376 THE MORAL STATUS OF ALCOHOL. 



that it is the bounden moral duty of each individual man 

 and woman to feed the flame of life with aliment of the sort 

 best calculated to preserve existence at one even burning rate 

 of vitality. The furnace fires are to be ever banked (so to 

 speak), but never raked and ventilated. 



This seems to be their aspiration, their meaning the 

 culmination of their philosophy. ' Would the result be good 

 or evil T is a question we may each of us well demand ; and 

 for a satisfactory reply, we may profitably revert to the il- 

 lustrative parallelism of a banked fire smouldering under a 

 steam-engine boiler. Unquestionably, if such a fire be always 

 banked, the boiler will incur little risk of bursting ; but has a 

 steam-engine boiler not an active as well as a passive func- 

 tion ? Is it to be ever static, never dynamic ? Is it not sup- 

 posed to be endowed with a working as well as a waiting 

 function ? Are there not times and occasions when work has 

 to be done, that the furnace-fires have to be fed with fierce 

 fuel, raked and ventilated, caused to burn wildly? When 

 these times and occasions come about, does it avail to plead 

 the plea that such invigorated fires may generate steam so 

 fast that the engine bearings may suffer from friction, may 

 go out of gear more or less ; that the engine's term of dura- 

 tion will be sensibly abbreviated; that the boiler may even 

 blow up at once, the whole system collapsing, broken, ruined ? 

 Not one jot ; the work having to be done, the risk must be 

 incurred. 



Total -abstinence people may be regarded as so many 

 human engines, having fires perpetually banked under their 

 boilers ; smouldering, torpid, unenergetic fires, almost equally 

 void of power for evil or for good. 



The advocates of total alcoholic abstinence, as I know, are 

 prompt with a rejoinder. They will affirm that the banked 

 and smouldering fires are equal to the occasion. They will 

 point to some thrifty mechanic, who, having taken the pledge, 

 and forsworn alcohol many years ago, has never had a black 



