spares neither young nor old, and which, alas ! is sending your scholars into gaols. Sunday- school teachers, do you know the fearful evidence concern- ing this terrible fact ? That little fair-haired girl listening at your knee to the story of God’s love, and repeating the sweet texts about Christ calling little children to Him and