Читать книгу Plain Words for Christ, Being a Series of Readings for Working Men - Reginald G. Dutton - Страница 7
DRINK.
Оглавление"When you see a drunken sot
From out the tavern reel,
Be thankful for a better lot,
And turn not on your heel.
Go warn him of the dreadful glass,
And save him, if you can;
But never scorn him as you pass--
Remember he's a man."
John Burbidge.
Drink! Why is it that when we speak that word we instinctively tremble? Is it not because we feel that it is the great enemy of our country and our race? Is it not because we call to mind strong men and women reeling under its influences? Neglected homes, ragged children, and general wants rise up before our eyes at the first mention of that word, Drink! Have you ever been in any of our large towns late on a Saturday night, and watched a woman waiting patiently outside a public house for the drunken husband, who is spending his time and his wages within? Perhaps there is a babe at her breast, and a ragged child crying at her side. Crying! yes, crying, because it knows that this means no supper, no comfort, no peace. It is an awful sight. I don't know any sight more sad; no not even a weeping mother mourning her only son.
Look into the newspapers again, week after week filled with cases of drunkenness. A horrible murder is committed; and if it should be peculiarly brutal in its details, we are almost certain to find that the murderer was drunk. Yes, it is drink that fills our prisons to overflowing; it is drink that fills the mad-houses of the country; and it is drink which indirectly taxes every single member of the society in which we live. Then, again, drunkenness leads to the commission of countless other sins. Apart from sins committed under the influence of drink, there are many sins to which drink leads. I have known a case in which a woman, who began life with high motives and honest intentions, being afflicted with a great and deep sorrow, was advised by her friends to seek consolation in drink. The glass which she then took led to another, and that one to another, and so on, until to-day that woman is pronounced by those very friends to be a hopeless and confirmed drunkard. As I said, before she took to drink her character was good; now it is far otherwise. And I am told that so great are her thefts, that everything in that house has to be kept under lock and key.
Oh, don't you think that is a terrible picture of the influence of drink? Don't you think that at the Day of Judgment God will blame the friends, however kindly they may have meant it, who first advised her to drown her grief in drink? Reader, that is a true story. It is no made-up tale. That poor woman is well known to me; and so far as I can see, the few years more she may have to live, and they cannot be many, must be passed in sorrow, in suffering, and in pain. And, unhappily, this curse of our nation does not end in our own land. Wherever the English tongue is spoken, wherever the English foot treads, there the curse follows. From the swarthy African, who knows the white man's "fire-water," which maddens his brain and dulls his senses, to the red Indian warrior who changes the skins of wild beasts for English gold and English spirits on the shores of Lake Ontario, all men know of the Englishman's curse: and knowing, learn to dread it.
It is drink which destroys our navy and our army alike. It is drunkenness which saps the strength of many of our greatest minds before they have left the university. And what can I say of our country villages,--of our young men, who year by year are growing up and beginning for themselves the labour of life; of the boys who, almost as soon as they leave school, learn, in many cases, to follow the example of their elders, and find the public house a convenient meeting-place?
It is for the young men of England to redeem their country's honour. It is for every individual soul to do battle with this mighty foe. Let the work be begun in our villages, in our homes, in ourselves. Let us be moderate in our living, in eating and in drinking; and then, by example rather than by precept, by deed rather than by word, we shall have done what we could; and when we lie down in death, it will be our comfort to reflect that little as it was we did, and poor and weak as were the efforts of our heart, we did it to the Lord and not unto men.
