Part 22 (1/2)
In a populous and civilized district of Ulster lived JAMIE, a day-laborer; a fellow of right good sense and practical talent, carpenter and mason, shoemaker and blacksmith, and aught else the case required. The variety of his powers had nearly ruined him. On all hands he was in requisition, and everywhere he was a favorite--kindness flowing to him in its common channel, spirituous liquor. Wherever he went, he was _treated_. This was too much for flesh and blood, and Jamie became, in the style of the world's false charity, ”fond of the drop.”
His cash flew to the spirit-shop, and brought neither health nor happiness in return. The neighbors called him--alas, for such lullabies to conscience!--an honest, good-hearted fellow, who did n.o.body any harm but himself. While, however, they tempted, and flattered, and deceived, their victim was posting to ruin.
But, while moderate drinkers were training him to drunkenness, G.o.d was raising up the Temperance Society as an ark of safety to him from the flood of their temptations. One of the publications of the Ulster Temperance Society fell into his hands, and he read it, for he was of an inquiring spirit, and a blessing attended it. What, said he, in amazement, can this be true?--distilled spirits of no more use to any man in health than a.r.s.enic or opium? ”Distilled spirits are too tempting, and dangerous, and violently intoxicating, to be used as a common beverage at all!” O, thought he, that at least is true.
”Distilled spirits are in their very nature injurious to the human const.i.tution; and every man who indulges even in their moderate use, injures himself in proportion to the quant.i.ty which he consumes.” Jamie was astonished, and well he might be; but Jamie was conscientious, and though he had the manhood to confess, what few moderate drinkers will, that he liked a gla.s.s, yet, because he had still a conscience, notwithstanding the searing it had got from the fiery drink, he said to himself, ”I must, at least, _try_ whether these wonderful statements respecting distilled spirits be true.” James _tried_, and the effects were delightful. In a very short time he found, from happy experience, that his health was better from the change; that his purse was better; that soul and body, the whole man of him was far better, in all respects, since he renounced the maddening draught.
His duty was now clear before him--to _abstain_ from the raging drink which, in time past, had been emptying his pocket, destroying his character, and bringing down his body to the grave, and his soul to h.e.l.l. He did his duty in the right way for doing duty--_at once_, and _right on_.
He saw, however, that something more was inc.u.mbent on him than merely doing his duty in this particular--he must, for the good of others, let it be known, without ostentation, that his duty was done. Abstaining, he said to himself, has done me good; the banishment of spirituous liquors would do my country good; what is every man's duty is my duty; and therefore, in love to my brethren, I'll freely give the blessing which to me has been so freely given. Union is strength, thought he: separate efforts are a rope of sand; united, they are the cable which holds the mighty s.h.i.+p. He resolved to establish a Temperance Society.
For this purpose, he supplied himself _immediately_ with a number of Tracts on temperance; for Jamie knew that when self-interest or pa.s.sion come in, second thoughts are not always best; and forthwith he commenced travelling around, reading them, at spare hours throughout the neighborhood, wherever he could find half-a-dozen people to listen to him. He was a good reader, and very soon found that his reading was not without effect; for in a short time he heard of a decent woman telling her neighbor to send for Jamie to the wake which was to be held in her house, if she wished to save her whiskey, and have peace and quietness; for, said she, he came to the wake in my house, and read and talked about temperance, till both the whiskey and the people seemed either persuaded or frightened, for hardly one had the courage to put to his lips what Jamie called, indeed too truly, ”the accursed thing.”
Jamie, however, soon found to his cost that he had commenced a very great and a very sore work. The spirit-sellers, four of whom were at a single cross-roads in his neighborhood, he expected to be against him, and drunkards he expected would be against him too; but he soon found that his chief opponents lay in quite another quarter. Sensible people soon began to see that spirit-sellers are drones on the community, doing no good, but much harm: and, besides, one of them having first allowed a temperance meeting to be held in his barn, conscientiously shut up his spirit-shop, and joined the Temperance Society, being convinced that spirit-selling is poison-selling, and that each spirit-shop might justly have on its sign-board, ”Beggars made here.” Of the drunkards, some indeed did call him hard names, and impute to him base motives; but from among even these, lost as they seemed to be to all hope, he was, by G.o.d's grace, enabled to reclaim some, as brands s.n.a.t.c.hed from the burning, while others of them said to him, in the bitterness of their reflecting moments, Go on, Jamie, your work is G.o.d's work. Had you commenced but a little sooner, what a blessing might your Society have been to us; but alas, it is all over with us now!
What at first surprised Jamie much was, that the fathers or husbands of these very drunkards were his most bitter opponents. He went to them with a glad heart, expecting that they would hear with delight of a plan by which drunkards, in great numbers, have been reclaimed, and by which the temperate can be effectually secured against temptation; but his heart sunk when he found, not that they received him coldly, for to such receptions he was accustomed, but that they, as well as others who boast much of being ”temperate enough already,” lost all temper at the very sound of temperance.
Some of these neighbors of Jamie were regular in attendance on public wors.h.i.+p, orthodox and strict, which gave them an influence in the neighborhood. Jamie, therefore, was anxious to enlist them on the side of temperance. Yet he could not but know, and very seriously consider, that whether, in market or fair, these same men either bought or sold, there could be no such thing as a _dry_ bargain; that at _churns_, and wakes, and funerals, and marriages, and such like, they always pushed round the bottle cheerily; that they held it churlish to refuse either to give or take a treat; that at their evening tea-parties it was not uncommon for six or eight gallons of spirituous liquor to be consumed by a few neighbors, men and women, in a single night; that in every house which their minister visited, the bottle was put to his mouth; and that as the natural consequence of all this and far more, not only was the crime of drunkenness, whether in minister or private layman, treated with much false charity, and called by many soft names, but drunkenness was spreading its ravages through many families, and bringing down many heads in sorrow to the grave.
Jamie was indeed charitable, but he was unable to persuade himself that, amid such universal drinking, all the objections to his Temperance Society arose merely from ignorance, or prejudice, or conscience; and therefore, when people were telling him, as they often did, that they cared not a rush about spirituous liquor, ”they could either drink it or let it alone,” he used sometimes to reply, ”Oh, I know well enough that you can drink it; what I want to know is, whether you can let it alone:”
and at other times he would tell them Dean Swift's story of the three men who called for whiskey in a spirit-shop: I want a gla.s.s, said the first, for I'm very hot; I want a gla.s.s, said the second, for I'm very cold; let me have a gla.s.s, said the third, because I like it!
As Jamie's opponents were no match for him in argument, they tried the plans usually resorted to when the wisdom and the spirit by which truth speaks cannot be resisted. For a while they tried ridicule. That, however, neither satisfied their own consciences nor frightened Jamie, for Jamie could stand a laugh, what many a man can't do who has stood grape-shot. Then they circulated reports about his having got drunk on different occasions, and having been caught drinking in secret; and some believed them, being of the same mind with the distiller, who a.s.serted it to be mere humbug that any man could live without whiskey, and that wherever the croaking cold water society men did not drink in the daytime, they made up for it by drinking at night. These evil reports, however, fell dead after a little, and n.o.body was vile enough to take them up again; and though attempts were made to circulate the lie, that Jamie had grown weak and sickly since he gave up drinking, yet every body who looked him in the face saw, that though he had neither a purple nose nor whiskey blossoms on his chin, yet he was stronger and healthier than ever; and that he could say, what every member of the Temperance Society, whether temperate or intemperate formerly, can say with truth, after abstaining for a single month from distilled spirits, that in every sense of the word he is better for the change.
Foiled thus in all their attempts, the opponents of Jamie and of temperance rallied strong for one last charge; and as it was against Jamie's weak side--who has not a weak side--they already chuckled in triumph. Jamie had thrown away his gla.s.s for ever, but his pipe stuck firm between his teeth still. The time was, when he was strong and well without tobacco, and when the taste of tobacco was disgusting and sickening to him; but respectable people were smoking, and chewing, and snuffing around him, and when he went to the wake, the funeral, or the evening gathering, ”Why,” thought he, ”should I be singular, and not take a whiff like the rest?” He chose smoking, probably, because he considered it to be the most _genteel_ way of being dirty and disgusting; and, according to the general law of habits, being most inveterate where the article used was at first most nauseous, he soon became so confirmed a smoker that one-half of what he smoked would have kept him decently clothed.
The lovers of strong drink, therefore, thought that they had Jamie on the hip completely, when they told him that his only reason for giving up whiskey was, that he could not afford to buy both it and tobacco; and promised, though with no sincerity, that they would quit drinking if he would quit smoking.
The reproach stuck like a burr to Jamie's conscience. He asked himself again and again, Is my use of tobacco a stumbling-block in the way of any? Does it do injury to the great cause which has all my heart? He read, he thought, and read and thought again; and the more he read and thought, the more was he convinced that the habitual use of tobacco in any of its forms is useless; is wasteful of time and money; is dirty; is offensive to others, and a breach of Christian charity; is a bad example to the simple and young; is a temptation to drunkenness, and injurious to health. He resolved to renounce it, and flung the old black pipe from him to lift it again no more. Thus Jamie was conqueror still; and his victory was one which Alexander, the conqueror of the world, could not gain. Jamie gained a victory over himself, and he that ruleth over his own spirit is better than he that taketh a city; but Alexander, who wept because he had not other worlds besides his own to subdue, died as a fool dieth, and sleeps in a drunkard's grave.
Jamie learned an important lesson in his victory, which will be of use to him as long as he lives. Whatever bad habit, he says, has got hold upon you, _break it of at once_. Would you pull your child out of the fire cautiously and gradually; or would you out with him at once? So let it be with every thing wrong. Don't prepare for ceasing from sin to-morrow, or next year, but cease from it now. Do so yourself; go right up to your neighbor without fear, and in love tell him to do the same, having this a.s.surance on your mind continually, _that what ought to be done, can be done_.
Jamie seemed from the commencement, to have taken for his motto, Expect great things, work for them, and you shall have them. Work as though all depended on self; pray as knowing all to depend upon G.o.d. He knew his place, and modestly kept it; yet when opportunity offered for dropping a word on behalf of temperance, in the ear either of clergyman or layman, whatever his rank, he did what conscience told him was right towards a neighbor and a brother. Jamie's pockets and hat were filled with tracts, which, as the most suitable plan for his shallow purse, and perhaps, too, for securing a reading of them, he generally lent, and sometimes gave away, to all who promised to read.
Let it not be supposed that amidst such active benevolence he neglected his own business. No; Jamie had not learned in vain the apostle's maxim, ”Let him labor, working with his hands the thing which is good, that he may have to give to him that needeth.” It was nothing for him to start off half a dozen miles of an evening after his work was finished, to procure some new tracts, or attend a temperance-meeting, or read and talk kindly to some poor drunkard, whose wife had sent him a hint that her husband would be glad to see him; or else to procure the services of some clergyman to address the next meeting of his Temperance Society.
Jamie is one of those who imagine that the business of a minister of the Gospel is not finished when he has preached a couple of discourses on the Sabbath; he really presumes to say, that both minister and layman should be ”instant in season and out of season,” and like their great Master, going about continually doing good. He does not set up for a preacher, nevertheless, but confines himself to his own proper sphere.
He applied to ministers to address his meetings, and though some few of them refused, telling him significantly that they preach the Gospel, even when Jamie did ask in his simplicity, if Paul forgot his resolution to know nothing but Christ and him crucified, when he reasoned of righteousness, _temperance_, and judgment to come; yet to the honor of the ministry around him be it told, that whenever he got up a meeting, a minister was at Jamie's service to address it.
Though, as a body, Jamie's Temperance Society was most steady, yet a few, and only a few, fell. It would be harsh to say that some were glad at their fall; at least many temptations were thrown in their way; and when they fell, a shout of triumph was raised against the Temperance Society. Such trials as these only urged Jamie on with fresh vigor.
Suppose, he used to say, that every drunkard should return again to drunkenness and ruin; would not this be another proof that truth, and honor, and principle, are all as nothing before the drunken appet.i.te?
Would not this be a louder and a stronger call to save the young, to stop young sons and daughters, now safe, from filling the place of drunken parents when they are gone? What ruins these poor wretches? he would ask. Is it the mere _abuse_ of a good and wholesome thing? No.
Distilled spirits are tempting, deceitful, and too violently intoxicating to be at all habitually used with safety; and as four hundred of the ablest doctors now living have established, and unnumbered facts prove, they are unwholesome and injurious to body and soul. Let every man, then, for his own sake abstain; and for the sake of others too, especially such as are near and dear to him, O let him abstain for ever.
Who, he would ask, give currency and influence to the absurd fooleries which are circulated respecting the marvellous excellences of spirituous liquors, while common-sense tells that they are of no more use to a man than to a cow or horse? Not drunkards, surely; for, on such a subject at least, they would not be believed. Who give support and respectability to spirit-shops, and the whole spirit-trade? Drunkards surely could make nothing respectable, and no spirit-seller would put on his sign-board, ”The drunkard's spirit-shop.” Again, he would put it to men's consciences to answer, who give respectability and permanence to all the _treatings_ and other customs by which each successive generation of drunkards is trained? There was no getting over the undeniable fact, that moderate spirit-drinkers must bear the responsibility of all this; and the more the matter was canva.s.sed, the more clearly was it seen, that the only way in which drunkenness can be put down is the very way which Jamie and the Temperance Society proposed--_the union of the temperate in refraining from intoxicating drinks, and promoting temperance_.