Temperance | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 8, 1883

Temperance.

Temperance Fanatics.

MR. GOUGH SAYS that there are many persons who talk about temperance men as being fanatics. They tell us we are rabid on this subject of temperance. I ask any reformed drunkard if it is not right to be rabid against an evil that has scorched and blasted and scathed and scarred us till we carry the marks of it to the grave?

Young men sometimes have an idea that a man can sow his wild oats and get over it. You put your hand in the hand of a giant and he crushes it. Still it may be healed, and by and by in some sort it may be a useful one, but it is a mutilated hand; its beauty and symmetry have gone forever. We who have passed through this fire know something of its awful scourge, we know something of the terrible struggle to get out of it. I think we ought to be what they call fanatics. They tell us that we exaggerate the evil of drunkenness. Do we? Let me appeal to the intelligent and ask the question, "Do we exaggerate the evil of drunkenness?"

No, sir, we cannot. God never gave a man a mind capable of grasping the extent of the awful evil of drunkenness for time and for eternity. You have a boy, a bright-eyed, beautiful fellow, round in limb, with pearly teeth, ruby lip, and rosy cheek, symmetrical and beautiful. O how you love him, as he springs into your arms in the morning, and puts his face to your cheek! You press him to your heart. How you love him as you say to a visitor, "Have you seen my boy?" and to him, "Come, old fellow." How he will spring into your arms. Oh, how you love him!

What would you do to save that child from curvature of the spine?

"Do anything."

What would you give?

"All my property."

What would you sacrifice?

"Every luxury under heaven."

What would you suffer?

"Try me. That boy, so straight of limb, so beautiful, so perfect, so symmetrical—that boy a poor, crawling cripple, deformed, upon the floor of my house? No, no, do not ask what I would do, give, suffer—anything!"

I was once at the house of a family where there was a crippled child. When four years of age it had fallen out of a swing backward; the child was twenty-three years of age then. The body had developed, but it was a very strange case. Physicians came to see it. The limbs had grown very little, it had a baby's hands and feet. I tell you, to see that little creature working over the carpet like a turtle made me shudder more than I ever shuddered to see a reptile. That child once said to its mother:—

"Mamma, I shan't trouble you much longer."

"Trouble us, my darling? Why you are the light of our home! We are learning lessons of faith and trust and patience from you every day. Why, darling, when God takes you from us it will be a dark day in our home."

"Yes, mamma, but I want to go, because when I see Jesus I shall stand up straight; shan't I, mamma?"

There may be some beauty and glory around a crippled child; there may be something lovely and sweet, something to be desired about a crippled child even, but is there anything about a drunken one? No, not a ray of light but such as comes lurid from hell. There is no comfort, nothing joyous, or delightful, nothing one can love to contemplate. If it be "fanaticism" to try and save our boys and young people from this curse, then let us all become fanatics of the most rabid sort, and it is to be hoped that our disease may be so contagious that we shall give it to everybody, even to those old fogies who are now laughing at us. The sooner they get bit hard and become rabid on this temperance question, the better for all concerned.—Christian at Work.