he did not become a total abstainer himself until the age of 38. While he was always against drunkenness it was an experience while over in Ireland that turned him away from drink altogether. While travelling with a ministerial friend in 1841 they stopped at a small county inn on a terrible cold night. Seeking some warmth and comfort they ordered some ‘toddies’ (whiskey and hot water). Out of kindness they called in their driver and offered him the same hospitality. Guthrie was stunned when this staunch, but uneducated and uncultured, Roman Catholic explained that he was a teetotaller and would not touch a drop of alcohol. From that day forward Guthrie resolved to abstain from alcohol and became one of the leaders of the temperance movement. The determination with which Guthrie pursued the temperance cause was all the more remarkable when we understand how unusual this position was in the first half of the 19th century. In his autobiography he reckons that when he was at Edinburgh University there was not a single student who was an abstainer. Perhaps even more remarkably Guthrie was unaware of any minister in the Church of Scotland who was a teetotaller. Undeterred by this, Guthrie established the Free Church Temperance Society along with Horatius Bonar and William Chalmers Burns. When the ‘Scottish Association for the Suppression of Drunkenness’ was formed in 1850 they turned to Guthrie to write their first booklet entitled ‘A Plea on behalf of Drunkards and against Drunkenness’. Other booklets followed and Guthrie was instrumental in bringing about the Licensing (Scotland) Act 1853 or the ‘Forbes Mackenzie Act’, as it is better known. This Act forced public houses to close at 10.00 pm on weekdays and all day on Sundays. Even today it is still illegal to buy alcohol after 10.00 pm in shops, although this is not so in Public Houses. Guthrie’s work on total abstinence reached its climax with preaching a series of sermons on Luke 19 v 41 and their publication under the title, 'The City, Its Sins and Sorrows’ in 1857. The stories of the impact that these sermons had around the world are many and varied but space allows us to mention only one of them. One of Guthrie’s later biographers, Oliphant Smeaton, recounts meeting a wealthy Scot while visiting Australia. This man, while resident in Scotland, had lived a dissolute lifestyle but one day