Health and Temperance by Theodore L. Cuyler

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · May 13, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 18.

Health and Temperance.

By Theodore L. Cuyler

STOP BEFORE YOU BEGIN!

A PLAIN TALK WITH YOUNG MEN.

A YOUNG man, who had just lost an excellent situation by a two days' "spree," came into my study lately, and said to me:—

"Doctor, I cannot understand how it is that I should have made such a fool of myself and thrown away my chance for a living. This is almost killing my little wife."

I replied to him: "There is no mystery about your case. You have been tampering with drink a long while, trying to jump half way down Niagara. You ought to have stopped before you began. It would not have cost you one-hundredth part as much effort to have signed a total abstinence pledge several years ago as it will now to break loose from this terrible habit." I entreated my friend to grapple his weakness to God's strength; he signed a pledge of entire abstinence, and went away with the desperate look of a man who is pulling for life in the rapids, in full sight of the cataract.

That young man is a fair representative of a sadly numerous class who "lock the stable-door after the horse is stolen." He may possibly be saved, but so as by fire. My plain talk to-day is with those who have not yet flung themselves into the rapids. I wish to give half a dozen common-sense reasons for letting every intoxicating drink (whatever its name) entirely alone. He who never touches a drop will assuredly never become a drunkard. Prevention is easy, is safe, is sure; reformation is difficult, and with some persons is well-nigh impossible. . . .

1. The first argument, my young friend, for total abstinence is that no healthy person needs an alcoholic beverage; and even invalids had better be careful how they tamper with it as a medicine. Sir Henry Thompson and several other distinguished British physicians have deliberately declared that "alcohol cannot, in any sense, be considered necessary for the maintenance of healthy life; that it is not a food in any true sense of that term; and that the steadiest and best work is done without it." Livingstone, the heroic explorer of Central Africa, was both a physician and a teetotaler. His testimony was, "I find that I can stand every hardship best by using water, and water only." I entreat you not to fall into the delusion that you can do honest work the better by firing up your nerves with alcohol. If you do, you will have to increase the fuel constantly in order to produce the effect. Solid food and sound sleep are all you require. Even as a tonic medicine, wine and Bourbon may cover up a great deal; they cure but very little. Several friends I have known to be decoyed by them into drunkenness and disgrace.

2. Therein lies a second reason for avoiding all intoxicants. They are deceitful. Not only the sting of the serpent, but the subtlety of the serpent, is in them. The deception lies in the fact that the habit of drinking will become confirmed before you suspect it. That young man who came into my study so tortured with the adder's bite, never dreamed at the outset that he was playing with a rattlesnake.

Every alcoholic drink has in it this quality, that it never satisfies, but awakens a constant demand for more. A small glass creates a thirst for a larger; one draught only whets the appetite for a second. This is not the case with any wholesome food or beverage. Bread and beef do not breed excess; one glass of milk does not arouse a morbid thirst for two the next time. But this horse-leech quality in alcoholic liquors, which cries, "Give, give," and is never satisfied, is the very thing that makes them so dangerous. This it is which makes it so difficult to drink wine or brandy moderately, and so easy to fall into drunkenness. A healthful beverage satisfies appetite; a hurtful one, like wine or brandy, stimulates appetite until it becomes an uncontrollable frenzy. This I regard as the Creator's law against alcohol; and when you take your first social glass you begin to play with a deadly serpent.

You may say, "Everyone who drinks liquors does not become a sot." Very true, but every sot drinks liquors; and not one in a million ever expected to become a sot when he began with his champagne or his "sherry cobbler." Will you run the risk? I would not. The two reasons why I am a teetotaler are that I dare not trust myself, and I dare not tempt others by my example. The most deplorable wrecks are those of men or women who at the outset considered themselves perfectly strong and invulnerable. Nothing from the pen of Dickens can surpass a heart-rending letter which I received from a cultured gentleman (then in an almshouse), who declared that he traced all the misery of his life directly to the "first glass he ever drank at the N— House, in the capital of Ohio." First glasses have peopled hell! With whatever "odds" in your favor, will you run the fearful hazard? Then stop before you begin!

A third reason why alcoholic drinks are dangerous is that it is the peculiar property of alcohol to strike directly to the brain. Some drugs have an affinity for the heart; others for the spine. The glass of brandy aims for the brain, as a hound makes for a hare. In striking the brain it overturns the throne of the reason and turns a man into a maniac. Like the shot in a naval battle, which hits "between wind and water," the alcoholic death-shot strikes where body and mind meet, and sends both to the bottom. No brain is proof against it. . . . Stop, my friend, before you begin! . . .

I might multiply arguments in favor of total abstinence as the only certain safeguard. The grace of God is powerless if you voluntarily yield to temptation. It is a defiance to the Almighty for you to leap into the rapids and expect him to save you from the cataract. No small part of my own life has been spent in bootless efforts to save those who were in the swift and treacherous current. The remainder of it shall be spent in endeavoring to prevent young men from embarking on the stream which is all music and mirth at the starting-point and all death and damnation at the bottom. Tons of arguments and appeals have been printed on this vital question, how to save young men from strong drink, but they may all be condensed into one line—Stop before you begin!—Theodore L. Cuyler, D. D., in Independent.