Select Temperance Tracts

by American Tract Society

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 God. 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 appetite? 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 canvassed, 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.

To parents Jamie addressed himself with unwearied and anxious importunity. Would you object, he would say to them, when other arguments had failed—would you object to your son becoming a member when going away from you to live, perhaps, amidst the temptations of a large town? Would you be afraid, lest keeping him away from the temptations of the bottle would make him an easier prey to the solicitations of the strange woman, whose house is the way to death, and whose steps take hold on hell? He met with none, whether spirit-sellers or spirit-drinkers, who were able to resist this appeal; and from this, as well as other causes, the young formed a large and zealous portion of Jamie’s Society. The young he was particularly anxious to enlist in his cause, not merely because youth is the time of truth, and of open, warm hearts, and in an especial manner God’s time, but because he believed spirit-drinking parents to be the great agents in making their children drunkards.

A case which happened in his own neighborhood, gave him a melancholy confirmation of this opinion. A respectable moderate drinker, who only now and then exceeded his single tumbler of punch, had seven daughters, whom he was in the habit of treating to a little glass of punch each day after dinner. He, of course, considered it good, and they were soon taught to consider it so too. They began first to like their one glass; then they began to like two glasses much better; one glass called for another, till, in the end, they found, according to the adage, that though one glass of spirits is too much for any one, two glasses are quite too little. Right onward they went to drunkenness and crime; for, alas, it was too true in their case, as in all others, that any one may be ruined who can be persuaded to drink intoxicating liquors. With the help of whiskey, as the murderer said, a man can do any thing; so, at least, it was with these poor girls; they are living with broken character, virtue and all lost. There is, however, one exception, the youngest; and how did she escape? She was too young when her father died to be influenced by her father’s example; and her father, with the character of a moderate, regular man, died sitting at table with his tumbler of punch before him.

Principally through the prudent and laborious exertions of Jamie, a great moral reformation has been effected throughout an extensive district; three hundred names are enrolled on the list of his Temperance Society; wives and sisters are blessing him for husbands and brothers reformed; the standard of public sentiment in regard to temperance has been nobly raised; people don’t talk now as formerly of a man’s being somewhat elevated or tipsy, or merely overtaken, when he is drunk, for they have learned to call things by their right names, and not practise imposture by slang phrases. Public resolutions have been passed against giving spirituous liquor at wakes or funerals, churns, ploughing-matches, or evening parties; men and women can go to market and fair, buy and sell, and yet never think of treating or being treated with spirits; and what still more fully exhibits the extent of the reformation, it has reached, in some cases, even the most degraded victims of iniquity, some of whom at least are now consistent members of the Temperance Society.

Arguing on the subject of temperance has, in a good degree, ceased in the neighborhood; and though a number of the old or ill-disposed appear decidedly resolved to have their glass, whatever the consequences, in the spirit of the fellow who told his doctor that he loved his glass, and did not care a fig for his liver, yet the young and conscientious are becoming more hearty in the cause of Jamie and temperance.