Saved as by Fire!

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PUBLISHERS' PREFACE
In this work we have one of those intensely wrought temperance stories for which the author is so distinguished. In the conception and execution of this story, he has taken higher ground than usual, and lifted the subject of temperance into the region of spiritual laws and forces. Rarely has the insidious growth and overmastering power of appetite, or the desperate and prolonged struggle of an enslaved man for freedom, been more powerfully exhibited than in the hero of this story — a man of education, social standing, high honor and the tenderest home affections.

We follow him in his downward course, step by step, with an almost breathless interest and suspense — glad and hopeful for every new effort that he makes to overcome his pitiless enemy, and disappointed and sorrowful at each successive failure — until manhood is eclipsed, love extinguished, and honor a thing of the past; and as we turn away from him at the prison door — our hope is as dead as his own.

But the man is not lost. No; there is One who can save to the uttermost, all who come unto Him. And by Him this man is saved and made a power for good in the salvation of many who had once been in the same fearful bondage from which, in the name and by the power of God, he had been able to get free. Can anyone who reads what befell this man in the cell, where society had shut him away as a foul and guilty thing, caring little whether he lived or died, do so with dry eyes? We think not. It is something to stir the heart profoundly. In this story the author deals not alone with the curse of strong drink, but with the means of cure, and shows that even with the lowest and the vilest — reform is possible.

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