Perhaps no class of men have suffered more from the evils of intemperance than our brave sailors, fishermen, and rivermen. Foreigners tell our missionaries to convert our drunken sailors abroad, and when they wish to personify an Englishman, they mockingly reel about like a drunken man. And what lives have been lost through the intemperance of captains and crews! The 'St. George,' with 550 men: 'The Kent,' 'East Indiaman,' with most of her passengers and crew: 'The Ajax,' with 350 people: 'The Rothsway Castle,' with 100 men on board, with many others we might name, were all lost through the drunkenness of those in charge of the vessels. Of the forty persons whom our friend rescued from drowning, a very large percentage got overboard through intemperance. We read that on the morning following the Passover night in Egypt, there was not a house in which there was not one dead, and it would be difficult to find a house in our land, occupied by sailors, in which this monster evil has not slain its victim, either physically or morally.
HIS DRUNKEN FATHER.
Our friend, speaking of his own family, says:—'I owe my Christian name to the favour with which drunkenness was regarded by my relatives. Soon after I was born, one of my uncles asked, "What is the lad's name to be?" "Thomas," replied my mother. "Never," said my uncle, in surprise, "we had two Thomas's, and they both did badly; call him John. I have known four John's in the family, and they were all great drunkards, but that was the worst that could be said of them." 'So it appears,' said our friend, 'that at that time it was thought no very bad thing for a man to get drunk, if he was not in the habit of being brought before the magistrate for theft, &c.' John's father was one of the four drunkards. In early life he became a hard drinker, and he continued the practice until a damaged constitution, emptied purse, a careworn wife, and a neglected family, were the bitter fruits of his inebriation. 'He drank hard,' says John, 'spending almost all his money in drink, and was at last forced to sell his vessel and take to the menial work of helping to load and unload vessels. At length he went to sea, and for a long time we heard nothing of him; nor did my mother receive any money from him. In old age he was quite destitute, and while it gave me great pleasure to minister to his necessities, it often grieved me to think of the cause of his altered circumstances.'
Nightly, when ashore, John, the elder, went to the public house, and it was his invariable rule never to return home until his wife fetched him. Often, when Mrs. Ellerthorpe was in a feeble state of health, and amid the howling winds and drenching rains of a winter's night, would she go in search of her drunken husband, and by her winning ways and kind entreaties induce him to return home. She was known to be a God-fearing woman, and often on the occasion of these visits, her husband's companions—some of whom were 'tippling professors' of religion—would try to entangle her in religious conversation, but to every entreaty she had one reply, 'If you want to talk with me about religion come to my house. I will not speak of it here; for I am determined never to fight the devil on his own ground.'
IMITATES HIS FATHER.
And was this Christian woman wrong in calling the public house the devil's ground? We have 140,000 of these houses in our land, and are they not so many reservoirs from whence the devil floods our country with crime, wretchedness, and woe? Is it not there that his deluded victims, in thousands of instances, destroy their fortune, ruin their health, and form those habits which wither the beauty, scatter the comforts, blast the reputation, and bury once happy families in the tomb of disgrace? And is it not at the public house that the sounds of blasphemy, cursing, and swearing, sedition, uncleanness, laciviousness, hatred, quarrels, murders, gambling, revelling, and such like, are begun? And you might as reasonably expect to preserve your health in a pest-house, your modesty in a brothel, and high-souled principles amongst gamesters, as to expect to preserve your religious character undamaged amid the impure atmosphere of a public house. Can a man go upon hot coals and his feet not be burnt? One hour spent around the drunkard's table has often done an amount of harm to the cause of God and the souls of men which the devotion of years could not undo.
BECOMES A DRUNKARD.
A youth, on being urged to take the pledge, said, 'My father drinks, and I don't want to be better than my father.' And, alas! for our friend, he early imbibed the tastes and followed the example of his father, for drink got the mastery of him. Speaking of his boyhood, he says, 'I remember a man saying to my father, "Your son is a sharp lad, and he will make a clever man, if only you set him a good example, and keep him from drink." To which my father replied, "O drink will not hurt him; if he does nothing worse than take a sup of drink he'll be all right; drink never hurt anyone." But, alas! my father lived to see that a "little sup" did not serve me, for I have heard him say with sorrow, "The lad drinks hard." But he was the first to set me the example, and if parents wish their children to abstain from intoxicating drinks, they should set the example by being abstainers themselves. The best and most lasting way of doing good to a family is for parents first to do right themselves.' But with such a training as John had, what wonder that he became a 'hard drinker.' For years previous to his marriage his experience was something like that of an old 'hard-a-weather' on board a homeward-bound Indiaman, who was asked by a lady passenger, 'Whether he would not be glad to get home and see his wife and children, and spend the summer with them in the country?' Poor Jack possessed neither home, nor wife, nor chick nor child; and his recollections of green fields and domestic enjoyments were dreamily associated with early childhood. And hence a big tear rolled down his weather-beaten but manly cheek as he said to his fair questioner, 'Well, I don't know, I suppose it will be another roll in the gutter, and away again.' Our friend was for years a 'reeling drunkard,' and often, during this sad period of his existence, he literally 'rolled in the gutter.'
But when he experienced a saving change he at once became a sober man, and began to treat public houses after the fashion of the fox in the fable—who declined the invitation to the lion's den, because he had observed that the only footsteps in its vicinity were towards it and none from it. He further saw that to indulge in the use of intoxicating drinks, and then pray, 'Lead me not into temptation,' savoured less of piety than of presumption. He attended a temperance meeting at which the Rev. G. Lamb spoke of the importance of Christian professors abstaining for the good of others, as well as for their own safety. John felt that his sphere of action was limited in its range and insignificant in its character; yet he knew he possessed influence; as a husband and father, and as a member of civil and religious society, he knew that his conduct would produce an effect on those to whom he was related, and with whom he had to do. 'No man liveth to himself.' He knew how to do good, and not to have done it would have been sin. And that thought decided him. At the close of the meeting, persons were invited to take the pledge of total abstinence, but not one responded to the invitation. John saw, sitting at his right hand, a man who had been a great drunkard, and whose shattered nerves, unsteady hand, and bloodshot eyes, told of the sad effects of his conduct. Placing his hand on this man's shoulder, he said, 'Will you take the pledge?' 'I will if you will,' was the man's reply. 'Done,' said John, and scarcely had they reached the platform, when about twenty others followed and took the pledge.
SIGNS THE PLEDGE.