Home Thoughts and Public Utterances, on Entertaining and Practical Subjects

Home Thoughts And Public Utterances, On Entertaining And Practical Subjects by William Baldwin Affleck. This 19th?century temperance and religious reform collection gathers lectures and essays delivered by a gospel minister to promote temperance, moral virtue, and practical Christianity. Contents include the provocative pieces “The House That Jack Built,” “The Life Battle,” “Lost For Want of a Word,” “Bible Teetotalism,” and longer sermons on Mammon Worship, the Blood?washed Multitude, and the Excellent Woman. Prefaced with a dedication to Charles Watson Esquire and a biographical note on Affleck’s own working?class origins, the book traces Affleck’s conversion from toil in the coal pits (ages nine to nineteen) to a life of temperance advocacy. It champions licensing reform, home and family virtue, Band of Hope work, and social reform, urging readers—especially youth and Sabbath schools—to cultivate character, charity, and public duty within a Christian framework.