The Temperance Reformation Movement in the Church of England; Its Principles and Progress a Series of Papers (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1865. Excerpt: ... VII. OUR CHILDREN.--No. 1. Theee is a very old maxim that "prevention is better than cure." In all great reformatory movements there is danger of forgetting this. Thinkers and workers, alike, are so busy in dealing with the plain and palpable effects before them, that they do not care to look back to more recondite causes. The waterfloods are out, there are lives to be saved, further ravages to be stayed, arid past ones to be repaired; and though wisdom would prescribe that the mischief should at once be traced to its fountain-head--to the distant glacier which for so long was gathering its contents, and is now discharging them, or to the want of a deep and safe channel for the waters to flow in--yet the interests of the present are so engrossing that there are few who have the time to undertake the task. Perhaps it might be added there are fewer still who have the ability, for it is not a whit the less true now than it was in the day of the heathen poet: "Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas." The temperance movement is especially liable to this danger. To those who have embarked in it, and are borne along in its onward progress, the fascination of the work itself is so complete, the thick coming cases of human misery which the drink has wrought are so terrible in their aspect, the vantage-ground which the total abstinence basis gives in dealing with these so soon perceived, and the change which is wrought so blessed, when operating from this basis, the power of the Gospel has been brought to bear, and the evil spirit is ejected, and the heart and home of the drunkard have become the habitation of all good and holy influences, that the temptation is very strong to confine ourselves exclusively to that which lies immediately before us. But the temptat...