Temperance > Autobiography and personal recollections of John B. Gough

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AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN B. GOUGH.
our own for support; our very strength lies in our sense
of weakness; and this was to be demonstrated in my ex¬
perience.
I had known all the misery which intoxication produces,
and, remembering it, could fervently offer up a prayer
such as the following, which, although first breathed by
other lips than mine, aptly expressed my feelings:—
“Almighty God, if it be thy will that man should suffer,
whatever seemeth good in thy sight impose upon me. Let the
bread of affliction be given me to eat. Take from me the friends
of my confidence. Let the cold hut of poverty be my dwelling-
place, and the wasting hand of disease inflict its painful torments.
Let me sow in the whirlwind, and reap in the storm. Let those
have me in derision who are younger than I. Let the passing
away of my welfare be like the fleeting of a cloud, and the
shouts of my enemies like the rushing of waters. When I an¬
ticipate good, let evil annoy me. When I look for light, let
darkness come upon me. Let the terrors of death be ever before
me. Do all this, but save me, merciful God, save me from the
fate of a drunkard. Amen.”
I loved the temperance pledge. No one could value it
more than I; for, standing as I did, a redeemed man,
enabled to hold up my head in society, I owed everything
to it. Painful as I said this event of my life was in the
act, and humiliating in the contemplation, I proceed to
state every particular respecting it.
I was at this time delivering addresses in the towns of
Charlton and Dudley, Worcester county. Labouring so
indefatigably, and indeed unceasingly, almost immediately
after suddenly breaking off the use of a stimulus to which
I had been accustomed for years, I became very weak in
health; and, being of an extremely nervous temperament,
I suffered much more than I otherwise should have done.
I had an almost constant distress in my stomach, and