“He would have a very gross and imperfect conception of our character,” said Thorwald, “who should have the thoughts which you express. I can judge something of the nature of the feeling which you say exists on the earth, however, for only a few days ago I was reading a full account of the different temperance movements on our planet. Few subjects in our history are more interesting. Do not despise the temperance reformers, and if you think they are sometimes too radical you can afford to excuse that for the sake of the absolute good they accomplish. All through the early part of our career there was a perpetual warfare against the drinking habit. At first wine was an ordinary article of food, and in some countries more commonly used for drinking than water. There was much abuse of it, but in general people used it as a matter of course, without thinking they were any more responsible for the drunkards than they were for the intemperate in eating. But the evil of overdrinking increased, and some religious reformers found that the easiest way to check it was to forbid all use of intoxicants. Here is an extreme example that I have read of what one such reformer taught: ‘If a single drop of alcoholic liquor should fall into a well one hundred and fifty feet deep, and if the well should afterwards be filled up and grass grow over it, and a sheep should eat of the grass, then my followers must not partake of that mutton.’ Could any of your prohibitionists be more radical than that? “In later times many kinds of strong and poisonous drinks were made, and untold harm was done by their use. Drunkenness was the most fruitful source of crime and misery; it, more than any other cause, filled the jails, the almshouses and the insane asylums; it kept men in poverty and squalor; it scattered families and changed men, and sometimes women, too, into beasts. No class or profession was free from the evil, for it disqualified the scholar and statesman for their duties just as it unfitted the laborer for his daily task. It helped to debauch politics and public morals, while it brought disgrace and ruin to private reputation and character. More money was lost by it than was spent to educate and Christianize the world, and it cost more precious lives than war and pestilence combined. Being a crime utterly selfish and debasing, as well as extremely tenacious of its hold upon the individual life, it was almost the greatest enemy to the spread of the gospel.