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It must, however, be admitted that the abstainers from it have been to some extent justified in their abstention.
Hundreds of habitual drunkards have been soundly converted and reformed in connection with our ordinary spiritual work in India. Probably there are not less than 500 such enrolled in our ranks in this country, and turned into staunch and perpetual abstainers.
The tempter had so far gained his end that he had made Frank disinclined to join himself at present to the body of stanch abstainers. He would wait and see he preferred moderation, it was more manly, more self-reliant. Ah, there was his grievous mistake. Self-reliant! yes, but that self was blinded, cheated by Satan; it was already on the tempter's side.
She would be offended. There is no one in this village who would take a shilling as a gift from a stranger. We all have enough; there is not a poor person among us." "What a happy village!" I exclaimed. "Perhaps you are all total abstainers." She laughed, and said that they all brewed their own beer there was not a total abstainer among them.
And so, when, after he had been about a month in the colony, he received a letter from Mrs Oliphant full of kindly expressions of interest and hopes that, by the time he received the letter, he would have formally enrolled himself amongst the pledged abstainers, he fiercely crumpled up the letter and thrust it from him, persuading himself that he was justly annoyed that the permanence of his sober habits should be doubted; whereas, in truth, the sting was in this, that the reading of the letter dragged out from some dark recess of his consciousness the conviction that, with all his high resolve and good intentions, he was standing on an utterly sandy foundation, and leaning for support on a brittle wand of glass.
The question of alcoholism is not one of the abuse of a good thing, here and there injuring those who take it to excess, but is a national question which affects the entire community, abstainers, and drinkers, men, women and children, present and to come. No one who has seriously studied the action of alcohol on civilization can question that it is our chief external enemy.
"Why, surely you don't think there is much danger in these days of many persons of our profession becoming the victims of intemperance?" "I cannot feel so sure about that," was the reply. "You know I hold strong views on the subject. I wish I could see more clergymen total abstainers."
"Friends, I've been at many a temperance meeting in my day, but never at one that I shall remember like this. Some of us abstainers came here to-night with doubting hearts; it seemed as if the evil one was a-going to put a big stone or two in the way of the temperance cause, but instead of that he's been and trod upon his own tail, as he often does. O bless the Lord for his goodness!
Oh, what a happy day it was to Ned Brierley and his little band of stanch Christian abstainers, when Thomas came forward, as he soon did, and manfully signed the pledge, as resolved henceforth to be, with God's help, consistent and uncompromising in his entire renunciation of all intoxicating drinks!
The use of and dependence upon tea and coffee, now so universal, and at sea so seemingly indispensable, was then unknown, beer supplying their places, and this happily did not have to be prepared with fire. Our Pilgrim Fathers were by no means "total abstainers," and sadly bewailed being deprived of their beer when the supply failed.
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