On the fourth of July last, (1839,) the Sunday-schools in the town where he resides made arrangements for a celebration, and I was invited to be present and address them. As I looked upon the audience, the first countenance that met my eye was that of this very man, at the head of his Sunday-school class. The sight almost overwhelmed me. Instead of a loathsome, drunken maniac—a terror to his family and a curse to society, whose very presence was odious, and his example pestilential—he was then, in the expressive language of Scripture, “clothed, and in his right mind;” and was devoted to the heavenly work of guiding children to Christ and salvation. He had made a public profession of religion, which he was daily honoring by a life of Christian meekness and sobriety.
O, who can comprehend the tide of domestic joy, of social happiness, and of Christian consolation which flows through the heart of this man and his family, in consequence of this change in his habits?
Now, what was the cause of this surprising change? What wrought this wonderful transformation in this individual? The whole story is told in one short line. He went where intoxicating liquor was not sold. Had he remained in this city, he would probably long since have been laid in the drunkard’s grave.
PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY.
REFORMATION OF DRUNKARDS.
Truly we live in an age of wonders. Under peculiar influences, hundreds and thousands of once hopeless drunkards are becoming sober men—yet the work of reform has but commenced. It is computed that there are in the land no less than five hundred thousand habitual inebriates. The condition of each individual calls for sympathy and aid, that he may become a sober man, and through the blessing of God, gain eternal life.
For drunkenness there is and can be no apology; but the condition of the drunkard is often pitiable in the extreme. However gradual, or respectable, may have been his progress in the descent called temperate drinking, the appetite now is formed within him—the drunkard’s appetite. Wretched man! He feels what not faintly resembles the gnawing of “the worm that never dies.” He asks for help. There are times when he would give worlds to be reformed. Every drunkard’s life, could it be written, would tell this in letters of fire. He struggles to resist the temptation, causes himself to be shut up in prison, throws himself on board a temperance ship for a distant voyage, seeks new alliances and new employments, wrestles, agonizes, but all in vain. He rises to-day but to fall to-morrow; and amid disappointment and reproach, poverty and degradation, he says, “Let me alone, I cannot live,” and plunges headlong to destruction.