Why I Became a Teetotaler.
By Rev. Dr. Guthrie
"I WAS first led to form a high opinion of the house of temperance by the bearing of an Irishman. In the year 1841, I had left Ornagh on a bitter, biting, blasting day, with lashing rain, and had to travel across a cold country to Cookstone. By the time we reached a small inn we were soaking with water outside, and as these were the days, not of tea and toast, but of toddy-drinking, we thought the best way was to soak with whiskey on the inside. Accordingly we rushed into the inn, ordered warm water, and got our tumblers of toddy. Out of kindness to the car-driver, we called him in; he was not very well clothed—indeed, he rather belonged in this respect to the order of my ragged school in Edinburgh. He was very wet, and we offered him a drink of toddy. But the car driver was not to be tempted. He would not taste it. 'Why?' we asked, 'what objection have you?' Said he, 'Please your rev'rence, I am a teetotaler, and I won't taste a drop of it.' Well, that stuck in my throat, and it went to my heart; and (in another sense than drink, though!) to my head. Here was an humble, uncultivated, uneducated Roman Catholic carman; and I said, if that man can deny himself this indulgence, why not I, a Christian minister? I remembered that; and I have ever remembered it to the honor of Ireland. I have often told the story, and thought of the example set by that poor Irishman for our people to follow. I carried home the remembrance of it with me to Edinburgh. That circumstance, along with the scenes in which I was called to labor daily for years, made me a teetotaler." The occasion on which he openly showed and owned himself a total abstainer was in the year 1844 at a dinner party. He says:— "I had become convinced that my power to do good among the lapsed classes lay in standing out before them as one who, in following Christ and for their sakes, was ready to take up his cross daily, and deny himself. If I was to prevail on them to give up the whisky, I myself must give up the wine. I had known so many instances of the sons of ministers, and of Edinburgh ministers going to the bad; and I had seen so many of my old divinity Hall acquaintances placed at the bar of the General Assembly, and deposed for drunkenness, and other crimes which it leads to, that, with an eye both to the good of my family and of my parishioners, I resolved to stand out before the public as a total abstainer, and to bring up my children in the habits of that brotherhood and sisterhood." "I well remember yet, the day and place when I roused up my courage to the deciding point. From how great a load of anxiety and care in respect of the future of my children it relieved my mind! But I confess I felt it hard to have my principles put to so severe a strain before they had time to acquire fibre and firmness, as they had to stand at Mr. Maitland's dinner table. Lord Jeffrey, Lord Cockburn, with their wives and others of the elite of Edinburgh literary and legal society, were there—people who might have heard of teetotalers, but certainly had never seen one before, and some of whom probably never dreamed of denying themselves any indulgence whatever for the sake of others, far less for the wretched and degraded creatures who haunted the Cowgate and Grass-market. But to my principles I was resolved to stand, cost what it might. So I passed the wine to my neighbor, without its paying tax or toll to me, which attracted our host's attention, who, to satisfy himself that I was not sick, called for an explanation. This I gave modestly, but without any shamefacedness." "The company could hardly conceal their astonishment; and when Jeffrey, who sat opposite to me, found that in this matter I was living, not for myself but for others—denying myself the use of luxuries in which all around were indulging, and to which I had been accustomed, and which had thus far done me no real apparent harm, that I might by my example reclaim the vicious and raise the fallen, and restore peace and plenty to wretched homes—that generous hearted, noble-minded man could not conceal his sympathy and admiration. He did not speak, but his look was not to be mistaken, and though kind and courteous before my apology, he was ten times more so after it." "This was to me a great encouragement to persevere in the line which I had entered and which I continued to follow for twenty years. Independent of the good it did my family and others, it was a great personal advantage to myself. It made my health better, my head clearer, my spirits lighter and my purse heavier. I feel sure that all parents, though they themselves might not be able to shake off their habits (a very easy thing, after all, to one who has not become the slave of drunkenness) if they but knew the load taken from my mind when I first resolved to bring up my family in total abstinence, would rear their children in the total disuse of all such dangerous stimulants." -Rev. Dr. Guthrie.