Temperance by John B. Gough

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 25, 1882

Temperance.

By John B. Gough

Moderate Drinking.

SOME men can drink moderately. My father drank moderately. He could drink in moderation; his son could no more drink moderately than you could blow up a powder magazine moderately, or fire a gun off a little at a time. I did as every intemperate man has done; I tried to drink moderately, and failed. No man means to be a drunkard. There is not an intemperate man but tries to be a moderate drinker, and fails. Why, a man said to me, "Well, you know what one man can do another one can, if he sets himself about it." Oh, no; not at all; oh, no, sir. So I say to the moderate drinker, "I don't expect to convert you to my notion; all I ask is this: If you will drink, drink, but don't tell these young men you set them a good example by your drinking."

"If they do as I do." "Ah, if they do as you do. Suppose they can't do as you do?" "Oh, well; one man can do what another one can if he sets himself to work about it." I saw a man stand on a little platform that was sustained by a rope that was fastened, I suppose, on the inside of a wall, 135 feet from the pavement, and he stood on that little platform without holding to anything. A man on the sidewalk hallooed to him. He put his hands on his knees, looked right down 135 feet, and spoke to the man on the sidewalk. How many of you could do that? All of you could, if you only think you could, to be sure. You could do what any other man could do. Well, try it. Now if that man on the platform had said: "Follow my example," you would have said: "Oh, I don't like the looks of the thing." "Well, but I have stood here every day for the last two or three weeks perfectly safe; just try and do as I do; don't bend down with a rush; do it in moderation; don't rush for it, but steadily and moderately exercise your self-control. Now put your foot right on this plank. That's it! There, there! Now take the other foot, then the other—a moment—the other step." Ah, well, but down I go. You may say I was weak-minded, if you like. I say neither the mind nor the will has anything to do with it. You may call it a physical inability, if you like, for there are a great many persons with just that physical inability, and if I am unsophisticated, and you tell me I can stand there because you have, you induce me to do it and I fall, are your skirts clear of my blood? I only ask the question, and leave the decision to you.

You may fill this room with young men tonight, and let every man of them go out and say, "I am going to be a moderate drinker. I am going to exercise self-control and self-government, and I am going to use this article in moderation." Take your pen and paper and make your calculation—make it as correct as you can—for life insurance, what proportion of these men will become drunkards. There is no necessity that any of them will. I care not for the necessity—some of them will. By all experience you know it. Why, let any young man look back for the last ten years, and count up the men that have become intemperate and ruined, lost their situations, one after another, and drifted out to get their living by miserable sponging and begging, and when you are sixty years of age the long fingers of memory will draw crowds of them that you knew, that have gone to ruin through drink, not one of them intending it.—John B. Gough.