Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1843 Excerpt: ...was known to make good men better? Great and glorious, then, as the results of the temperance movement have been in reclaiming those who appeared to be irretrievably lost to their friends and to society, its most beneficial operation, and that to which we look for the greatest good, is its power to arrest the downward progress of the moderate, before they shall have lost caste amongst their fellow-men. In order to do this, it is necessary that there should be some powerful and immediate check against so much as tasting the dangerous draught. This check has been tried by a mere promise to a friend for a stated period, and has often proved sufficient for the time, though the opposite cases in which it has failed, may be reckoned as a thousand to one; for, until the temperance principle was made known, it never seemed to occur to such friends, that their part, and a very important one in the work of reformation, was to join with the tempted in totally abstaining. And here let us observe, that it is one of the peculiar and striking features of intemperance as a vice, that its victims often loathe the very monster on whose polluted altars they are offering up their lives; nay, they even loathe themselves, and hate and despise the tyranny whose badge of cruel servitude they wear. In this state, the struggles of the wretched victim to escape, are sometimes most painful and heartrending to the confidential friend to whom they are disclosed. Sometimes prayer is resorted to, sometimes penance. Every device which a wounded spirit can suggest, except the only sure and effectual one, is by turns adopted and renounced; and still, though torn and lacerated by a thousand agonies, which the untempted can never know, until within the last few years, these miserable and isola...
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