Soberness

“ I refer to the consciousness produced by intoxicants and anæsthetics, especially by alcohol. The sway of alcohol over mankind is unquestionably due to its power to stimulate the mystical faculties of human nature, usually crushed to earth by the cold facts and dry criticisms of the sober hour. Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes. It is in fact the great exciter of the Yes function in man. It brings its votary from the chill periphery of things to the radiant core. It makes him for the moment one with truth. ”

“ And, lastly, she promises to be a mild and agreeable guardian of life; as well of the rich as of the poor; of the male as of the female sex; the old as of the young; being that, which teaches the rich modesty; the poor frugality; men, continence; women, chastity; the old, how to ward off the attacks of death; and bestows on youth firmer and securer hopes of life. Sobriety renders the senses clear, the body light, the understanding lively, the soul brisk, the memory tenacious, our motions free, and all our actions regular and easy. ”

“ And as when a fever is passed by, the mischievous consequences of the fever remain, so also when drunkenness is passed, the disturbance of intoxication is whirling round both soul and body. And while the wretched body lies paralysed, like the hull of a vessel after a shipwreck, the soul yet more miserable than it, even when this is ended, stirs up the storm, and kindles desire; and when one seems to be sober, then most of all is he mad, imagining to himself wine and casks, cups and goblets. ”

“ I have tried to be a sober worker all my life—all my two lives. I did so from taste, no doubt, having an instinctive horror of losing my sense of full self-possession, but also from artistic conviction. Yet there are so many pitfalls on each side of the true path that, having gone some way, and feeling a little battered and weary, as a middle-aged traveller will from the mere daily difficulties of the march, I ask myself whether I have kept always, always faithful to that sobriety wherein there is power, and truth, and peace. ”

“ But let me tell you, there are companies of men of genius into which I sometimes go, where the atmosphere of intellect and sentiment is so much more stimulating than alcohol, that, if I thought fit to take wine, it would be to keep me sober.
Among the gentlemen that I have known, few, if any, were ruined by drinking. My few drunken acquaintances were generally ruined before they became drunkards. The habit of drinking is often a vice, no doubt, - sometimes a misfortune, - as when an almost irresistible hereditary propensity exists to indulge in it, - but oftenest of all a punishment. ”

“ Being drunk, he knows nothing; whilst the physician, although not drunk, knows well in what drunkenness consists, and what are its predisposing conditions. Similarly there is a difference between knowing the nature of abstinence, and being abstinent or having one's soul detached from the world.—Thus I had learned what words could teach of Sufism, but what was left could be learned neither by study nor through the ears, but solely by giving one's self up to ecstasy and leading a pious life. ”

“ What classes of individuals are admonished to be sober?
“That the aged men be sober, grave, temperate, sound in faith, in charity, in patience. The aged women likewise, that they be in behavior as becometh holiness, ... that they may teach the young women to be sober.... Young men likewise exhort to be sober-minded.” Verses 2-6.
Note.—These four classes include all. All should be sober. 6. What similar advice is given in the epistle to the Romans?
“Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying.” ”

“ The drunkard realizes in his sober moments what must be the end of a course of intemperance. Loss of self-respect and of the esteem of friends, the marks he soon begins to bear in his body—unsteady hands and discolored features—these things are the quick harvest of drunkenness, and may easily be detected as they ripen. The licentious man, also, reaps the early fruit of his sin in diseases of the body, which are often effective warnings against continuing in such a dangerous path. But with “respectable” sins it is different. A man may be sowing for years, and not even realize it himself. ”

“ In order, therefore, to put a stop to so great an evil, I have resolved by this short discourse to demonstrate, that intemperance is an abuse which may be easily removed, and that the good old sober living may be substituted in its stead; and this I undertake more readily, as many young men of the best understanding, knowing that it is a vice, have requested it of me, moved thereto by seeing their fathers drop off in the flower of their youth, and me so sound and hearty at the age of eighty-one. ”

“ But in truth they should be considered as the presentation of a certain phase of life which nations in their onward course sooner or later assume. To the individual, how well we know that a sober moderation of action, an appropriate gravity of demeanor, belonging to the mature period of life, change from the wanton willfulness of youth, which may be ushered in, or its beginnings marked by many accidental incidents; in one perhaps by domestic bereavements, in another by the loss of fortune, in a third by ill-health. ”

“ 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. ”

“ They represent him as an unhealthy-looking, bloated youth, bearing aloft the winegoblet, seated on a car drawn by wild beasts, while round about him frantic men and lewd women and monstrous satyrs wrestle and sing and caper in shameful abandon. Oh, those ancient poets well knew that sobriety is wisdom, and the companions of drunkenness, vice, and every kind of folly. ”

“ Let your dress be sober, clean, and modest; not to set out the beauty of your person, but to declare the sobriety of your mind, that your outward garb may resemble the plainness of your heart. For it is highly reasonable, that you should be one man, all of a piece, and appear outwardly such as you are inwardly.
As to your meat and drink, in them observe the highest rules of Christian temperance and sobriety: consider your body only as the servant of your soul ”

“ SOBRIETY. By sobriety I do not mean merely an absence of drinking to a state of intoxication; for, if that be hateful in a man, what must it be in a woman! There is a Latin proverb, which says, that wine, that is to say, intoxication, brings forth truth. Whatever it may do in this way, in men, in women it is sure, unless prevented by age or by salutary ugliness, to produce a moderate, and a very moderate, portion of chastity. ”

“ But he was sober now; as sober as a man can be who has drunk but a glass of ale since he left his bed, but whose flesh is soaked with the abomination of the taverns, and whose brain can never be steady for the fumes that rise incessantly into it. ”

“ As a rule they seem drunk with health, and with the surprise of it, the wonder of it, the unspeakable glory and splendor of it, after a long, sober spell spent in inventing imaginary diseases and concreting them with doctor-stuff. ”

“ It moderates according to reason; that is, it decides what is proper for an individual, not merely from the viewpoint of bodily health, vigor, and longevity, as is done by the arts of medicine and hygiene, but also and chiefly from the viewpoints of higher goods, such as mental power, control of passion, austerity.
(d) It moderates the pleasures of the table, that is, the desire for and actual enjoyment of food and non-intoxicating beverages. Moderation in intoxicants is the special virtue of sobriety, which will be discussed later. ”

“ The conflagration will put an end to it; and all things must be swallowed up in an endless eternity. The inference from this comprises a series of exhortations.
1. To sobriety and watchfulness: " Be you therefore sober, v. 7. Let the frame and temper of your minds be grave, stayed, and solid; and observe strict temperance and sobriety in the use of all worldly enjoyments. Do not suffer yourselves to be caught with your former sins and temptations, v. 3. An watch unto prayer. Take care that you be continually in a calm sober disposition, fit for prayer ”

“ Our moderation then, as to all temporal things, should be known to all men, because the Lord is at hand. Besides this, watchfulness and sobriety are most suitable to the Christian's character and privilege, as being children of the day; because those that sleep sleep in the night, and those that are drunken are drunken in the night, v. 7. It is a most reproachful thing for men to sleep away the day-time, which is for work and not for sleep, to be drunken in the day, when so many eyes are upon them, to behold their shame. ”

“ The more active the age the more prevalent was this evil, but the greater, also, was the determination to overthrow it. When the conscience was quickened by the growth of Christianity and men’s lives became more valued, many persistent efforts were made to stamp out the crime of intoxication.
“Numerous societies were organized and good men and women entered heartily into the work. Every argument was used to show the danger of the drink habit and to teach the beauty and value of sobriety, appeal being made both to the reason and the conscience. ”

“ Know, at least, that all of us—the highest and the wisest—who have, in sober truth, passed beyond the threshold, have had, as our first fearful task, to master and subdue its grisly and appalling guardian. Know that thou CANST deliver thyself from those livid eyes,—know that, while they haunt, they cannot harm, if thou resistest the thoughts to which they tempt, and the horror they engender. ”

“ The sober realities of life became tiresome and tasteless. Still panting after something unattainable, I became displeased with my situation in life, and neglected my education—not because I disliked it ”

“ The other preliminary and condition is 'being sober,' which of course you have to extend to its widest possible signification, implying not merely abstinence from, or moderate use of, intoxicants, or material good for the appetites, but also the withdrawing of one's self sometimes wholly from, and always restraining one's self in the use of, the present and the material. A man has only a given definite quantity of emotion and interest to expend, and if he flings it all away on the world he has none left for Heaven. ”

“ Abú Yazíd and his followers prefer intoxication to sobriety. They say that sobriety involves the fixity and equilibrium of human attributes, which are the greatest veil between God and Man, whereas intoxication involves the destruction of human attributes, like foresight and choice, and the annihilation of a man’s self-control in God, so that only those faculties survive in him that do not belong to the human genus ”

“ The clouds that gather round the setting sun do not always take a sober coloring from eyes that have kept watch on mortality; or, at least, the sobriety is sometimes scarcely sad. One walks with one’s friends squarely up to the portal of life, and bids good-bye with a smile. One has done it so often! Hay could scarcely pace the deck ”

“ In vain we plead drunkenness or the poison of wine, wineless drink upsets the dry and there is drunkenness this side of wine. Men have dreams and most are sleepwalkers, awake they snore, and with their eyes open do what in sobriety would be blind madness. ”

“ It is as leisurely as nature, as little helped by accident, as sober even as matter of fact, and yet what a potent, clear, all-realizing fancy—a faculty which in its limited sphere saw and felt and acted in completest appropriation of the circumstances—this sober imagination was! ”

“ When a certain point is reached in intoxication the will is weakened, the automatic machinery takes control, the judgment is dethroned, and images—some grotesque and others terrible—having the power of exciting the corresponding emotions, hurry through the mind until frenzy is reached, subsequent to which a heavy stupor ends the scene. When a drunken man becomes sober, his recollections of what he has done are as vague and uncertain as those of dreamers ”

“ Secondly, sobriety is more requisite in certain persons, as being more necessary for the operations proper to them. Now immoderate use of wine is a notable obstacle to the use of reason: wherefore sobriety is specially prescribed to the old, in whom reason should be vigorous in instructing others: to bishops and all ministers of the Church, who should fulfil their spiritual duties with a devout mind; and to kings, who should rule their subjects with wisdom. ”

“ They kept their mind in the dark, or at least in a constant confusion and tumult, lest, if they should admit a considerate sober thought, they should understand with their heart how much it is both their duty and their interest to be religious, and so by degrees the truth should be too hard for them, and they should be converted from the evil ways which they take pleasure in, to those exercises to which they have now an aversion. ”