W. E. Channing.


XII.

INTEMPERANCE.

Among the evils of intemperance, much importance is given to the poverty of
which it is the cause. But this evil, great as it is, is yet light, in
comparison with the essential evil of intemperance. What matters it, that a
man be poor, if he carry into his poverty the spirit, energy, reason, and
virtues of a man? What matters it, that a man must, for a few years, live
on bread and water? How many of the richest are reduced, by disease, to a
worse condition than this? Honest, virtuous, noble-minded poverty, is
comparatively a light evil. The ancient philosopher chose it, as a
condition of virtue. It has been the lot of many a Christian.

The poverty of the intemperate man owes its great misery to its cause. He
who makes himself a beggar, by having made himself a brute, is miserable
indeed. He who has no solace, who has only agonizing recollections and
harrowing remorse, as he looks on his cold hearth, his scanty table, his
ragged children, has indeed to bear a crushing weight of woe. That he
suffers, is a light thing. That he has brought on himself this suffering by
the voluntary extinction of his reason, that is the terrible thought, the
intolerable curse.

Intemperance is to be pitied and abhorred for its own sake, much more than
for its outward consequences. These owe their chief bitterness to their
criminal source. We speak of the miseries which the drunkard carries to his
family. But take away his own brutality, and how lightened would be these