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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 74

[introduction]

(An Address delivered to the Forward Movement, Wellington, on Sunday, November 7th, 1895).

The spoil of the poor is in your houses. What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor ? saith the Lord God of Hosts.—Isaiah iii., 14, 15.

The ravages of strong drink are, in one sense, a very familiar subject; but in another they are to most of us a sealed book. There are certain great truths of which Coleridge speaks as "lying bedridden in the dormitories of the soul"—truths, that is, too obvious to be disputed, but grown powerless from neglect and want of exercise, and commanding on occasion a vague and abstract recognition instead of a constant and practical homage. Upon the aspect of the drink problem which even for the most thoughtless has almost the air of an axiomatic truth—I mean its magnitude and urgency—I shall have very little to say to-night and nothing that is new, and what 1 shall say will be entirely directed towards a more disregarded aspect of the question, namely, the responsibility of the individual Christian in the matter of this gigantic evil, and especially in relation to those who are less able to protect themselves than he is. My endeavour will be to galvanize into activity this belief in the enormity of the evil which in some souls is but a bedridden truth, and to convert it into a vital power for the guidance of conduct. I shall speak from the Christian standpoint, and as the subject is important and I do not wish to be misunderstood, I shall speak as plainly as possible.