ABSTINENCE AND PROSPERITY.
The following words we extract from a speech by Rev. J. W. Monk, at Faversham, England, published in the Dietetic Reformer, for April, 1881, London:— “Lord Derby says that each time a man drains off a pot of beer he swallows a yard of land, and that if the working men of England would only reduce their potations by one-half, they may at no distant day become possessed of half the soil of England. Well, now if to their abstinence from liquor they add abstinence from animal food, the advent of that happy time when every man may sit under his vine and under his own fig-tree will be wonderfully accelerated. Meantime every day will bring a fresh accession of health, wealth, and wisdom. I appeal to those who are abstainers and vegetarians to say whether your abstinence has not materially contributed to your comfort and enjoyment. I am not ashamed to make such an avowal myself. Nearly five years ago I renounced, at once and forever, alcohol and tobacco in every form, and soon found myself better in every way for my abstention. I next gave up tea and coffee; then fish, flesh, and fowl, and now I am able to say with the late Mr. Brotherton, M. P., ‘I count not my wealth by the number of my possessions, but by the fewness of my wants.’ I invite you to try the experiment of living more simple lives, to break off the luxurious habits—the luxe effrene, as one of our novelists has it—the note of our time, a contagious disease spreading downwards from the palace to the cottage, bringing nothing but evil in its train. I ask you in the words of Dean Stanley, spoken in Westminster Abbey, to resist, above all things, the temptation to do things because everybody does them. Take for your motto the words, a translation of which the Dietetic Reformer has placed upon its title-page, ‘Fix upon that course of life that is best; custom will render it most delightful.’ For as Shakespeare says:— “‘That monster, custom, who all sense doth eat—
Of habits’ devil,—is angel yet in this,—
That to the use of actions fair and good
He likewise gives a smock or livery
That aptly is put on: Refrain to-night;
And that shall lend a kind of easiness
To the next abstinence: the next more easy;
For use almost can change the stamp of nature,
And either curb the devil, or throw him out
With wondrous potency.’”