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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 45

Thirteen Reasons for Total Abstinence

page 55

Thirteen Reasons for Total Abstinence.

1.Intoxicating beverages are unnecessary. Many persons live in health and labour in the hardest occupations without them.
2.These liquours are dear. They are so in themselves, and in-omparison with other articles of diet. Ardent spirits are destitute of nutritive qualities; while wine, beer, and cider contain an exceedingly small portion of nourishment. In a gallon of ale there is about as much as in a pennyworth of bread.
3.Intoxicating liquors weaken the mind. They are enemies put into the mouth that steal away the brains.
4.They always endanger the character, and often ruin it. They inflame the imagination, appetites, and passions. Through their influence multitudes have been plunged into guilt and eternal destruction; and even some wise and good men have, for a season, been covered with shame and defilement. Witness Noah and Lot.
5.It enlarges and multiplies our jails, poor-houses, hospitals, and lunatic asylums. This is certified by our judges, magistrates, physicians, chaplains of prisons, and other competent and reliable authorities. It means a great extension of crime and misery, as well as a large augmentation of taxes.
6.The general practice of temperance would help to fill our schools and places of worship. Sobriety is likely to lead to thought fulness; and that, in connection with better clothing and more comfortable homes, will result, by the divine blessing, in the attendance at the house of God of many who were formerly absentees.
7.Personal abstinence gives us much more influence over drunkards. They are far more likely to sign the pledge and keep it when advised by those who, distinguished for sobriety and religion, have also set the example of nephalism, or avoidance of strong drink.
8.It tends to fill the treasury of the Christian Church, and to raise its Spiritual character. In nearly all sections of it, funds are constantly wanted to carry on the moral machinery. Backslidings and expulsions, too, are continually occuring throughout Christendom, owing to strong drink.
9.As a pioneer, temperance hastens the conversion of the world. Means sufficient for universal evangelization would be provided, the minds and hearts of Christians improved, the number of earnest workers multiplied, and in other ways the grand consummation would be accelerated.
10.It will vastly aid in multiplying the inhabitants of Heaven. In the case of many, it has been and will be a stepping-stone to Christ and eternal life.
11.It increases the joy of angels. The repentance of a sinner always swells their gladness, and the abandonment of strong drink is often the first stage of a prodigious reformation.
12.It undermines the throne of Satan. When delivered from the demon of intemperance, many escape altogether from the thraldom of the great slave-master of the universe.
13.It glorifies God. His honor is necessarily promoted by the diffusion of purity and happiness.