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BOOK 178. 1.M72 c. 1
MODERATION VS TOTAL ABSTINENCE #
ODERATION VS TOTAL ABSTINENCE
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MODERATION
TOTAL ABSTINENCE
OR,
DR. CROSBY
EVIEWERS.
NEW YORK :
The National Temperance Society and Publication House,
58 Reade Street. 1881.
530
THE BIBLE WINE QUESTION.
The jSTational Temperance Society has published a variety of Books and Tracts upon ti Wine Question, by some of the ablest writers in the world. The investigation clearly sho\ the exlj^tcnce of two kinds of wine, the fermented and unfermeuted, and presents nuraeroi and convincinfr authorities.
TJie Divine I^aw as to Wines. 12rao, 326 pages- By Geo. W, Samson, D.D.,
former President of Columbian University, Washington, D. C 14)
Years of careful study have been given to its preparation, aided by personal ob- servation and extensive inquiry in Eastern lands. The whole question is treated from a stand-point and acquaintance with the subject which commands the attention of scholars, scientists, ministers, and all who are interested in a thorough investigation of this most important subject.
Oible ^ViiieN, or the liUAVS of Ferinentatioii, and Wines of tlie
Ancients. 12mo, 139 pages. By Rev. Wm. Patton, D.D. Paper, 25c. ; cloth,
It presents the whole matter of Bible Temperance, and the wines of ancient times,
in a new, clear, and f?atisfactory manner, developing tbe laws of fermeuiatiou, and
giving a large number of references and statistics "never before collected, showing
conclusively the existence of unfermented wme in the olden time.
Bible Rule of Temperance, 18mo, 206 pages. By Rev. Geo. Duflield, D.D. This is the ablest and most reliable work which has been issued on the subject. The immorality of the use, sale, and manufacture of intoxicating liquors as a bever- age is considered in the light of the Scriptures, and the will and law of God clearly presented.
Coiuinuniou Wine, or Bible Temperance. 133 pages. By Rev. Wm. M.
Thayer. Paper, 20c. ; cloth
An unanswerable argument against the use of intoxicating wine at Communion, and presenting the Bible argument for abstinence.
Scripture Testimony against Intoxicating W^iue. By Rev. Wm. M.
Ritchie, of Scotland. ISrao, 213 pages
An unanswerable refutation of the theory that the Scriptures favor the idea of the use of intoxicating wine as a beverage. It takes the different kinds of wines men- tioned in the Scriptures, investigates their specific nature, and shows wherein they differ.
Gospel Temperance. 12mo,114pp. ByRev. J. M. VanBuren. Paper, 25c.; cloth. This work is intended to supply the felt necessity for an authoritative law on the subject of Temperance. It gives a clear explanation of that law, with its applications, and the duties it imposes.
Tlte Cliurcli and Temperance. By John W. Mears, D.D
Tlie Moral Duty of Total Abstinence. By Rev. T. L. Cuyler, D.D
Tlie Wines of tUe Bible. By Eev. C. H. Fowler, D.D
Four-Page Tracts. $3.00 per Thousand.
Timotliy a Teetotaler. Uomestlc Wine.
Tlie ^ ine-Cup and tlie Gallows. Ctuestions with Bible Answers. Wiiere did Timothy get liis Wine ? Siiall We Drink ^Vine? Sliali We use Wine and Beer? A Word to Scriptural W^ine Drinkers.
Wine and Expediency.
Win e- Drinking— the BeginnI
and tlie £ndlng. Timothy Titcomb's Testimon
against Wine. Wine- Drinking in France. Tlie Sabbath and Temperance. The Cliurch and Temperance. The Miracle at Cana.
Eight-Page Tracts. $6.00 per Thousand.
Bible ^Vines. I Does the Bible Sanction the use <
Does the Bible Favor Moderate W^ine at the Iiord's Supper ?
Drinking? I Bible Opposed to W^iue- Drinking
NATIVE WIXES. Twelve Pages. $9.00 per Thousand.
Address J. N. STEARNS, Publishing; Agent,
58 JReade Street, New Tor)
?s. Tola
V\C.3
OR,
DR. CROSBY AND HIS REVIEWERS.
NEW YORK:
The National Temperance Society and Publication House,
58 Reade Street.
1881.
Copyright, 1881,
BY
J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent.
H. J. Hewitt, Printer, Ti Rose Street, New York.
CONTENTS.
A Calm View of the Temperance Question,
By Chancellor Crosby, 5
A Review of Dr. Crosby, . By Rev. Dr. Mark Ilo^^Uns, '25
A Reply to Dr. Crosby's '* Calm View of Temperance,"
By Wendell PhilUp.% 89
A Reply to Dr. Crosby's " Calm View of Temperance,"
By Mrs. J. E. Foster, 59
Joseph Cook's Pulpit and Temperance,
By Theodore L. Cwjler, D.D.. S9
Relations of Distilled and Fermented Liquors,
By Ezra M. Hunt, DI)., 94
An Open Letter, . . . By Rev. Dr. A. J. Gordon, 98
The "Calm View"— Comments of the Press, . . .100
The Voice of Science, . ....... 114
The Voice of Scripture, 119
A CALM YIEW
OF THE
TEMPERANCE ODESTION.
By chancellor CROSBY, or New York.
An Address delivered in Treino?it Temple^ Jan. lo, 1881, in the Boston Monday Lecture Course.
I^HE object of temperance societies is to prevent drunk- enness. The cardinal principle in tbese societies is total abstinence from all tbat can intoxicate. That total abstinence, if adopted by all, will prevent drunken- ness no one will dispute. The object of temperance socie- ties would be gained.
But two questions arise after contemplating tbese propo- sitions : first, will tbis plan of total abstinence be adopted ? and, secondly, ougbt it to be adopted? The first question is prudential, the second is moral.
THE prude:ntial qtjestio:n-. 1. Will tbe plan of total abstinence from all that in- toxicates be received by men in general? We desire to use in all measures of reform a plan that is practica- ble. We cannot be satisfied with mere testimony to a theory that will be unproductive of results. Herein re- form differs from religion. Religion demands adhesion to a truth stamped by the conscience, even though that truth find no other adherent. But reform lies in the domain of the expedient. It seeks to make society better, and if it cannot raise society to the highest level it will raise it as high as it can. It will not prefer to let society wallow be-
5
6 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
cause it cannot place it in an ideal Utopia. The most reli- gious and conscientious man will be glad to see men leave off strife and discord, even if they do not act from the high- est motives or attain to the heights of a genuine charity. His conscience will not be injured by their improved condi- tion, however much he would like to see them still more enlightened. It is an important point to make clear to the mind this distinction between the conduct of reform and the movement of personal religion, for confusion here has led to much false action. A common argument of the radical agi- tator is that his conscience cannot stop short of total absti- nence in the temperance question, and on that ground he will not have any afifiliation with one who seeks to subdue the intemperance of the land by any other method. But his argument is a complete non sequitur. His conscience con- cerns his own personal habits. In the matter of other peo- ple's habits he is simply to do the best the circumstances allow. The conscience that prescribes his personal habits may make him long to see others like him, and may make him work to that end, but it cannot rebuke him if that end is not attained, but only an approximation is gained ; nay, it should make him work for the approximation with all zeal.
Too often that which is called conscience is mere obsti- nacy of opinion and personal pride. A large part of the fanaticism that history records has been made in this way. Men have gone to the stake as martyrs, or sufferers for con- science' sake, when the heresy they professed never went deeper than their sentiment, and might readily have been altered by a free judgment. While this fact does not justffy their persecutors or palliate their guilt, yet it certainly de- tracts from the merit of the martyrdom. In this matter of arresting the progress of drunkenness we may have very different views of the means to be used, and we may consci- entiously adhere to our own plan of working toward the end, but we cannot conscientious! i/ object to the means em- ployed by others unless they contain an immorahty. Nay, more, we must conscientiously wish them success.
If this principle of sympathy and co-operation on the part of all who seek the abatement of intemperance were once
A Calm View of the TcmiJcrance Question. 7
established, -ue should see effects that are now thwarted by the divisions and mutual hostility of those who profess to have the same end in view. One ol the reasons for this con- firmed hostility of the total- abstinence advocates against Lbe reformers who do not adopt that principle is found in Lbe power of a false usage. I refer to the word ^' tem- perance."
MEA:jfIXG OF THE WORD " TEMPERAXCE."
The word has been violently wrested from its legitimate meaning. By a persistent use of a moderate word for radi- cal measures the great unthinking public, so far as they are seekers tor the common good, have been led to see in these radical measures the only path of duty. They have learned to consider all that was opposed to the party called by the name of temperance as inimical to temperance, and so have enormously swelled the radical ranks by their unenlightened adhesion. The label has been afiQxed to the wrong goods, and the unsuspecting purchaser has not noticed the fact. So potent has been this deception that I undertake to say that there are thousands of worthy citizens who have no other idea of the word ' ' temperance " than that it means the total abstinence from all that can intoxicate. With such we have to begin with first principles. We have to show- them that tbe Latin temperantia signifies the moral quality of moderation or discreetness, and that the English word *' temperance," as used in all good standard English works, means precisely the same thing. We have to show them that the temperate zone does not mean a zone which totally abstains from cold or heat, but a zone that is moderate in both; that a temperate behavior is not a behavior that totally abstains from severity, but one that is steady and reasonable in its course; as Cicero says (" Fam.," 12, 27): ^'Est autem ita temperatis moderatisque moribus ut summa severitas samma cum humanitate juugatur."' And while quoting Cicero I may quote his definitions of temperance as given in his '^ De Ftnibus "—first, '^ Temperantia est modera- tio cupiditatum, rationi obediens" (2, 19, 60) ; and, secondly, '* Temperantia est quae, in rebus aut expetendis aut fugien-
8 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence.
dis, rationem ut sequamur monet" (1, 14, 47). Now, what a fearful prostitution of a Doble word is seen in the popular use of the word '' temperance" to-day ! And this prostitu- tion is a work wrought within the last fifty years. From its high position as signifying a grand moral subjection of the whole man to the sway of reason it is degraded to the maimed and mutilated function of representing a legalism that pro- hibits man from any drink that can intoxicate. To what base uses has it come at last ! This false use of a word has had special influence upon that portion of the unthinking public who rightly reverence the Scriptures. They see that temperance is put in the list of Christian virtues ; and as temperance now means total abstinence, what can they do, as loyal believers in the Scriptures, but sign the pledge, and, furtheiTuore, count all who do not as aliens from God's truth ? They are as honest and as enlightened as the good Presbyterian woman who only needed to see the words ^'general assembly" in the Bible to know she was right and everybody else wrong.
Now, the use of a false argument always reacts against the user, and, while the ignorant and semi-ignorant multi- tude will be deceived, the thinking classes (;f society will shun a cause that rests on misrepresentation. The word '^temperance," as seized and appropriated by radical and intemperate souls, is a false flag, and, as a false flag, will disgust and alienate true and enlightened souls. Especially will this be the case when it is found to be only one of many false lights held out to attract the masses. Another ot these deceptions (of course I do not say these are wilful deceptions by all that use them ; I am only speaking of their absolute character)— another of these deceptions is the circulated theory of an unfermented, unintoxicatmg wine. There is not a chemist nor a classical scholar in the world who would dare risk his reputation on the assertion that there was ever an unfermented wine in common use, knowing well that 7mist preserved from fermentation is called wine only by a kind of courtesy (as the lump of unbaked dough might be called ^^ bread "), and that this could in the nature of things never be a common drink. Cato ('' DeRe Rustica," 120) shows
A Calm View of the Tempercmce Qiiestion. 0
how by a very careful method malt could be kept for a whole year, and other Roman writers show the same j but who can pretend that these writers ever looked upon such preserved juice as wine, when their whole object is to show how it can be kept from becoming wine? Yet, with no other foundation than this, the leaders of the total-abstinence cause have pub- lished their bull affiiming that the good wines of antiquity were uufermented, in utter defiance of chemistry, history, and common sense. Because the grape-juice could, by means of hermetically-sealed vessels under water, be kept grape- juice, therefore the common wines of antiquity, the wine of which writers speak when they use no qualilying phrase, must have been unfermented. This is the logic used by these infatuated defenders of the total abstinence principle.
DISTORTIOI^^ or SCRIPTUEE.
A third deception in this cause is the twisting of Scrip- ture to its advocacy. No unbiassed reader can for a moment doubt that wine, as referred to in the Bible passim^ is an in- toxicating drink, and that such wine was drunk by our Sa- viour and the early Christians. To meet this fatal blow to the total- abstinence system in the minds of those who take the Bible as their guide, the advocates of the cause have in- vented a theory that is magnificent in its daring. It is no less than the division of the word '^wine'' by a Solomo- nian sword, so that the good and the bad shall each have .a piece of it. Whenever wine is spoken of severely in Scrip- ture, then it is fermented wine ; and whenever it is spoken of in praise, or used by our Lord and his apostles, then it is unfermented wine. And if you ask these sages why they so divide wine — on what grounds they base this theory — they bravely answer that our Saviour could not have drunk in- toxicating wine, and God's word never could have praised such, and, therefore, their theory. They start with the beg- ging of the whole question, and then on this thin air they build their castle.
It is not now my purpose to argue with these strange logi- cians. I only wish to put this Scripture-twisting in the list of deceptive methods used by the representative total-absti-
10 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
nence reformers to promote their cause. I could add, in this item, the false use of texts and the suppression of parts of texts, but I leave the matter here.
The three elements of deception entering into their cause is, as we have seen, the use of tbe word temperance for a totally differeut thing, the fable about unfermented wine, and the violent wresting of the Scriptures. Now, I unhesi tatingly affirm that a cause having such falsehoods as its main support can never be accepted by the public. Simple- minded people may be gained to it, but the thinking people will be repelled. It is true that some may adhere to it, in spite of its falsehood, for other reasons ; but the three great untruths that are flaunted on its banners will disgust most men who have brains and use them.
A second reason why I believe the plan of total abstinence will not be adopted by the people is its immanliness. To stop the use of anything because of its abuse is an expedi- ent for the weak and diseased, an exceptional plan for excep- tional cases ; but to assert this principle among men in gene- ral would be to degrade the race and remove all tbe incen- tives and helps to moral gTowth. We know in the family how mistaken a method it is to remove everything the child should not play with out of its reach. Tbe wise parent leaves the article in its accustomed place, and teaches the child its rightful use.
SELF-COXTEOL.
The other plan only makes the child more and more de- pendent on external checks, and prevents the growth of self-control. The same reasoning holds good in the human family at large. We are to develop self-control as much as possible. A true civilization always seeks to do this. A barbarous state of society requires man to hide everything valuable in places unknown to others, and to go personally armed to secure himself against attack. But a civilized condition reveals a very diflerent state of things. Men live in houses full of valuables, and walk the streets unarmed and in security. Dependence is placed upon the common self-control, and it is acknowledged to be a far higher and
A Calm Vieiv of the Temperance Question. 11
more successful principle for the conduct of human life. Of course there is a limit to this practical trusting of mankind, and much wisdom is needed to mark this limit correctly in any given instance. But the general truth is evident that true civilization is in the direction of personal self-control, and not in that of governmental prohibition. Weexpectlaw to proJiihit crime, but we look to law only to regulate matters that do not involve crime, but contain risk under certain conditions. Now, the selling or drinking of wine is certainly not a crime, and any legislation which prohibits it is open to the charge of putting it in a wrong category and abusing the popular conscience. A prohibition for certain times or places may be defended without subjecting the act to this false imputation ; but a total prohibition, the cardinal doc- trine of the total-abstinence people, at once brands wine- drinking with theft and Violence. Things that are not vicious in themselves, but which may be readily abused to vicious ends, certainly need legislative regulation, and such regulation is a help to self-control, where prohibition would be a hindrance. Regulation is a hint to put the people on their guard, but prohibitioa is completely taking away the subject from the people's notice. Now, the public mind re- volts at being treated in this childlike way. It virtually says : '' Give us certain wise rules about this thing, but for the sake of respectable and dignified humanity do not sweep it away from the earth." Eemember that we are not argu- ing now on the merits of the total-abstinence theory, but only on its feasibility. We do not say that it is a wrong principle. We only say that people will not adopt it, and we are showing the reasons why they will not. The community will not unrea- sonably (as they think) be put into leading-strings and kept in a permanent nursery — and that, too, by men who use manifest falsehoods as prominent arguments for their position. There is such a thing as the pubhc conscience, and people will draw lines of distinction between things criminal and things indifferent. They will naturally, therefore, resist any move- ment that tends to obliterate these distinctions, and judge of it as the action of a tyrannic opinion, and not of an ethi- cal truth. They feel that their manhood is assailed, and if
12 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence.
this assault is allowed in this form they may be exposed to other assaults iu still more odious forms. Of course it is eapy for the radical reformers to say that this opposition is interested, and is only the struggle of evil agamst those that woiil I fetter it ; but there are too many good, conscientious, and thoughtful men who feel all this that I have said for this allegation to be maintained. We cannot consent to go back to mediaeval nonage, and have our day's allowance doled out to us by a few who arrogate to themselves the paternal management of the world. We cannot permit the system of sumptuary laws to take the place of an enhghtened com- mon sense. We cannot forego our reason on the plea that the world is in danger. Nay, we must all the more assert our reason against a false expediency that in curing, or at- tempting to cure, one evil would create a hundred. Tbe fact that there is a great danger is the very fact that should guard us from pursuing any false way. Great dangers must be met by great prudence, not by headlong impulse. It looks brave to shout and fall pell-mell upon the enemy; but it is wiser to set our batteries in sure places, and to order line and reserves in the interests of a permanent victory. Too many of our reforms are pushed without regard to the character of the means, the end being insisted on as justify- ing all means. The temperance reform has been an eminent example of this heedlessness.
THE SPIRIT or rN' TIMID ATION.
•
And here I put the third reason why I believe the plan of total abstinence will not be adopted by the people — because of its spirit oi intimidation. Of course this is not inherent to the cause, but it has been the invariable accompaniment of it during its forty years' curriculum. And we now have to deal practically with historic facts, and not with mere ab- stract theories. Whatever may have been the cause, whe- ther it be the weakness of the case or the unfortunate choice of leaders and defenders, the total-abstinence propaganda has been an overbearing and tyrannical power. It has used a violence of language that can admit of no excuse. It has condemned every one, however faithful in all moral and re-
A Calm Vieiu of the Temperance Question. 13
ligious duties, who has refused to enter its ranks. It has confounded all ideas of right and \Yroug, ealumniously de- claring the man who drinks wine moderately is as bad as, nay, worse than, the drunkard; asserting that all drinks, whether vinous, malt, or distilled, are alike poisonous; vili- fying those who teach any other doctrine by calling them traitors to the truth — Judas Iscariots betraying the Master —and exercising where it could a fearful proscription in driving good men from the pul[)its of the land because they would not and could not conscientiously pronounce their shibboleth. The principal printed organs cf this propaganda have been full of these fierce onslaughts upon the character of respectable men, and the harsh and cruel judgments spoken of have been carried out with the spirit of the Inqui- sition. The political world has lately invented a word for this way of settling a disputed question. They have called it " bulldozing." It makes peace by creating a desert. It produces unanimity by shutting the mouths of the other side. The world is apt to think that such conduct indicates a cause that cannot be sustained by reason, and the reaction is likely to be excessive. It is exactly that reaction which is now making the cause of rum and ruin more successful than ever. Men, in their revolt from tyranny, rush into licentious extremes ; and however honest the tyranny may have been, or however true the cause it supported, it has only itself to blame for the harm it does. A man may put bis hand on the safety-valve and exclaim : ^' See how I have stopped the noisy escape of the steam," and certainly every- thing looks calm and peaceful ; but a few minutes afterward, when the steam has had time to gather its strength, our hero will have a difi^erent cry. A little success here and there by the total-abstinence crusade may impress many with the idea that this is the true way to make men tempe- rate. A partial success in Maine has been proclaimed as proving the question against the painful failures everywhere else, but no careful observer will either approve the speci- men or take it as a proof against our general position. Maine is but a small part of our country, and has no great seething population made up from every nation on earth.
14 Moderation vs. Tatal Ahstine^ice.
It has a highly-educated people, who can bear an experi- ment in morals with something of a philosophic spirit. A few strong-minded and high-minded people can become as- ceticS; but the great world cannot, and we must legislate for the great world. Even Maine cannot permanently keep its Maine Law.
There is a general notion in the public mind that the pre- sent condition of Maine in regard to the liquor question is that of a temporary repression ; and whether that notion be right or WTong, it belongs to that public opinion which has to be regarded in all prudential planning. The general thought of the community concerning this repression is that it belongs to a system of intimidation that can never be a permanent institution in this land.
I have thus far considered only the prudential question. The total- abstinence scheme may be in strict accordance with- theoretical virtue. It may be the grand end to which all re- forming processes should tend. All we have endeavored thus far to establish is that it is a plan that cannot succeed^ if we are to judge it by its past history and methods, as well as by its intrinsic principles, and that therefore to push the plan is to defeat the great end we should all have in view — the cessation of drunkenness with its fearful ruin to body, soul, and society. We have endeavored to show that the public mind will not receive a system whose principal agen- cies have been falsehoods and intimidation, and whose prin- ciples they consider to be at war with a proper manliness or self-respect. We repeat (that no one may mistake us; that these falsehoods and intimidations are not necessary parts of the system, but have been its constant adjuncts in point of fact; and we also repeat that our argument regarding man- liness is not (so far as we have gone) so much a charge against the system as a statement of what a very large por- tion of respectable and virtuous thinkers think of it. It is from such considerations, we hold, that the plan of total- abstinence as a method of eradicating drunkenness and its at- tendant vices will never be adopted by the community. One other thing I desire to repeat before taking up the other branch of my subject, and that is that 1 make no charge of
A Calm View of the Temperance Question. 15
purposed falsehood on any of the total-abstinence leaders. Their main arguments are falsehoods, as I have shown, but I am quite sure that the excellent men who are often found leading the crusade are honest in their use of these false statements. They take up these weapons without suffi- ciently examining them. They see that they can be made effective, but do not stop to enquire whether they are legiti- mate. Their praiseworthy zeal outstrips their judgment and prudence. I honor the heart and energy of very many of these men. They show a philanthropy and consecration, involving often self-denial and loss, which demand our ad- miration. They are, indeed, too often mixed up with low, hypocritical self-seekers who make the temperance cause a mere lever to raise money, but that does not detract from the sterhng devotion of these noble souls. And while I differ from them altogether in my views, and am thoroughly convinced they are doing unmeasured harm to the com- munity by retarding practical reform and disseminating pernicious principles, at the same time I would not refrain from J ielding this honest and hearty tribute to their inten- tions, and disclaim any personal reproach while criticising the system they advocate.
THE MOEAL PHASE OF THE QUESTION.
2. The prudential question being thus treated, I turn to the moral question before us : " Ought the plan of total ab- stinence to be adopted ? " Is it a healthful and legitimate method of doing away with drunkenness ? A man stands at a great disadvantage who argues in behalf of his belief that the total-abstinence system is immoral, because he at once ex[)Oses himself to the assaults of slanderers who impugn his motives and deny his honesty. Radicalism has so ruth- lessly mobbed down independent thought by its intimidating processes that editors who have no faith in the total-absti- nence system still uphold it in their columns, and ministers deem it prudent to say nothing against a cause so popular in religious circles. Men are loath to come forward and be bespattered with mud thrown in the name of truth and god- liness. They are loath to lose the support and good- will of
16 3fodercdion vs. Total Abstinence.
the many whose fanaticism despises argument and brooks no opposition. Hence, if any one is constrained to speak, he is tempted to come forward as a humble apologist and modestly plead his cause with many concessions and compromises. Surely this is not for the advantage of the truth.
In this address I take no apologetic position. I carry the war into Africa. I have no contest with men, but with false principles. I assert that the total-abstinence system is false in its philosophy, contrary to revealed religion, and harmful to the interests of our country. I charge upon this system the growth of drunkenness in our land and a general demoralization among religious communities. And I call upon sound-minded, thinking men to stop the enormities of this false system by uniting iu reasonable and wholesome measures for the suppression of drunkenness, for the lack of which this false system has all its present success. Between fanaticism on the one hand and licentiousness on the other there ought to be a large mass of solid folk, whose union and efficiency would moderate and reduce, if not destroy, both extremes.
1. The first moral error of the total-abstinence system is in tuinirg a medicinal prescription into a bill of fare for all mankind. That a drunkard should carefully avoid every form of alcoholic drink nobody can deny. He is a dis- eased man, and his restoration depends on this restric- tion. Now, by what logic does this man's duty become mine? Because I have admitted total abstinence as a correct princi- ple in his case, am 1 bound to admit it as a correct principle for all f Are the sick to be the norm of the well? Is the mat ter of diet to be regulated by the needs of the drunkard ? Why nor, then, by the needs of the dyspeptic ? Ah ! but (say they) it is to save you from becoming a drunkard. Well, is the logic any way improved by this explanation ? You would put me on a sick-regimen to keep me from becoming sick ! Because total abstinence is absolutely necessary to a drunk- ard's recovery, you would make it necessary to one who is not a drunkard. Do you not see that, if you are going to prove your latter proposition, you must have another premise
A Calm Vieio of the Temperance Question. IT
than jour former one ? The two are wholly uncounected. It is an oflence to the moral sense of the community to spread over it the restriction of the drunkard, as it would be to im- prison all the community with the imprisonment of the thief, lest by liberty they should all fall to thieving.
DOES MODERATE DRIXKIJ^G LEAD TO DRUXKE:N'NESS?
2. A second moral error of the total-abstinence theory is its assumption that moderate drinking leads to drunkenness. The millions upon millions of our race who have been accus- tomed to drink wine, and who never knew drunkenness, stand up against this atrocious dogma. And yet this dogma has actually become an axiom with the total-abstinence re- formers, and they would disdain to argue it. They are so determined to have it true that they have performed the paradoxical operation of putting the moderate drinker in the place of the drunkard as the criminal to be punished with scorn and contumely. This strange mixing of things reminds me of the calhng good evil and evil good which a high au- thority makes a mark of very deep depravity. You will find that the principal shafts of the total -abstinence literature are directed not at the drunkard, but at the moderate drinker. The drunkard is pitied and coddled, while the moderate drinker is scourged. Now, this sort of moral jug- glery is not beneficial to the community. It distorts and perverts judgment, and involves moral distinciious in cha- otic confusion. It overthrows the ordinary reason that is so useful in all the relations of life, and leads men to clannish obedience to some ruling mind. It is the old trick of the Jesuits, to weary the mind in mazes, so that it may in sheer fatigue seek to be guided by them.
3. A third moral error of the total-abstinence theory is its want of discrimination between things that differ. Every- thing that has alcohol in it must be tabooed. As if all the drinks that had alcohol in them were of the same efiect when drunk ! Brandy and hock-wine and lager-beer are all alike the devil's poison, and must be banished from the lips of all true men. This assault upon common knowledge is a blun- der that has the proportions of a crime. To say that cer-
18 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
tain drinks that are wholesome and beneficial are the same as ' certain drinks that are pernicious and destructive is a moral outrage which the whole community should indig- nantly repel. Beers and unbrandied wines are promoters of health and strength when used judiciously, especially by those who have not robust health. They are tonic, anti- scorbutic, and gently stimulating to the digestion. As Dr» Parkes, who is a strong opposer of the use of distilled liquors, says : "■ For the large class of people who live on the confines of health, whose digestion is feeble, circulation languid, and nervous system too excitable," mild wines and malt liquors are beneficial. The fact is that (as another writer well says) outside of the sick-room the distilled liquors are compara- tively noxious, the fermented comparatively harmless. What we desire to emphasize is that the two classes of drinks are altogether different in their character and effect, and that a theory which destroys that difference has therein a moral stain.
4. A fourth moral error of the total-abstinence system is its assertion that all drinks that contain alcohol are poison ; that the presence of alcohol thus justifies the confounding of different sorts of drinks just referred to. Dr. Anstie has clearly shown that alcohol in small quantities is not a poison but a true food, and that it is a stimulant to the system in precisely the same sense as that in which food is a stimulant. He has shown that there is an essential difference between the effects of large and small quantities of alcohol — a difference of liind and not of degree. The effect of the small quantity, he says, is often beneficial ; the effect of the large or narcotic quantity is injurious. Dr. Binz defines/oorZ as both building up the tissues and supplying the warmth and vital force ne- cessary for the body's functions, and he shows that, while small quantities of alcohol have not the former quality, they have the latter ; and he further shows that alcohol in mode- rate quantities is entirely assimilated in the human system. In the light wines and beers, where alcohol forms only from three to ten per cent, of its liquid, we have the alcohol in the form best adapted for this beneficial effect, while in brandies, rums, gins, whiskeys, and all distilled liquors the alcohol is
A Calm View of the Temperance Q^iestlon. 19
in dangerous proportions for a beverage. To say that every- thing containing alcohol is a poison is, therefore, a false assertion, as false as to say that fruit is poisonous because prussic acid, which is a deadly poison, is found in it. Nature has in her alembic turned a powerful and dangerous element into a beneficial minister to human wants, and all nations have recognized this vital difierence between a moderate and an excessive use of stimulants, and have testified to the wisdom of using nature's provision without abusing it.
THE PLEDGE AS A STRAIT-JACKET.
5. A fifth moral error of the total-abstinence system is its dependence upon a contract rather than on a moral sense- Instead of regulating a man from within, it would ap.'ly a strait-jacket. Instead of allowing a free play of the man's individuality, and then endeavoring to instruct and educate the man's reason, it would in a moment of the man's emer- gency tie up his conscience with a pledge, which, when the emergency is past, he will bear irksomely and endeavor to nullify or evade. This is a most pernicious instrument for debauching the conscience. In the first place, it manufac- tures a new sin, always a dangerous experiment, bringing about a reaction which sweeps the soul into real sin from its experience in committing the constructed sin ; and, secondly, it gives a ready excuse to the conscience against any tnoral argument for temperance by covering it with a suspicion of conventionality. The pledge is always an injury and never a help to a true morality. It is a substitute for principle.' It is a sign, not of weakness (for we are all of us weak enough), but of readiness to reform. The true reform would demand a change of the underlying principles of life. That the pledge-taker refuses to make. Instead of that he reforms the surface. Instead of turning the stream into a new channel, he contents himself with throwing up earthen dikes to prevent an overflow. You can get thousands to sign the pledge where you can get one to reform. Of course the pledge is not kept, except in the cases where it was not needed, where the reform took the place of the pledge, where the man would have reformed without any pledge. Surely
20 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence.
such a wholesale defiling of promises is a profane dealing with sacred things, and marks a very corrupt system. Man's moral nature is not to be curbed by pledges. His outward conduct may be restrained by imposed law, but so far forth as tbat conduct has amoral element in it, no action of the man himself can affect it except a moral reformation. Gov- €rument, by its threatened punishment, may stop a man's drinking so long as he thinks himself in danger of punish- ment, but a pledge that has no punishment for its breaking will command no obedience while the moral convictions re- main unchanged. It is only an invitation to further sin.
6. The sixth and last moral error of the total-abstinence system to which I shall refer is one which I bring forward not as a philosopher nor a moralist, but as a Christian who believes in the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures. This error I have already adverted to in my prudential argument, and, therefore, need not enlarge upon here. It is impossible to condemn all drinking of wine as either sinful or improper without bringing reproach upon the Lord Jesus Christ and his apostles. There has been an immense amount of wrig- gling by Christian writers on this subject to get away fi'om this alternative, but there it stands impregnable. Jesus did use wine. I will not waste my time in proving this proposi- tion, and answering those wild basM-bazouks of controversy who assert, with childlike confidence and simplicity, that the Bible wines were unfermented grape-juice. Their learned ignorance is fairly splendid with boldness. They disarm criticism by their overwhelming dash. Such little questions as why the epithet ivine-bibber should have been opprobrious ? why deacons should not be given to much wine ? why the Corinthian communicants should become drunken f why the apostles at Pentecost should have been accused of wine- drinking as the cause of their strange utterances ? — ail such trifling questions they utterly disdain to notice in the magni- :ficent sweep of their assertion. It is a small thing, too, with them that the apostles never hint at two kinds of wine, a good, unfermented wine, and a bad, fermented one, when it would have been so easy and natural for our Lord or for Paul to say, " Drink only the unfermented wine." Instead of
A Calm View of the Temperance Question. 21
that they lead us into great danger by their unguarded re- marks about wine, as if there were but one sort; nay, worse than that, Paul even tells the deacons not to drink too much wine. Did Paul mean the fermented wine? Then he al- lowed the deacons to use it as a beverage. Did he mean unfermented wine ? Then why did he limit the amount ? This dilemma and ail the other arguments from the Scrip- tures are as mere cobwebs to the lances of these vahant knights, who are too free and fiery to be checked by reason or overcome by syllogism. To a foot-pilgrim like myself, however, these Scriptures are convincing and end the con- troversy, and, therefore, I have to charge the total-absti- nence propaganda with wresting the Scriptures and de- spising their authority.
THE BIBLICAL AKGUMENT ANALYZED.
I know that there is a wing of their army which acknow- ledges all that I have said of Scripture record, and which holds that times are so changed that the Scripture examples and precepts are now obsolete, that they were made for an Oriental people eighteen centuries ago, and are wholly inap- plicable in the great Occident in this nineteenth century. But this wing of the host is a very weak wing, and is often very thoroughly snubbed by the loud leaders, who count their p )sition a giving-up of the contest, as indeed it is. For who will beheve that Christ and his apostles, on great moral questions and matters of moral conduct, gave example and precept that would not last ? The argument runs this way : Christ and his apostles said that we may drink wine, but that was a local and temporary matter; now, under new circumstances, we must not. Christ and his apostles said that Christians must not be mixed with the ungodly world, hut that was local and temporary, when idolatry was rife; now, under new circumstances. Christians and the ungodly world may so intermingle that you can't tell one from the other. The apostle of Christ said that women must keep silence in the churches, but that was local and temporary, when wo- men were not much more than slaves; now, under new cir- cumstances, women may mount platform and pulpit as ex-
22 3Ioderation vs. Total Abstinence.
borters and preachers, for verily, uuder the Gospel, there is no difference between male and female ! I said, who will believe all this? Alas! there are many who do. And I charge them with undermining the authority of the Word of Ood. If moral questions that are not in the Scripture are to Idc thus treated, who is to draw the line where you are to stop ? Why may not the Christian merchant say of the New Testament command, " Lienot one to another : This is local and temporary, when trade was sluggish and men's minds Tvere dull ? Now, under new circumstances, when emulation needs every help and Wall Street sharpens men's wits, you must lie or go under. This departure from the Bible senti- ment and example on moral conduct in us who believe in the Bible is a very dangerous thing. Of course, for the Bud- dhists who have lately become fashionable in our country it is of no consequence. And to them this division of my ar- gument is not addressed.
I have now endeavored, in a very brief way, to point out the reasons why the total-abstinence system as a cure for in- temperance will not and ought not to be adopted. Of course I am therefore bound to propose a system that ought to be adopted. I do not dodge the issue. No man is more keenly alive to the frightful ravages of drunkenness than I am, and it is because the prevailing system of a total-abstinence cru- sade is hindering the cure of the evil by keeping just methods from the field and by disgusting men's minds with the very name of temperance, so cruelly bemired, that I denounce it, and ask good men to rally around a truer and purer stand- ard.
EXCESS AXD MODEEATIOX.
The right system must be one that recognizes practically the difference between excess and moderation, and the diffe- rence between injurious and harmless drinks, and will thus appeal to the common sense of reasonable and thinking men. It must be a system that deals honestly with history, science, and Scripture, and does not invent theories and then support them by garbled quotations and imaginary facts. It must be a manly system, that has no cant or foolery of
A Calm View of the Tern iier mice Question. 23
orders and ribbon3 degrading a matter of high principle to the hocus-pocus of a child's play. Such a system would be found in the exclusion of distilled liquor from common use as a beverage both by public opinion and by law, and the wise regulation in society and in the state of the use of vinous and malt liquors. Society should put away all the drinking usages that lead to excess, such as furnishing many wines at an entertainment, or *' treating" others, or putting brandied wines upon the table ; and the state should limit the number of licensed sellers to at most the proportion of one to a thou- sand inhabitants of each town, and these sellers should be under heavy bonds not to sell to minors or drunkards, an^l not to allow disreputable characters to gather at their places. The law should likewise make the collection of evi- dence against a licensed seller easy, and the penalty of breaking the law should be imprisonment as well as fine. On a basis like this, that does not sweepingly condemn every drink that has alcohol in it, the great majority of the people could work accordantly, and therefore effectively. The wild radicalism of the teetotalers is just what the rumsellers and their advocates enjoy. They know that this absurd ex- travagance disintegrates the army of order and renders it powerless; that so long as temperance is made to mean '' total abstinence from everything that can intoxicate," the great multitude of order-loving men will shrink from joining any temperance movement, and hence these wholesale de- stroyers of the race can go on in their nefarious work with impunity. Now, what is needed is the union of all good men who desire to stop the fearful drunkenness of the laud with its attendant crimes and misery. That union never can be effected on the principles of the total-abstinence propaganda. But it can be effected on the principles of truth and common S3nse, and they who prevent this union by their tenacious adherence to a false and fanatical system are responsible before God and man for the spreading curse.
There is no more important question before the American people to-day than this : '' How shall we stay this surging tide of intemperance ? " and it is to be answered on one side by the practical voice of society, and on the other by the
24 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
edicts of our legislatures. We should act with an even mind on so grave a subject, and see to it that every step we take is solidly founded on right reason. We should urge before our legislatures plans that are fi^ee from the taint of crude prejudice, and instinct with practical wisdom ; and when we do this we shall be surprised to see how many whom we took to be enemies there are who are ready to join us in the work arid establish foundations of order and peace in the land that shall save us from a moral slough.
COXCLUSIOX.
Let me, in conclusion, distinctly say that I do not oppose the principle of total abstinence from all that intoxicates /or the individual. Every man is at liberty to abstain if he will, and it is his duty to abstain if his own conscience command it. That against which I contend, and which I hold up as the hindrance to true reform and the promoter of the drunkard's cause, is the total-abstinence crusade or propaganda— thQ forcing total abstinence upon the community as the duty of all ; the putting under the ban every one who does not fol- low that standard ; the insisting upon total abstinence as the only safety against drunkenness. It is this headlong move- ment, which virtually cries '' The Koran or the sword !" and tramples alike on reason and Scripture in its blind rush— it is this and not private total abstinence against which I in- veigh. And let me also repeat that I am attacking a sys- tem and not persons. I have no war with men, but with er- ror. I can honor the men who uphold a pernicious system, for I can believe in their purity of motive and singleness of aim. And for this reason I the more earnestly and hopefully urge them to consider their ways and abandon a course which is only confirming the dreadful curse we all abhor and desire to remove.
A REVIEW OF DR. CROSEY.
By rev. dr. mark HOPKINS,
Ex-Presideni Williams CoUege, Jla^s.
THE recent lecture by Dr. Crosby, entitled '' A Calm View of the Temperance Question, '' is divided into four parts: 1. Preliminary Propositions; 2. Tbe Prudential Question ; 3. The Moral Question ; and 4. His own System. Of these each requires attention.
His prehminary propositions are three, and of these we are compelled to take exception to the very first. This is, that "the object of temperance societies is to prevent drunken- ness.'' That is one object, but is so far from being the only one that the statement is inadequate and misleading. It implies that the effect cf alcoholic drinks up to the point of drunkenness is not injurious, and that unless moderate drinking leads to drunkenness, which he denies, it does not come within the scope of temperance societies.
We hold, on the other hand, that, in our climate and under our present inherited conditions, the health of the human system is better without alcoholic stimulation than with it, and therefore that temperance, taking Dr. Crosby's
25
26 Moderation vs. Total Ahsthience,
own definition of it as ^' a grand moral subjection of the whole man to the sway of reason," would exclude such stimu- lation. We hold with him that temperance permits only such use of anything whatever as will best promote the well- being of the whole man. On this point we remember the statements of Bishop Potter, and men like him, at the be- ginning of this reformation, of the eifect upon their health of giving up wire; we recall the regimen of Samson, and the uniform testimony of the trainers of athletes ; we note the fact that in England a total-abstainer can have his life insured at a less rate than a moderate drinker ; we have the testimony of physicians* that what they call an ^'insane diathesis" is produced by moderate drinking, and that this may fail to reveal itself till the second or third generation ; we take what is known of the stimulating quality of our climate and of the adulteration of alcoholic drinks in this country, and we conclude that the object of temperance so- cieties is broader than the prevention of drunkenness.
The second proposition of Dr. Crosby is that '^ the cardi- nal principle of these ^societies is total abstinence from all that can intoxicate." Yes, as a beverage. We agree to the use of alcohol as a medicine and in the arts. Here, how- ever, it ought to be said that these societies were formed and this principle was adopted to meet an emergency. Fifty years ago it came upon the country almost with the suddenness of a cry of fire that the whole fabric of our so- ciety, moral, social, and civil, was in danger from the use of intoxicating drinks. The alarm was not sounded too soon, nor was the danger over-estimated. A mighty work was to be done. The evil pervaded church and state alike. There were vested rights and drinking customs ; wines for the rich, whiskey and cider-brandy for the poor, and adulterated liquors -, and the question was not about abstract principles, or what might be right at all times and in all places, but how to meet a present danger. The grand men of that day —the Beechers and Notts -and Potters — felt their way, and
*See a recent pamphlet on "The Insane Diathesis," p. 15, by Henry P. Stearns. M.D., of Hartford.
A Review of Dr. Crosby, ^1
at length reached the principle of total ahstineDce as their only sheet-anchor. We are fighting the same battle, with much gained, but still under similar conditions. The house is still on fire. How shall we put it out? We say with water. Those who have labored longest and made most sacrifices in this cause say that the danger can be best met by total abstinence on the part of the individual and by prohibition on the part of the State. To each of these Dr. Crosby objects not only, but he strongly condemns them.
The third proposition of Dr. Crosby is that ^' total absti- nence, if adopted by all, will prevent drunkenness." With this we heartily agree.
In objecting to total abstinence under his "Prudential Question " Dr. Crosby says many things with which we agree. We agree that we ought to adopt a " practicable '' plan — not, however, as he says, one "that will be received by men in general," but one in which we can worli most effectively. Wo agree that we ought to work with others who differ from us so far as we conscientiously can. If any have failed to work with Dr. Crosby up to this point it is to be regretted; but since he does not object to ^' total absti- nence for the individual," and agrees that that would be a sure preventive for drunkenness, we invite him, if he has not already done so, to join us in bringing over to that as many individuals as he can. We agree with him in what he says of conscience as too often '^mere obstinacy of opin- ion," and about "fanaticisms" and false martyrdoms; ar.d if in working with us, as he " conscientiously^'' must, he can- not bring men quite over to total abstinence; we do conscien- tiously wish him success in bringing them as far as he can. We agree with him in what he says of the original and proper meaning of the word "temperance,'' and of the change in its use, but not in his apparent irrita- tion about it; or in his charge of intentional deception. The change has come by a law of language which makes a gene- ral term specific when a particular use of it becomes pro- minent. It was thus that certain writings came to be called Scriptures^ as if there were no other writings; and also
S§ Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence.
the Bihle^ which means the book, as if there were do 3ther book. So when an Enghsh sportsman shoots a partridge he says he has shot a bird, as if tbere were no other birds. Changes of this kind constantly occur with no conscious agency of any one, and there is no more reason for suppos- ing that any advocate of total abstinence ever used the word temperance in this secondary sense with an intention to de- ceive than tbere is that Dr. Crosby so used it when he en- titled his lecture " A Calm View of the Temperance Ques- tion." Some deception may have been wrought in this way, but Dr. Crosby's view of it seems to us greatly exaggerated. We cannot believe that a word which has thus found a second- ary meaning by a natural law will be regarded as ^' a false flag," or that it *' will disgust and alienate true and en- lightened souls."
We agree further with Dr. Crosby, and thank him for stating it, that " the use of a false argument always reacts against the user." We presume he is right in res])ect to '' mw5f preserved from fermentation." We agree with him that the Scriptures ought not to be '^ twisted," but fail to see how it would be ''a fatal blow to tbe total-abstinence system," or any blow at all, if it should be proved that they speak of only one kind of wine. Many advocates of total abstinence, perhaps the majority, agree with Dr. Crosby on this point, but find in that no reason for abating their zeal in the cause.
In treating of the prudential question up to this point Dr Crosby finds '' three elements of deception entering into ^ their cause ' : the use of the word temperance for a totally different thing, the fable about unfermented wine, and the violent twisting of the Scriptures." He then says : " Now I unhesitatingly afiQrm that a cause having such falsehoods for its main supports can never be accepted by the public."
Finding thus his tirst reason why tbe plan of <* total absti- nence will not be adopted by the people " to be that it is sup- ported by falsehoods, Dr. Crosby states as his second rea- son ''its unmanUness." Under this head the main point of his argument is against legal prohibition. Total prohibi-
A Review of Dr. Croshy. 29
tion he calls 'Hhe cardinal doctrlue of the total -abstinence people,'' whereas we are not aware that, as total-abstinence people, it is their doctrine at all. The two are sought for different ends, and by different means. Total abstinence we seek through voluntary action, for the promotion of in- dividual virtue and of the general good. Legal prohibition we seek for as a means of guarding our rights. Let the law cease to appeal to us by taxing us for the support of pauper- ism and Clime caused by the selling of intoxicating drinks, and we will cease to appeal to t!ie law. The question then is not at all whether legal prohibition is opposed to manli- ness and the cultivation of '* self-control," but whether a voluntary position of total abstinence, prohibition or no pro- hibition, IS so opposed. We have been accustomed to think, and do now, that we have had few finer illustrations in mod- ern times of heroic self-denial, and moral courage, and true manhood than were seen in Governor Briggs and men like him, who planted the standard of total abstinence in Wash- ington, and stood faithfully by it for so many years. Does Dr. Crosby charge unmanliness upon these men, or upon the merchant princes of our day, who, with every facility for the safest and most refined forms of indulgence, stand firmly by the same banner because they think they can thus best arrest the ravages of intemperance ? But while we find Dr. Crosby thus arguing against legal prohibition because of the unmanliness it fosters, strange to say, we find him farther on, and with no change that we can see in its relation to manli- ness, adopting legal prohibition as the very basis of his own system !
The third and only other reason mentioned by Dr. Crosby under the prudential head why the plan of total ab- stinence will not be adopted by the people is ^Mts spirit of intimidation.^^ Here, again, we agree with Dr. Crosby— we think with him that intimidation should not be used. Espe- cially do we sympathize with him in what he says about the use of violent language. That such language should ever be used by the advocates of total abstinence we regret, and have not a word of excuse to offer. We venture to enquire,
30 Moderation vs. Total Abstmence.
however, whether he has not himself in the single instance of applying the term bulldozing to means of influence wholly moral erred slightly in the same direction. We may not have caught the precise shade of the meaning of that word, but suppose it to imply some reference to physi- cal forco either threatened or actually used, whereas it is well known that the use of physical force, when used at all, has invariably been on the other side.
The three reasous above referred to are dwelt upon by Dr. Crosby at length, but are touched thus slightly by us be- cause their force as bearing on the point in question depends almost wholly on the truth of the statement by him that they are the " main supports of the cause of total absti- nence." He says : " Now, I unhesitatingly affirm that a cause having such falsehoods as its main supports can never be accepted by the public." Again : '^ We have en- deavored to show that the i)ublic mind will not receive a system whose principal agencies have been falsehoods and intimidation." That these have been the main supports of the total -abstinence cause we wholly deny, and are aston- ished that such assertions should be made. Has Dr. Crosby never heard of the statistics of intemperance, so vast and so laboriously gathered, as used for promoting this cause ? Has he never heard of the six hundred millions of dollars an- nually spent in this country for alcoholic liquors ? Has he never heard of the sixty thousand drunkards who are esti- mated to die annually, or '^ of the poorhouses, prisons, and hospitals filled with inmates, and the land filled with widow- hood and orphanage such as no war in modern times has ever occasioned"? Has he never heard of entreaties to men and of prayers to God with tears and agony that hus- bands and sons and brothers might be brought to stand on the firm ground of total abstinence ! We have before us, and have just referred to it, an address to the people of Massachusetts by the Massachusetts Total-Abstinence So- ciety, and in that the topics dwelt on by Dr. Crosby, main supports though he calls them, are not even referred to, and there is not in it the slightest attempt at intimidation.
A Review of Dr. Crosby, 31
But while we thus deny what Dr. Crosby says about the " principal agencies " relied on by the friends of total absti- nence, and, if we deny truly, vacate the whole force of what he has said on the '' prudential question," we go one step further and say that even if his assertions on that point were true his argument would be, as he has said of another, a com- plete nan sequitur. For what does he object to ? Not to total abstinence, for he says in this connection : " The total- abstinence scheme may be in strict accordance with theoreti- cal virtue. It may be the grand end to which all reforming processes should tend." Not to total abstinence, then, does he object, but to '^falsehoods," and 'intimidations," and attacks on manliness. These he regards, and justly, as false methods, and he tells us that *'a cause having such falsehoods as its main supports can never be accepted by the pubUc." But does it follow because a scheme that either is or '' may be in strict accordance with theoretical vutue " would be rejected when supported only by falsehoods and intimidation would not be received when supported by truth presented in love ? Not at all. There is not the most distant connection between the premises and the conclusion. But this is Dr. Crosby's argument, and the whole of it. Accord- ing to this, if we will but accept deserved criticism and keep our forces in order, looking well after our Bible-twisters and bulldozers and "wild BasM-Bazouks of controversy," we may hope for success.
Whether, then, the assertion of Dr. Crosby that the main supports of our scheme are falsehoods and intimidation be false or whether it be true, his whole argument under the prudential head amounts to absolutely nothing— perhaps even less, for we think we have seen somewhere that '' a false argument always reacts against the user." We have no apprehension from the effect of such logic upon ''men who have brains and use them."
In passing to what Dr. Crosby calls the moral question we find it impossible to account for the language he uses re- specting •' the total-abstinence system," except from the want of discriUiination already referred to between that sys-
32 Moderation vs. Total Abstine?ice.
tern and legal prohibition. Separated from the ignorance and faults and follies of its friends, ^' the total-abstinence system " is the endeavor to secure by individual and asso- ciated action, and with their free consent, total abstinence on the part of individuals from iutoxicating drinks as a beverage. This is the system and the whole of it. If each individual would assent to this no wrong or harm would be done, and drunkenness with its attending evils would cease. Now, that Dr. Crosby should charge upon this sys- tem, so understood, that it is ''immoral," "false in its philosophy, contrary to revealed religion, and harmful to the interests of our country" — that he should charge upon it '' the growth of drunkenness in our land and a general demoralization among religious communities," seems impossible.
The growth of drunkenness, we had supposed, was due in part to the greed of gain, and in part to depraved appetite, but it seems we were mistaken. It is due to the total-ab- stinence system understood in some way ! If this be so, well may Dr. Crosby say, and he should say it with the voice of a trumpet, '' I call upon sound-minded, thinking men to stop the enormities of this false* system." Precisely what he had in mind we do not know. Probably the system of legal prohibition, or, possibly, a confused mixture of the two. But we do not ask legal prohibition for the promo- tion of total-abstinence, or temperance, or morality in any way. Let the law compel the traffic to provide for its own results, and not to put unjustifiable temptation in the way of the young, and we ask of it nothing more. We will then go on working in harmony with Dr. Crosby on the voluntary plan, seeking, if possible, to bring individuals up to total abstinence, and if not, as near to it as we can.
When Dr. Crosby charges that the total-abstinence sys- tem is immoral we know what he means by the moral ques- tion; but when he passes to bis specifications we should be glad to know what he means by a moral error. Error is commonly supposed to belong to the intellect, but if there pan be moral error at all, it must involve blame on the part
A Eevietv of Dr. Crosby. 33
of him who holds it. If so, then a man is to blame for be- lieving that moderate drinking leads to drunkenness. And Dr, Crosby seems to think so, for he calls it an atrocious dogma, but whether he intends thus to impute blame to all who do not agree with him in his six specifications we are at a loss to determine.
'< The first moral error of the total-abstinence system," he says, 'Ms in turning a medicinal prescription into a bill of fare for all mankind." We are not dealing with all man- kind, but we do say that here and now most men, if not all, would be healthier and exert a better influence if they would abstain from intoxicating drinks as a beverage. That the drunkard should wholly abstain Dr. Crosby afQrms, but he recognizes no obligation on our part to help him by our ex- ample in his mighty struggle to do this. He nowhere re- cognizes, or alludes to, the great principle laid down by the apostle Paul when he said he would eat no meat while the world should stand if it would cause his brother to offend. That principle we kcow tho president of the National Temperance Society and those who act with him regard as one of the great supports of the cause they advocate, and one that is to be strongly urged. Is that a moral error ? It seems implied in what Dr. Crosby says under this head, though doubtless not so intended.
" A second moral error of the total- abstinence theory," as statod by Dr. Crosby, "is its assumption that moderate drinking leads to drunkenness." Taking the words " mode- rate drinking " as they are commonly understood, we confess to having been in this error, if so it be, and hope we are not to blame for holding it still, though it is intimated by Dr. Crosby that t? hold it is '* a mark of very deep depravity," and though it is supported by logic like the following:
All drunkards were first moderate drinkers. *' Millions upon millions of our race " have been moderate drinkers and have not become drunkards. MiUions of our race have been moderate drinkers and have become drunkards ; therefore moderate drinking does not lead to drunkenness. Or take a case wholly parallel ; a miUion people have lived
34 Moderatmi vs. Total Abstinence.
iu a malarial atmospLere and have not had typhoid fever ; a hundred thousand have lived in the same atmosphere and liave had it ; therefore a malarious atmosphere does not pro- duce typhoid fever. Surely Dr. Crosby cannut be ignorant of the delusive, and mocking principle there is in all narcotic stimulation by which a larger amount of the stimulus is con- stantly demanded for a given amount of stimulation, till, if the stimulus be alcohol, the moderate drinker is led oti un- consciously over the shaky ground of moderate drinking into the " Serbouian bog," '^ a gulf profound," of drunken- ness, and hears the mocking cry (oh ! how many have heard it !) : '^ Now extricate yourself if you can."
A third moral error of the theory, we are told, ^' is its want of discrimination between things that differ." This does not, we suppose, apply to all things, but only to the different kinds of alcohohc drinks, as brandy and hock wine and other kinds mentioned by Dr. Crosby. We think it de- sirable that discriminations should be made where there is a difference, especially where there is so great a difference as we suppose there is between brandy and hock wine, though, as we do not know what hock wine is, we cannot be sure about it, but we think it rather strong language to call such want of discrimination and language indicating it '' a moral outrage which the whole community should indignantly re- pel." If these are those ^* whose digestion is feeble, circu- lation languid, and nervous system too excitable," and cer- tain alcoholic drinks will do them good, do let them have them J we shall not object.
A fourth moral error of the total-abstinence system, says Dr. Crosby, '' is its assertion that all drinks that contain al- cohol are poison." This is much like the third. It involves, however, the scientific question whether there is, or is not, " a radical difference, a difference in degree not only but in kind, between the effects of large and small quantities of alcohol."
We now come to the pledge. The use of this Dr. Crosby regards as the fifth moral error of the total-abstinence sys- tem. He would have the appeal made directly and continu-
A Review of Dr. Croshij. 35
ously to the moral nature ^ith no pledge. So far as we see, what he says applies equally to all pledges. ^' Instead of regulating a man from within," they are equally ''strait- jackets." " The pledge/' he says, 'Ms always an injury, and never a benefit to true morality." Again he says : " Man's moral nature is not to be curbed by pledges.' Than this nothing could be more sweeping and universal. Now, that, in a country whose independence was estabhshed by men y^ho pledged their lives and liberty and sacred honor for its maintenance, whose marriages and churches and business contracts are all sustained and guarded by pledges, for a contract is simply a mutual pledge, this wholesale onslaught upon them should be made seems extraordinary. We had supposed that the Scripture precept, ''Vow, and pay unto the Lord thy vows," was still in force. By the pledge the influence of the social element is gained, and we do not see, as Dr. Crosby thinks he does, why the moral nature may not be appealed to for the keeping of the pledge as well as in any other way. Not alone to their moral nature, but to all that was noble within them, did that mother appeal when she asked each of her four boys, as he left her at an early age to make his own way in the world, to pledge himself never to use intoxicating drinks, or profane language, or tobacco before he should be twenty-one. The boys pledged themselves and have kept their pledge, and now, at ages ranging from sixty-five to seventy-five they are honored men ; but one of them has ha-d a sick day, and no one of them is worth less than a million of dollars. That there have been great abuses in connection with the pledge in the temperance movement we do not doubt, but that does not show that either the original adoption of it or the use of it on the whole has been or is a moral error.
The sixth and last moral error noticed by Dr. Crosby re- spects the question already referred to about the kinds of wine mentioned in the Scriptures. Is there only one, or are there two ? On this we have two things to say. The first is, and Dr. Crosby concedes it, that the Scriptures nowhere CDm- mand us to drink wine of any kind as a beverage. We feel,
36 Moderation vs. Total Ahstmence.
therefore, tliat we do not go against the Scriptures either in abstaining from wine as a beverage ourselves or in e-idea- voring to lead others to do so. The secoud thing we have to say is implied in a story we remember to have heard. It is that during the final battle before Vicksburg, when some injudicious person rushed into the presence of General Grant and in the most excited manner called his attention to an incidental matter, the general merely said, with his charac- teristic calmness : *' I am fighting tliis battle.^'
We now turn for a moment to the method proposed by Dr. Crosby. It is one of blended prohibition and license- prohibition of distilled liquors, and license for fermented ones. In adopting this he gives np his argument about manliness, and concedes the principle of prohibition. Of the right of this there can be no doubt so far as it may be necessary for the protection of rights, and we wish to apply it only so far as may be necessary for that. If we could avoid doing so, and still have our rights, we would in no way interfere legally with what any person should eat or drink. If iu manufacturing chemicals a man causes an offensive and poisonous smoke to invade the houses of his neighbors, the law compels him to raise his chimney till the smoke shaU pass away, and then, if any one, or even numbers, should be fond of the smoke, and be obliged to climb to the top of the chimney to get a whiff of it, they could not complain that it was the object of the law to make them do so, or to interfere in any way with what they should smell. Let the traffic be so regulated that it shall be responsible for its own results and we are con- tent.
The difficulty of framing laws by which this would be reached we appreciate. We do not wish those that cannot be executed. Prohibition may be wise in one place, or in one degree, and not iu another place and to another de- gree. If laws theoretically the best would not be executed to a reasonable extent, we must get the best we can that will be thus executed. If, which we do not at all beheve, the mixed system proposed by Dr. Crosby would approxi-
A Review of Dr. Crosby. 37
mate that result most nearly we would accept that. Mean- tune, we must not fail to recognize the total-abstinence scheme as having aims and methods different from those of legislation, wholly above and beyond them, and if it be really the best, as we think it is, for the peace of families and for the purity and permanence of our institutions, we must not be deterred by opposition or discouraged by ob- stacles from doing what we can to promote it.
We have now followed the lecture step by step, and what have we? We have, in connection with a claim to a calm view of the temperance question, strong denunciation and a proclamation of war to be carried into Africa. ^'Carthago delenda esV^ We have the general statement that the main supports of the total-abstinence scheme are falsehoods nnd intimidations. The friends of the scheme are allowed to be well-meaning people, some of them even "noble souls," but too fanatical and headlong to be aware of the means they are using. We have the failure of the system attribut- ed, not to anything wrong in itself, but to wrong methods. We have then the statement that this same system is the cause of the growth of drunkenness in our land and of gene- ral deraorahzation. We have mere opinion on certain points branded as moral error, and we have the condemnation of all pledges. All this we have, but we have no recogniza tion of the overwhelming testimony of physicians that the alcoholic element is not needed for our best health, or of the tremendous statistics of intemperance, or of the force of example, or of the great principle, as expounded by the apostle Paul and illustrated by our Saviour himself, of self- sacrifice for the good of others.
This lecture of Dr. Crosby has attracted wide attention. From its subject, the place of its delivery, and the person de- livering it, it could not be otherwise. If it had been given by an ordinary man we should not have felt called upon to notice it. But Dr. Crosby is not an ordinary man. From his position as chancellor of the University of New York, from his eminent scholarship, his high character, his evident sincerity, and the noble efforts he has made and is now
38 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
making for the suppression of crime and for moral reform, his words fall with a weight which only makes it the more imperative, if they be, as we think, erroneous and mislead- ing, that we should do what we can that their influence may be counteracted.
A REPLT
TO
Dr. Crosby's ''Calm View of Temperance."
By WENDELL PHILLIPS.
Delivered VI Treviont Temple^ Boston^ January 24, 1881,
before the Association of the Mifiisters of the
Methodist Episcopal Church.
I AM to offer you some remarks on a lecture delivered here a fortnight ago by Chancellor Crosby. He de- nounced the temperance movement as now conducted. The address was not very remarkable for novelty, or weight of argument, or the correctness of its statements. Indeed, it was rather noticeable for the lack of these qualities. And it was so well handled and so fally answered in several of our pulpits that I thought it needed no further notice. But you thought otherwise, and perhaps it does deserve it, considering the source from which it comes. And when the health of the chancellor becomes the standing toast in the grog-shops of our city, and when the journal which publishes these Mon- day lectures is obliged to print a second and third edition, day after day, to supply that class of customers, it is evi- dent that temperance men have a text on which an effectual temperance sermon can be preached — one that will proba- bly arrest the attention of just those we seek to reach.
Dr. Crosby laments the divisions among temperance men, and lays it down as a principle that we '' cannot conscien- tiously object to the means employed by others, unless they
39
40 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
contain an immorality." I beg leave to dissent from this. We have had sixty years' experience in temperance methods, and certainly may claim to have learned something. Now, when these new converts, these nursling babies of grace, mislead by their crude suggestions the temperance public, obstruct its efforts and waste its means, are we bound to sit silent and make no protest against such waste and reckless- ness ? The treasury of reform is not rich enough to bear such extravagance on the pretence of harmony ; much less are we bound to silence when a neighbor's mistake seriously harms and binders the movement. If Boston lived, as it did in 1806, with no steam fire-engine (only leather buckets hang- ing in each man's front entry), cheerfully would I stand with Dr. Crosby and a hundred more to pass buckets of water up to the firemen on a burning building. But in 1881 I should not ob:^truct the engine, and crowd it out of its place, merely that I and Dr. Crosby might Lave a chance harmoni- ously to unite in passing empty buckets toward the flames. Life is too short for such false courtesies ; too short for us to postpone working on our line until we have educated every new convert up to our level. This might do very well be- fore the Flood, as Sydney Smith suggests, when Methuselah could consult his friends for a hundred and fifty years in re- lation to an intended enterprise, and even then live to see the working of his plan, and its success or failure, for six or seven centuries afterward.
But life now is limited to an average of seventy years, and practical men must put their hands to the plough in the best way they know, and, if children stand in their w'ay, move them gently but firmly out of the path.
I think before Dr. Crosby spoke he should have studied the history of the temperance movement. If he were as familiar with the literature of our enterprise as he is with that of Greece, he never would have repeated criticisms and suggestions that have been answered over and over again during the last fifty years. As I turn over his essay, and find how tediously familiar we all are with his objections, I am reminded of Johnson's objection to Goldsmith's plan of travelling over Asia in order to bring home valuable im-
ReiJly of WencMl Phillips. 41
provements : ^^ Sir, Goldsmith is so ignorant of his own coun- try that he would bring home a wheelbarrow as a new and valuable invention."
The address turns back in its path frequently, and repeats its chief criticisms again and again. If we analyze it I think it may be fairly summed up thus :
1. Dr. Crosby objects to the total-abstinence theory and movement that it insults the example of Jesus ; that its ad- vocates undermine and despise the Bible, while they strain and wrench it to serve their purpose ; and he asserts that the ^' total -abstinence system is contrary to revealed religion " ; and that the Bible, correctly interpreted, repudiates total abstinence and such a temperance crusade as has existed here for the last fifty years.
2. Dr. Crosby objects to this movement as immoral as well as unchristian ; and as ^' doing unmeasured harm to the com- munity." He considers it as the special and direct cause of the '* growth of drunkenness in our land, and of a general demoralization among religious communities "; asserts that it is exactly the kind of movement that rumsellers enjoy, and that it ought not to succeed, never will, and never can.
3. The pledge is unmanly and kills character and self- respect.
4. The assertion that moderate drinking leads to drunk- enness is untrue.
5. The total-abstainers bully and intimidate the communi- ty and disgust all good, sensible men.
6. That what is needed to unite sensible men in a move- ment sure to succeed is a license system recognizing the distinction between moderation and excess, between harm- less wines and beer and strong drink. Such a system, ''free from taint of prejudice, and instinct with practical wisdom, will establish order and peace and save us from a moral slough."
The looseness of these statemeuts is noticeable. Dr. Crosby says ^' the total-abstinence system is contrary to re- vealed religion."
What is the '' total-abstinence system "? It is abstaining from intoxicating drink ourselves^ and agreeing, with others
42 Moderation vs. Total Ahstlnencc.
to do so. How is tliis contrary to revealed religion ? Can any one cite a text in the Bible or a principle laid down there which forbids it? Of course not; no one pretends that he can. But Dr. Crosby's argument is that Jesus drank intoxi- cating wioe and allowed it to others. There is no proof that he ever did drink intoxicating wine. But let that pass, and suppose, for the sake of the argument, that he did. What then? To do what Jesus never did, or to refuse to do what he did — are such acts necessarily *' contrary to re- vealed religion " ? Let us see.
Jesus rode upon an '' ass and a colt, the foal of an ass." We find it convenient to use railways. Are they " contrary to revealed religion"? Jesus never married, neither did most of his apostles. Is marriage, therefore, '^ contrary to revealed religion " ? Jesus allowed a husband to put away his wife if she had committed adultery, he himself being judge and executioner. We forbid him to do it, and make him submit to jury trial and a judge's decision. Are such divorce laws, therefore, ^' contrary to revealed religion"? Jesus said to the person guilty of adultery : '^ Go and sin no more." We send such sinners to the State prison. Are our laws punishing adultery, therefore, ''contrary to re- vealed religion " ? There were no women at the Last Supper. We admit them to it. Is this ''contrary to revealed reli- gion " ? We see therefore that Christians may, in altered circumstances, do some things Jesus never actually did, and that their so doing does not necessarily contravene his ex- ample; nor, unless it violates t\iQ uprinciples he taught, does it tend to undermine Christianity.
But the learned lecturer will, perhaps, urge : " I did not mean exactly what I said. I meant to point out that the means you use — methods with which you urge and support the total-abstinence theory— are contrary to revealed reli- gion. You strain and pervert the Bible to get the example of Jesus on your side, and so undermine the authority of the Scriptures."
It would have been better if Dr. Crosby had originally said exactly what he meant, and on so grave a subject we had a right to claim that a trained and scholarly man should
Ee2)lij of Wendell Phillips, 43
do so. But, waiving that, let us allow Mm, as the courts do, to amend his declaration.
The total-abstinence system is ^' contrary to revealed re- ligion," because we strain and distort the Scriptures and wrest them to serve our purpose ; and the chief instance upon which the doctor mainly dwells is our assertion that wherever drinking wine is referred to in the Bible with approbation unfermented wine is meant. Upon this claim the doctor pours out his hottest indignation, indulging in a wealth of abusive epithets, and returning to it again, and again ringing changes on it, and turning it hke a specially sweet morsel under his tongue. Indeed, this may be consid- ered the chief thing he came to Boston to say.
Now, there is a class of Biblical scholars and interpreters who do assert that wherever wine is referred to in the Bible with approbation it is unfermented wine. Of this class of men Dr. Crosby says ^' their learned ignorance is splendid " ; they are '' inventors of a theory of magnificent daring"; they ^' use false texts " and '^ deceptive arguments " ; " deal dishonestly with the Scriptures"; '' beg the question and build on air"; their theory is a ''fable," born of ''false- hoods," supported by " Scripture-twisting and wriggling"; their arguments are " cobwebs," and their zeal outstrips their judgment, and they plan to " undermine the Bible."
This is a fearful indictment ! Who are these daring, ri- diculous, and illogical sinners? As I call them up in my memory, the first one who comes to me is Moses Stuart, of Andover, whose lifelong study of the Bible and profound critical knowledge of both its languages place him easily at the head of all American commentators. His well-balanced mind, conservative to a fault on many points, clears him from any suspicion of being misled by enthusiasm or warp- ing his opinions to suit novel theories. " Moses Stuart's Scripture View of the Wine Question" was the ablest con- tribution, thirty years ago, to this claim about unfermented wine, and it still holds its place, unanswered and unanswer- able. By his side stands Dr. Nott, the head of Union Col- lege, with the snows of ninety winters on his brow. Around ^hem gather scores of scholars and divines on both sides of
44 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence.
the Atlantic. In our day Tayler Lewis gives to the Ameri- can public, with his scholarly endorsement, the exhaustive commentary by Dr. Lees on every text in the Bible which speaks of wine — a work of sound learning, the widest re- search, and fairest argument.
The ripe scholarship, long study of the Bible, and critical ability of these men entitle them to be considered experts on this question. In a matter of Scripture interpretation it would be empty compliment to say that Dr. Crosby is wor- thy to loose the latchet of their shoes. You would think me using only sarcasm if I said so.
Now, imagine Moses Stuart, with his " learned ignorance," ^' using false texts," '^ dealing dishonestly with the Scrip- tures," "■ begging a question and using cobwebs for argu- ments," " wriggling and twisting the Bible "; at the ripe age of sixty years his boyish " zeal outstripping bis judgment" — imagine him, with his infidel pickaxe, zealously digging away up there on Andover Hill to ^'undermine the Bible" ! Of course all Andover will at once recognize the fidelity of the portrait, and cordially thank the New York Greek professor for informing them of his discovery of this Stuart conspiracy with Dr. Nott to bring the authority of the Scriptures into contempt.
One thing Dr. Crosby wishes to be distinctly understood : he does not charge such men as Stuart with meaning to lie. *^ Their main arguments are falsehoods. They take up these weapons without suflflciently examining them. They see they can be made efieetive, but do not stop to enquire whether they are legitimate." Now, this is very kind in our New York professor. We had never discovered the super- ficial character of Stuart's scholarship, which left him open to such mistakes, or his mischievous haste and culpable carelessness in logical methods, and it is very generous in this new^ Daniel to assure us that, in spite of these faults, he ^'can [with effort, of course, and some struggle] believe in the purity of motive " of such men, even when they "■ trample on reason and Scripture in blind rush."
Now, the truth is, the only ^^ castle built on air " in this matter is the baseless idea that the teuiperance movement
Mej^hj of Wendell Fhithps. 45
uses dishonest arguments or wrests the Scripture because it maintains that where the drinking of wine as an article of diet is mentioned in the Bible with approbation unfermented wine is meant. The fact is, there are scholars of repute on both sides of the question ; but we do not claim too much when we say that the weight of scholarly authority is on our side, and not on that of the doctor.
But suppose the weight on each side were equal, what then ■? One theory makes the Bible contradict itself^ puts it below the sacred books of many other nations in the strict- ness of its morality, and sets it as an obstacle to the highest civilization.
The other reconciles all its teachings one with another, lifts it to the level of the highest moral idea, and makes it the inspirer and the guide in all noble efforts to elevate the race. Which theory ought the behever in the Bible to pre- fer, if both were equally well supported? Are those who degrade the Bible below other scriptures entitled to charge us with '' undermining" it ? There are other claims besides that of unfermented wine which are '^ magnificent in their daring " and, let me add, in their insolence.
Some of the doctor's young hearers might have been sur- prised to see a divine flinging the Bible in the way of the temperance movement. But we older ones and Abolitionists are used to such attempts. Forty -five years ago the Princeton Bevietv, representing the Presbyterian Church, de- nounced the anti-slavery movement— at a time when Garri- son stood surrounded by divines and church-members with- out number— as infidel and ^'contrary to revealed religion." Its argument was the exact counterpart of Dr. Crosby's against our temperance enterprise. In vain we showed that the word '' slave" in the New Testament did not necessari- ly or probably mean a chattel slave, and in vain did Weld's " Bible Argument " — which was never answered — prove the same to be true of the Old Testament. Still, we were de- nounced as ^' twisting and wresting and straining the Scrip- tures and undermining the Bible." This Crosby Bible was flung in Garrison's face for thirty years. But since his great hand wrote Mighteousness on the flag and sent it down to
46 Moderaiwn vs. Total Alstmence,
the G-ulf, and since we boast that no slave treads our soil — since then nine hundred and ninety-nine church-members out of every thousand will call you a libelerand suspect you of infidelity if you say the Bible anywhere or in any degree upholds slavery; and I see your lecturer last week closed his eloquent and able address by triumphantly claiming that the Gospel abolished slavery — which is truC; only he should have stated that it was the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and not the gospel of the church of that day.
Hence I am not impatient nor distrustful. I rest quiet in serene assurance that by and by, when our temperauce cause is a little stronger, men will blush to think they ever belittled and dishonored the Bible by such claims and argu- ments as these. At that time ninety-nine out of every hun- dred Christians will look askance upon you, and suspect your orthodoxy, unless you believe Jesus never drank any fermented wine, and that the Bible's precepts touching wine- drinking can only be reconciled with each other or with its claim as a revealed religion by recognizing the distinction between fermented and unfermented wines. In my active life of fifty years I have seen more men made infidels by these attempts to prove the Bible an upholder of slavery than I ever saw misled by the followers of Paine ; and I think this sad exhibition of New York partisanship will have the same result. The misled men to whom I refer were not ignorant, careless-minded, or unprincipled, but men of conscientious earnestness of purpose, good culture, and blameless lives.
It is, indeed, mournful to look back and notice how uni- formly narrow-minded men, hide-bound in the bark of tra- dition, conventionalism, and prejudice, have thrown the Bible in the way of every forward step the race has ever made. When the Reformation claimed that every Christian man was his own priest and entitled to read the Bible for himself, the cry was: *' You are resisting and undermining the Bible." Even before that the most advanced and liberal churchmen denounced their own (unrecognized, but true) spiritual brothers — the democracy of their day in Holland and elsewhere— as infidels and contemners of the Scriptures.
Reply of Wefidell PhilUps, 47
When the English Puritan saw dimly a republican equal- ity of rights, Sir Robert Filmer and the High- Churchmen tried to frighten him with the scarecrow of their Bible. The chief apostle says, *' Honor the king ! " aud this fellow leaves us no king to honor! But even Dr. Crosby would, in spite of St. Peter, hardly acknowledge the Declaration of Independence to be '' contrary to revealed rehgion."
One of the strongest proofs that the Bible is really a di- vine book is that it has outlived even the foolish praises and misrepresentations of its narrow and bigoted friends.
When anti-slavery lecturers first entered Ohio, some forty years ago, they carried the Bible before them as their sanc- tion for the movement. Certain doctors of divinity, horror- struck at this profanation, proposed to form a society whose object should be to prove that the Bible sanctioned slavery. Ben Wade was then considered somewhat of an infidel; but, on the principle of the forlorn sailor, who puts up with any port in a storm, these divines sought out Wade, asking him to be president of the proposed society. Wade received them most courteously. ^' Certainly," said he, ^' gentlemen, I will serve you gladly, and do my best to make this thing a success. But, you know, when we've proved that the Bible supports and demands slavery as an institution, folks will ask you to show them what is the worth of such a Bible, here and now. And in that matter I cannot be of any help to you, gentlemen, at all."
But some adherent of Dr. Crosby may say : Still, the New Testament does not anywhere specifically and in so many words describe a system of moral observance like teetotal- ism. Possibly not; and hence the doctor claims that this suiting Christianity to the needs of the age is disguised infidelity.
But look at it a moment. The New Testament is a small book, and may be read in an hour. It is not a code of laws, but the example of a life and a suggestion of principles. It would be idle to suppose that it could describe in detail, specifically meet every possible question, and solve every difficulty that the changing and broadening life of two or three thousand years might bring forth. The progressive
48 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence.
spirit of each age bas found in it just the inspiration and help it sought. But when timid, narrow, and short-sighted men claimed such exclusive ownership in it that they refused to their growing fellows the use of its broad, underlying principles, and thus demanded to have new wine put into old bottles, of course the bottles burst and their narrow- surface Bible became discredited; but the real Bible soared upward, and led the world onward still, as the soul rises to broader and higher life when the burden of a narrow and mortal body falls away. This is that kind of literal and starved ignorance which lays its unworthy hand on the Scriptures, and tells us that, because Solomon said, '-He that spareth the rod spoileth the child," he meant every child must be mercilessly whipped ; thus dragging down the wisest of men to the level of their own narrow and brutal nature, ignorant that the poet-king, ]3utting the concrete for the principle involved, meant only to emphasize the truth that the training of a child must include subjection — by what method obtained each case and each child's nature must decide. And thus many a brute and ignoramus has complacently fathered his absurd blindness and passionate temper on Solomon and the Bible.
Had not the lecturer of last week (Dr. Crooks) so ably and eloquently pointed out this characteristic of Christianity, its opening to the moral and spiritual need of each age, its ready and complete adaptation of itself to the most unfore- seen and immense changes in the moral life of succeeding ages — one of the proofs of its divine origin — furnishing the principles needed for each larger development of civiliza- tion, and giving its sanction to the new methods which keener temptations and more threatening dangers demanded, I might have troubled you with something on this point. You will allow me to quote what will show you that even the old divines and those whose orthodoxy will not be suspected have, again and again, affirmed that a moral agency's being new was no evidence at all that Christianity did not include and intend it. Eobinson, in '^Address to the Pilgrim Fathers," says :
"If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of
Rejjhj of Wendell FJnIJijjs. 49
his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth
by my ministry ; for I am verily persuaded — I am very confident
— the Lord hath more truth yet to break forth out of his Holy
Word."
The Hon. Robert Boyle (1680) says :
"As the Bible was not written for any one particular time or people, ... so there are many passages very useful which will not be found so these many ages ; being possibly reserved by the Prophetic Spirit that indited them ... to quell some foreseen heresy, ... or resolve some yet unformed doubts, or confound some error that hath not yet a name."
Bishop Butler, in Ms ^' Analogy " (1737), says :
*' Nor is it at all incredible that a Book which has been so long in the possession of mankind, should yet contain many truths as yet undiscovered. For all the same phenomena and the same faculties of investigation from which such great discoveries in natural knowledge have been made in the present and last age were equally in the possession of maniiind several thousand years before. And possibly it might be intended that events, as they come to pass, should open and ascertain the meaning of several parts of Scripture."
The Interpreter (1862) says :
" A day is coming when Scripture, long darkened by traditional teaching, too frequently treated as an exhaustive mine, will at length be recognized in its true character, as a field rich in unex- plored wealth, and consequently be searched afresh for its hidden treasures."
Vinet, in his " Lectures," says :
" Even now, after eighteen centuries of Christianity, we may be involved in some tremendous error of which the Christianity of the future will make us ashamed."
Dean Stanley says :
**Each age of the church has, as it were, turned over a new leaf in the Bible, and found a response to its own wants. We have a leaf still to turn — a leaf not the less new because it is so simple."
Dr. Crosby passes to the great weapon of the temperance movement— the pledge. This he calls ''unmanly," ''a
50 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
straisjacket " J says it kills self-respect and undermines all character.
Hannali More said : ^' We cannot expect perfection in any- one ; but we may demand consistency of every one.^'
It does not fend to show the sincerity of these critics of our cause when we find them objecting in us to what they themselves uniformly practise on all other occasions. If we contiDue to believe in their sincerity, it can only be at the expense of their intelligence. Dr. Crosby is, undoubtedly, a member of a church. Does he mean to say that, when his church demanded his signature to its creed and his pledge to obey its discipline, it asked what it was ''unmanly" in him to grant and what destroys an individual's character — that his submission to this is '•' foregoing his reasoning," ^' sinking back to his nonage," etc. *? Of course he assents to none of these things. He only objects to a temperance pledge, not to a church one.
The husband pledges himself to his wife, and she to him, for life. Is the marriage ceremony, then, a curse, a hin- drance to vu'tue and progress i
I have known men who, borrowing money, refused to sign any promissory note. They thought it unmanly and evidence that I distrusted them. Does Dr. Crosby think the world should change its customs and immediately adopt that plan ?
Society rests in all its transactions on the idea that a solemn promise, pledge, assertion strengthens and assures the act. It recognizes this principle of human nature. The witness on the stand gives solemn promise to tell the truth ; the ofiacer about to assume place for one year or ten, or for life, pledges his word and oath ; the grantor in a deed binds himself for aU time by record ; churches, societies, universi- ties accept funds on pledge to appropriate them to certain purposes and to no other — these and a score more of instances can be cited. In any final analysis all these rest on the same principle as the temperance pledge. No man ever de- nounced them as unmanly. I sent this month a legacy to a hterary institution, on certain conditions, and received in return its pledge that the money should ever be sacredly used as directed. The doctor's principle would unsettle
Reply of Wendell PJiilhps. 61
Society, and, if o.e proposed to apply it to any cause but temperance, practical men would quietly put him aside as out of his head.
These cobweb theories, born of isolated cloister life, do not bear exposure to the midday sun or the rude winds of practical life. This is not a matter of theory. It must be tested and settled by experience and results. Thousands and tens of thousands attest the value of the pledge. It never degraded ; it only lifted them to a higher life. ' ' Un- manly f" No. It made men of them. We who never lost our clear eyesight or level balance over books, but who stand mixed up and jostled in daily life, hardly deem any man's sentimental and fastidious criticism of the pledge worth ans<vering. Every active worker in the temperance cause can recall hundreds of instances where it has been a mau's salvation.
In a rail way-car once a man about sixty years old came to sit beside me. He had heard me lecture the evening be- fore on temperance. "■ I am master of a ship," said he, "sailing out of New York, and have just returned from my fiftieth voyage across the Atlantic. About thirty years ago I was a sot; shipped^while dead-drunk, as one of a crew, and was carried on board like a log. When I came to, the captain sent for me. He asked me : 'Do you remember your mother ? ' I told him she died before I could remem- ber anything. 'Well/ said he, ^'I am a Vermont man. When I was young I was crazy to go to sea. At last my mother consented I should seek my fortune in New York.' He told how she stood on one side the garden-gate and he on the other, when, with his bundle on his arm, he was ready to walk to the next town. She said to him : ' My boy, I don't know anything about towns and I never saw the sea ; but they tell me those great towns are sinks of wickedness and make thousands of drunkards. Now pro- mise me you'll never drink a drop of liquor.' He said : ' I laid my hand in hers and promised, as I looked into her eyes for the last time. She died soon after. Fve been on every sea, seen the worst kinds of life and men. They laughed at me as a milksop and wanted to know if I was a
52 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence,
coward ; but when tboy offered me liquor I saw my mother across the gate, and I never drank a drop. It has been my sbeet-anchor. I owe all to that. Would you like to take that pledge ? ^ said he."
My companion took it, and he added : "It has saved me. I have a fine ship, wife and children at home, and I have helped others."
How far that little candle threw its beams ! That anx- ious mother, on a Vermont hillside, saved two men to virtue and usefulness ; how many more He who sees all can alone tell. But our agitation of the drink question is " bulldoz- ing " and '^ intimidation." This is only an unmanly whine.
What is the pulpit? Does it not take admitted truths and press them home on conscieuce ? Or does it not seek to prove principles the listener does not admit, and then urge him to their practice ? Does it not criticise, and affirm, and denounce, seeking to waken the indifferent, convince the doubting, and claim consistent action of all '^ Does It wait until the sinner acknowledges its principles before it de- nounces his action as a sinf By no means. Is church dis- cipline visited only on those who see and confess their sins? Is it not used to rouse them to a sense of the principle they will not acknowledge, and hold them up to the rebuke and take from them the respect of their fellows ? If our tempe- rance agitation is "intimidation," then nine-tenths of the land's pulpits are bulldozers and the other tenth is useless. What does the Bible say of those who prophesy smooth things, and whose order was Nathan obeying when he said, "Thou art the man " !
I have known even a Greek professor, when speaking in downright earnest, fling about the keenest and roughest words in the dictionary in the most reckless and biting manner ;* yet I never dreamed of charging him with seeking to intimidate his opponents.
* As illustrating Dr. Crosby's "calmness" the Chicago Advance says : "A collection of the dynamic complimentary phrases applied by this ' calm ' lecturer to the main body of temperance people of America would make a curious para- graph. Here are some specimens : * Mere obstinacy of opinion and personal pride ' ; ' what a fearful prostitution of a noble word is seen in the use of the word " temperance " to-day ! ' ' a^false flag ' seized by ' radical and intemperate
Replij of Weiidell PliilUps. 53
Dr. Crosby says it is false, our constant assertion that moderate drinking makes drunkards. Will lie please tell us where, then, the drunkards come from ? Certainly teetota- lers do not recruit these sweUing ranks. Will he please ac- count for the million -times-repeated story of the broken- hearted and despairing sot, and of the reformed man, that " moderate drinking lulled them to a false security until the chain was too strong f(^r them to break " ? Will he please explain that confession forced from old Sam Johnson, and repeated hundreds of times since by men of seemingly strong resolve : '' I can abstain ; I can't be moderate " ?
Do not the Bible, the writers of fiction, the master drama- tists of ancient and modern times, the philosopher, the moralist, the man of affairs — do not all these bear witness how insidiously the habits of sensual indulgence creep on their victim, until he wakes to -find himself in chains of iron, his very will destroyed ?
When Milton says, '' I cannot praise a fugitive and clois- tered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies out and sees her adversary,'' Dr. Crosby, you suppose, inter- prets it as meaning that boys should frequent gambling- hells and such resorts, in order to prove their strength of resistance. But no ; he does not mean any such thing. He only thinks they should face the drink temptation ; none other. When you hear that the New York Central Kailway prohibits the sale of flash literature in its cars, perhaps you expect to hear Dr. Crosby denounce that corporation as emasculating the virtues of their travellers and making them
souls,' which ' will disgust and alienate true and enlightened souls ' ; ' these in- fatuated defenders of the total-abstinence principle'; ' these great untruths that are flaunted on its banners will disgust most men that have brains and use them *; ' its spirit of intimidation ' and ' bulldozing,' the ' invariable accompaniment of it during its forty years' curriculum ' ; 'overbearing and tyrannical,' 'using a violence of language that can admit of no excuse ' ; whose ' principal agencies have been falsehood and intimidation ' ; whose ' principles are at war with proper manliness or self-respect'; 'upon the total abstinence system I charge the growth of drunkenness in our land and a general demoralization among religious communities'; 'moral jugglery,' 'a blunder that has the proportions of a crime ' ; of the pledge, a ' most pernicious instniment for debauching the con- science,' ' always an injury and never a help ' ; the wild ' bashi-bazouks of con- troversy,'etc., etc,"
54 Moderation vs. Total Abstiiience.
unmanly. Not at all. He approves it. It is only drink temptations that he considers good training for heroic men.
You might suppose that Dr. Crosby would recommend to colleges to substitute, in their study of the hterature of fic- tion, the works of Eugene Sue, Dumas, and Balzac, in the place of George Eliot, Walter Scott, and Jane Austen, since these last would afford no proof of a lad's ability to with- stand the harm of pernicious novels. Oh ! no. I assure you that is a mistake. Dr. Crosby confines the new discovery of fortifying virtue by steeping it in temptation wholly and exclusively to rum. Hannah More's demand of ^' consis- tency " he thinks of no consequence whatever.
But our movement is the delight of rumsellers and the great manufacturer of drunkards. How is it, then, that anx- ious and terror-stricken rumsellers assemble in conven- tions to denounce us and plan methods of resisting us ? No such conventions were ever heard of or needed until the last twenty years. How is it that they mob our lecturers and break up our meetings ? Was Dr. Crosby or any of his class ever mobbed by rumsellers ? How is it that, the moment we get one of the prohibitory laws, ''which delight rum- sellers," passed, these delighted men form parties to defeat every man who voted for it, crowd the lobbies to repeal it, and never rest until, by threat or bribes, they have repealed it ? If rumsellers long and pray for the coming of the mil- lennium of prohibition, why don't they all move down to Maine, and get as near to the desired heaven as they can ? If rumsellers dehght in our total-abstinence labors, how un- grateful in them to allow their organs all over the world to . misrepresent and deny what httle success even Dr. Crosby allows we have had in Maine ! They ought to chuckle over it and scatter thencTs far and wide. When Dr. Crosby has answered half these questions, we*ave some more diffi- culties to propound which trouble us, about the unaccount- able freaks of these delighted rumsellers, who, delighted as they are with our work, yet never can bear or praise the very men who, Dr. Crosby says, are constantly employed spending time and money in '* delighting " these unreason- able fellows.
Reply of Wendell Phillips. 55
We are the cause of all this drunkenness, the temper- ance movement is a failure, and always must be a failure, and ought to be so.
I will prove that Cliristianity is a failure in the same way. The famous unbelievers, down from Voltaire, through Mill, to the last infidel critic, prove Christianity, by the same sort of argument, to be a failure and the cause of most of the evils that burden us. Exaggerate all the evil that exists, especially those vices that will never wholly die while human nature remains what it is ; belittle and cast in- to shade all the progress that has been made ; dwell with zest on the new forms of sin that each age contributes to the infamy of the race ; keep your eyes firmly in the back of your head, and insist that there's nothing equal to what we had in old times — not even the snow-storms or the St. Michael pears — and the thing is done.
Before our movement began three-quarters of the farms of Massachusetts were sold under the hammer for rum- debts. You could not enter a public- house in country or city, of the first-class or the smaller ones, except through a grog-shop. Their guests felt mean if they did not at din- ner order some kind of wine, and often ordered it when they did not wish it. Now the grog -room is hidden from sight ; men slink into it ; and not more than one man in ten at the most fashionable hotels, and not one in fifty in common inns, orders wine at dinner. Then the sideboard of every well- to-do house was covered with liquors, and every guest was urged to drink -, the omission to do which would have been held a gross neglect, if not an insult. No man was buried without a lavish use of hquor ; no stage stopped without the traveller being thought mean if he did not help the house by taking a drink. Now one may travel hundreds of miles on rails which allow no liquor in their stations. Every farmer furnished drink to his men; famous doctors went drunk to their patients; the first lawyer in the Middle States was not singular when he held on by the rail in or- der to stand and argue, half-drunk, to the Supreme Court of the United States ; rich men saw to it that every clergy- toan who attended a convention was plied with wine ; and
56 Moderation vs. Total AJjstinence.
the preacher of the Concio ad Clerum was fed on brandy- punch to be on a more exhilarated level than his hearers. If a man caught sight of a grog-shop, he was as sure he had arrived in a Christian land as the shipwrecked sailor felt when he got sight of a gibbet. Dr. Crosby then had every maD, lay and clerical, on his side in construing the Bible j whereas now we are in a healthy majority. Then a few scattered temperance tracts, hke rockets In a night, only betrayed how utterly the world was in the desert on this subject; now a temperance literature, crowded with facts, strong in argument, filled with testimonies from men of the first eminence in every walk of hfe, in every department of science and hterature, challenges and defies all comers. Then the idea of total abstinence was not so much denied as wholly unknown; now, if New England were polled to-day, our majority would be overwhelming. Then all men held liquors to be healthy and useful; now seventy men out of a hundred, whatever their practice, deny that claim, and the upper classes, well informed and careful of health, lead the way in giving up the use. Then the medical profession waded in the same slough of indulgence and ignorance as their patients ; now the verdict of the profession is undoubt- edly and immeasurably against the use of intoxicating drinks at all in health, and but seldom in favor of it in disease.
We have driven the indulgence in drink into hiding places, and for the first time the Legislature is obliged and wilhng to prohibit the use of screens to hide rum-drinkers from the public view they dread. Is not this skulking evidence of weakening ^
Sixty years ago the Legislature passed a few formal laws perfunctorily, and dismissed the whole subject. But ten years ago Liquor gathered at the State-House all the ex- perts of social science, the lights of the medical profession, all the famous science from Harvard College, and retained an ex-governor, at vast expense, to marshal this host, in order to resist Dr. Miner and a few Bible-twisters, whom Liquor seemed somehow to dread, although they had dis- gusted and repelled all the sensible men in the State.
Of course this was before Dr. Crosby had communicated
Reply of Wendell Pliillips, 57
to the liquor-dealers the comforting fact that the temperance movement was a failure, and that they ougbt to be delighted with it and with Dr. Miner and his Bible-twisters, and that they were delighted with it, whether they themselves knew it or not !
And far above all, set on a hill, a great State, Maine, challenges the world to show her equal in an intelligent, law-abiding, -economical, and self-restraining population; while smaller examples cluster round her, here and across the Atlantic ; and the haughty Episcopal Church, hardest and last to be roused to any reform, has put on record in its Convocations the most convincing and the most instructive array of facts and evidence on total abstinence that any ec- clesiastical body ever contributed to social science. It is the ocean-wave kissing the Alps. You would weary if I continued the summary.
Even if the statistics showed that the amount of liquor consumed increased as fast as our population and wealth do — which they do not show, but just the contrary — that would not be sufficient evidence to prove that our movement has failed. The proper comparison is between what we were in 1820 and what tve sliould have been noiv had not some be- neficent agency arrested our downward progress. These evils, left to themselves, increase by no simple addition, but in cubic ratio.
Does Dr. Crosby fancy this active movement and vast mass of fact, opinion, and testimony can exist without bene- ficial influence in an age ruled by brains ? He does not, then, underslar.d moral forces or his own times. When, twenty-five years ago, Frederick Douglas was painting the anti-slavery movement as a failure unless we would load our guns, Sojourner Truth asked: ''Frederick, is God dead ?" When I see the doctor's unbelief in the efficacy of the moral power and the weight of this mass of conviction, I am tempted to ask him : " Is your God dead "? "
Dr. Crosby closes by stating his plan and panacea. It is a regulated license. I will not delay you by criticising his or any other license plan. The statute-books in forty States are filled with the abortions of thousands of license laws that
58 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence.
were Dever executed, and most of them were never intended to be. We have as good a license law in this State as was ever devised, and yet it leaves such an amount of gross^ de- fiant, unblushing grog-selling as discourages Dr. Crosby and leads him to think nothing at all has been done. His own city, with license laws, is yet so ruled and plundered by rum that timid statesmen advise giving up republicanism and borrowing a leaf from Bismarck to help us.
License has been tried, on the most favorable circumstances and with the best backing, for centuries — ten or twelve, at least; yet Dr. Crosby stands confounded before the result. We have never been allowed to try prohibition, except in one State and in some small circuits. Wherever it has been tried it has succeeded. Friends who know claim this. Enemies, who have been for a dozen years ruining their teeth by biting files, confess it by their lack of argument and lack of facts, except when they invent them. With such a record may we not say that, even if we have no claim to be considered Crosby Christians, we have a right to ask one fair trial of what has, at least, never been, like license, demonstrated a hundred times to be a failure ?
A REPLY
TO
Dr. Crosby's ''Calm View of Temperance."
By MES. J. E. FOSTER, of Iotta.
Afi Address delivered in Tretnont Temple^ Boston^ February 14, 1881.
WHEN Zenobia, the Queen of the East, rode upon her white steed at the head of her armies to save Pal- myra from the grasp of Roman avarice, she needed no new anointing. Palmyra was in danger and she was queen ; she looked from the glittering domes of her proud capital to the hosts of Rome under its proud Aurelian, and, urged by royal impulse, she went forth. The women of America are queens, every one ; from early girlhood they have been taught from pulpit, press, and platform that by virtue of their motherhood they held undisputed sway over the home.
This kingdom in the home is undisputed by the pure and good. It is assailed by intemperance, it is threatened by the drinking customs of society, and in defence of the home woman has engaged in distinctive temperance work.
Five weeks ago to-day a cultured Christian gentleman, the head of a great educational institution, a man called of God to preach the Gospel of bis Son, and set apart by the Christian Church to do that work, stood on this platform and assailed the fundamental principles which underlie our defence of ourselves in this work and our appeals to all good people to aid us by their co-operation, or at least by their
59
60 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
good wishes. Good and able men from this and other plat- forms, from many Christian pulpits and through the press, have answered what of argument the gentleman's address contained ; they have mourned its arrogance and rebuked its assaults. They have done so on broad and general grounds, not in a spirit of partisanship or in defence of any narrower interests than those involved in the weal of our common humanity. I come to-day by invitation of the Boston Woman's Christian Temperance Union, by the per- mission of these honorable gentlemen, and by your suffer- ance, to review the address from a woman's standpoint, and to set forth the causes which have led the women of this land to take up arms against the drinking customs of so- ciety.
Honored as I am, kind friends, by your presence, and real- izing in what city I am, 'tis not you alone I see, but the faces of women in homes all over the land; some of these are beautiful as yours j some are very bare ; some are among the hills of the East and some on the prairies of the West ; some of them are sitting by the cradles of little children, some are bending over the washtub or before the sewing- machine. There is despair in some of their faces, sorrow in all, for they
WEEP FOR THEIR CHILDREN,
and will not be comforted because they are not, or, madden- ed by long-continued abuse and neglect, they have at last died to all joy or comfort, and only wait for the grave to give the rest that rum has cheated them out of here. These are not all I see, for close among the throng is the great com]3any of husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers who are not wholly lost, who only circle in the outer rim of this ter- rible maelstrom of strong drink^but as the years go on will be carried faster and faster, nearer and nearer, to the vortex from which there is no escape; and near every one of these some woman watches, some woman waits. I hear the plead- ing voice, I see the tear-dimmed eye, I can almost feel the feverish breath upon my cheek. And little children, too, are in the foreground of this scene, not plump and rosy, not
Reply of Mrs. J. E. Foster, 61
gay and merrj^ with the rush of childhood, but quiet and pitiful, with pale faces, and thin lips, and frightened mien ; old are they, though only a few summers have their little barks been afloat on life's rough sea. These, kind friends, are my constituents ; 'tis for them I speak to-day.
The remarkable address of the reverend gentleman con- tains but a few salient points:
^' The Bible does not teach total abstinence " ;
^' The results of the investigations of science do not de- mand it " ;
'' Human experience does not justify our plea for it" ;
Distilled liquors should be excluded from '• common use as a beverage both by pubUc opinion and by law " ;
The use of vinous and malt liquors should be under '^ wise regulation " ;
And that the great body of temperance advocates have employed very questionable, and in many instances highly objectionable, methods in the ^' total-abstinence crusade or propaganda.''^
These are the strategic points in this latest marshalling of forces against the home.
TEEASON" AGAINST THE STATE
consists in levying war against it, in adhering to its ene- mies or giving aid and comfort to them. The great chan- cellor would not make war upon the home ; too often has he, in the performance of the duties of his sacred ofiQce, and by virtue of authority vested in him by the State, laid the foundations of the home at the holy marriage altar ; too often have his hands been laid upon the heads of httle babes whom proud and thankful parents have early brought to the altars of religion ; too often has he carried the comforts of our holy Christianity to homes where the sable wing of the death angel had left its dark shadow. Oh ! no ; he, a minister of the Lord Jesus— he would not assail the home, he would not levy war against it; but he has given aid and comfort to its enemies, and that is treason to the home. All over the land the hosts of sin rejoice ; in the grog-shops they laugh and drmk to his health ; in the fashion-
62 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence,
able club they smile and praise tbe wiue of which they taste ^' in moderation " ; in the home the poor eld mother says to her wayward boy : " Promise me, son, sign this pledge, that I may be sure you'll never drink again," and he replies : "'Tis unmanly, mother, a strait-jacket, and beneath my self-respect." From breaking hearts there comes the cry : '^ Noble sir, you have given aid and comfort to our enemies. Had it been an enemy we could have borne it, had it been he that hated us we would have hid ourselves ; but it was thou, our guide and our acquaintance. We took sweet coun- sel together, and walked to the house of God in company." Surely we are wounded in the house of our friends.
Does the Bible teach total abstinence, directly or implied- ly ? We answer, in both ways. For the critical exegesis of the passages which in our King James's translation are ren- dered wine we refer the honest enquirer to the publications of the National Temperance Society, of which Hon. Wm. E. Dodge, of New York, is president, and which are supported by many eminent Christian ministers. This Society has col- lected the testimony of Hebrew and Grreek scholars as to the meaning of the terms used ; the weight of testimony is in support of the position taken by the leading temperance ad- vocates of this country and of Great Britain — namely, that many words are used in the original tongues to express the many kinds of wine used in Bible times; that the words translated ^' wine," when it is spoken of as " good," and as typical of God's grace, and a thing to be desired, refer to the grape still hanging on the vine, or to its expressed juice pre- served from contact with the air, and thus free from fermen- tation; that the wine that is a '^ mocker," that ^' moveth itself aright," the strong drink that '^ is raging," is given in other words, as indeed it was quite another thing ; that in pas- sages where no condemnation or commendation of the wine is given, and where a generic term is used, which may, with no violence to the rules of interpretation, be understood to mean fermented or unfermented, then the harmony of Scrip- tures, the spirit of their teachings, must be studied, that the narrative may be rightly understood or the admonition re- ceived. This *Hwo-wine theory" is not a trumped-up
Reply of Mrs. J. E. Foster. 63
'^ Scripture-twisting" to suit the purposes of special pleaders, or a '^ begging of the whole question," but is a calm view of the real meaning of terms used by men writing as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.
But to the common English reader, who h^s not facilities of critical study at hand, there comes the argument of
THE GENERAL SPIRIT AJSJi TEACHING
of God's word. Drunkenness is everywhere denounced, even the looking upon it (the wine) " when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright"; the curses pronounced upon drunken nations and upon him who giveth his neighbor drink j the fearful setting forth of the desolations of that people when priest and prophet err through strong drink, who*' err in vision and stumble in judgment/' Surely Isaiah's prophetic soul must have seen in vision this year of grace !
Did our Saviour use fermented wine ? Let us walk softly here ; let us not toss about opinions and arguments as children at play toss the snow-balls their own hands have made. He was our example. He came to fulfil the law. He wrought his first miracle at Cana to show forth his glory. He ate the Passover with his disciples, wherein nothing that had ferment of any sort might be allowed ; 'twas thus he instituted the sacrament of the Lord's Sup[)er, preserved in the church '4n remembrance" of him through all the cen- turies since he went away. The very essence of the religion he taught is self-denial, self-renunciation for the good of others. But the temperance that is at the top round of the ladder of Christian graces enumerated by the apostle is not such as Dr. Crosby would fain have us believe is the con- summation of all manhness; true temperance is the moderate use of good things and total abstinence from bad things. Alcoholic drinks are *' bad things " — bad according to Scrip- ture and science, and bad as shown by the testimony of hu- man experience. How a man set apart to study God in his word and in his works, and then to lead the people as he himself shall be led, guided always by the great problems of
64 Moderation vs. Total Abstine7ice.
human destiny — how lie can teach that the Bible looks with any degree of allowance upon even.moderate drinking is ex- plainable upon no other. theory than that the old Scripture is again illustrated: ''Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging, and tojiosoever is deceived thereby is not iviseP
Again : Do the investigations of science demand total abstinence ? We answer : '^ Yes." No erudition is needed to show the sin and shame of drunkenness ; everybody ac- cepts the truth.
THE EEAL NATTJEE OE ALCOHOLIC DEINXS
is not so well understood. Science, rightly interpreted, is always the handmaid of religion and the servant of man ; she has for half a century cried — not with the pleading tones of the philanthropist, or the trumpet-blasts of the watchman on Zion's walls, or the clear bugle-notes of the reformer, but with the hard, unfeeling voice of cold intellec- tuality— ^' It is a poison ! it is a poison !'' Others have an- swered: '' 'Tis the abuse and not the use that makes such sad havoc with our poor humanity; if people only would stop when they have had enough there would be no need of all this onslaught." Again science answers : '' One drop is too much." It has been clearly shown that alcohol is not changed by chemical action in the laboratory of the human stomach ; it did not itself contain any of the elements found in the fruit from whose decay it had its origin.
A great chemist says :
*' Fermentation is nothing else than putrefaction of a sub- stance containing no nitrogen. It is excited by the contact of all bodies the elements of which are in an active state of decomposition. It continues till the original compounds are wholly destroyed" (Turner's Chemistry).
Here I have another eminent witness :
'' It did not require college training," writes Dr. A. H. Mc- Murty, ^'but merely my sense of smell to tell me, what chemical analysis has so often demonstrated, that alcohol comes out of the body as it goes into it, which is a pretty suggestive hint that the body wants to have nothing to do with it, but treats it as an intruder, as it treats every other
y of Mrs. J. E. Foster. 65
foreign body, and gets rid of it as soon as possible " (Dr. A. H. McMurty in Medical Teynperance Journal, January, 1871, p. 89).
IT DOES KOT KEPAIR WASTE
and supply tissue, for it contains none of the elements of which the body is built up. I will quote another expert witness : '^ It has been admitted by those who differ from total-abstainers most largely that it cannot be proved that alcohol is able to evolve force in the body under any circumstances, or that it is capable of being changed or transmuted In any way within the system into an element of physical well-being" (''Stimulants and Strength," by Dr. H. S. Patterson).
<' When alcohol is taken in small quantities repeated dai- ly, the individual usually slowly increases in weight, not from increased nutrition, but from retardiug the waste and retaining the old atoms longer in the tissues" (" Verdict of Science," by Dr. N. S. Davis, page 6).
Alcoholic drinks do not promote digestion. Dr. Cheyne says that nothing more effectively hinders digestion than al- cohol ; that many hours, and even a whole night, after a de- bauch in wine it is common enough to reject a part orwhole of the dinner undigested. I hold that those who abstain from alcohol have the best digestion, and that more instan- ces of indigestion, of flatulency, of acidity, and of depres- sion of mind and body are produced by alcohol than by any other single cause ( ''Results and Eesearches on Alcohol," by Dr. B. W. Richardson, p. 13).
Alcoholic drinks do not protect the system from cold.
" Like ether and chloroform, its presence diminishes the sensibility of the nervous system and brain, thereby render- ing the individual less conscious of all outward and exterior impressions. The alcohol does not relieve the individual from cold by increasing his temperature, nor from heat by cooling him, nor from weakness and exhaustion by nourish- ing bis tissues, nor yet from affliction by increasing nerve- power ; but simply by diminishing the sensibihty of his nerve- structures, and thereby lessening his consciousness of im-
66 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
presslons, whether from cold or heat or pain " (Dr. Davis in "Verdict of Science," p. 5). The use of alcoholic drinks is the
DIEECT CAUSE OE MUCH DISEASE,
and renders the system unable to resist the attacks of mala- dies -which might otherwise be cured by the physician's skill.
" It is the nature of intoxicating liquors to produce the disease just described [vinomania, or craving for drink]. Hence all who drink them regularly to any extent, even though it be within the so-called bounds of moderation, must expect to suffer; indeed, there are very few moderate drinkers who do not siiffer to a greater or less degree from this disease " (" Bacchus Dethroned/' p. 21).
And yet another witness on that point : '^ I have no hesi- tation in attributing a very large proportion of some of the most painful and dangerous maladies which come under my notice, as those which every medical man has to treat, to the ordinary and daily use of fermented drink taken in quantities which are conventionally deemed moderate " (Sir Henry Thompson, Tract 113).
Kev. Sydney Smith, one of the founders of the Edinburgh Bevieiv, says : ^^ Let me state some of the good arising from abstaining from all fermented liquors. First, sweet sleep (having never known what sweet sleep was). I sleep like a baby or ploughboy. If I wake, no needless terrors, no black visions of life, but pleasing hopes and pleasing recollec- tions " (Bell's ^' Report,'^ p. 47).
' ' It is well known to the physicians of Mobile and New Or- leans that the victims of yellow-fever are chiefly those who drink freely " (Dr. Drake, of Cincinnati, quoted in Reid's '' Cyclopaedia," p. 522).
It— the use of alcohohc drinks— deteriorat es the quality of the human race by the
OPEKATION OF THE LAWS OF HEREDITY,
which visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation. '^ No vice is more hereditary than intemperance. I be-
BcpJy of Mrs. J. E. Foster. G7
lieve the mere habit of intemperaDce in the individual rarely produces this condition [insanity], but that it is usu- ally a result of the baneful heritage entailed on their de- scendants by intemperate progenitors; the vice of one gen- eration becoming the weakness of the next, liable to be evoked at any time by [indulgence in] the parental vice, and thus bringing a double curse" (''Dr. Yellowlees," p. 80).
'' Not one of the transmitted wrongs, physical or mental, is more certainly passed on to those yet unborn than the wrongs that are inflicted by alcohol " (' ' Cantor Lectures," p. 178).
" Lord Shaftesbury, having acted as Chairman of the Com- mission of Lunacy in England for sixteen years, says that fully six-tenths of all the cases of insanity in that country arise from their habits of intemperance " (Dr. Lees's Prize Essay).
Dr. Crosby claims that alcohol is '' nature's provision." Science says :
'' Alcohol is a purely artificial product, obtained only by carefully carried (sut chemical methods. It exists nowhere in nature" (Dr. Niel Carmichael, in Medical Temperance Journal, April, 1880, p. 125).
Dear friends, does not scientific investigation teach total abstinence ?
Again : Does human experience justify our plea for total abstinence f
THE TESTIMONY OF HUMAN EXPEEIENCE
is that all drunkards come from the ranks of moderate drink- ers. The testimony of science is that alcoholic drinks do not supply any want of the body when in health. The mildest tone, then, in which human experience speaks is, " Alcoholic drinks as a beverage, even in moderation, do no good; they are likely to do great harm." Thus total abstinence is the only ground of absolute safety. I do not need at length to review the learned doctor's talk about the pledge ; for years it has been an honored instrument in the restraint of the young who have never learned to drink, and a declaration
68 Moderation vs. Total Ahstineiice,
of independence to tbe slaves of appetite. His objections to it that ic is '^ unmanly ^''^ that it is a '^substitute for principle," that it is " always an injury and never a help to a true morality," need only to be stated to carry their own refutation.
From the pledge-book of John B. Gough ; from the mul- titudes who knelt before the cross, and from the lips of the good priest. Father Mathew, took the pledge; from the Bethel and the Cook mission in your own city ; from Jerry McAuley's mission in New York; from Farwell Hall in Chi- cago ; from prayer-rooms all over tlie land, where poor ap- petite-bound souls are helped, by warm appeal, by earnest expostulation, by loving sympathy, to make another asser- tion of manliness and in honest effort to shake ofi" the demon drink ; from multitudes of children in our Sunday-schools and Bands of Hoijc, and round our firesides, who have pro- mised they would never drink, and signed the pledge with the unskilled hand of childhood; yes, from lonely rooms where repentant sons and self accusing husbands, with honest hearts and manly purpose, have before God, and to the soul next them here below, taken a solemn promise never again to touch, taste, or handle the accursed stuff — from these comes this testimony : '' The pledge has been to us a help ; it was the door to a new and better life."
In a little book which I have not here to-day, but which I thought I had, are certain memoranda of temperance in- formation which I carry for my own use. There is a pledge; very few names are in it — not more than fifty. I do not use it in public meetings, but merely for chance occa- sions; but I could tell you many a history of haroic effort, of terrible struggle that is recorded here. There are names of men and women and of little children. One of them is pi'inted by a little fellow who could n<>t write, a child in a beautiful home whose hospitality was once offered me ; his mother wanted him to promise me, as he promised her, that he would never drink, and so his name is theie, printed be- cause he could not write it. Was that mother putting that boy in a '' strait-jacket " ? Oh ! no ; she was putting around him a bulwark that might save him. Oh ! the joy the
Reply of Mrs. J. E. Poster. r;0
pledges in this little book have brought to the hearts of those whose names are here ; the joy they have brought to those to whom they were so dear ! Kind friends, I know a womaa, whose home is in the West, who is the mother of a son dear to her as her very life. She has done the best she could with him, but now he is away at an institution of learning; he is near to the great city of Chicago, with its three thousand grog-shops. She knows he is under almost continual fire from these intrenchments of the armies of Bacchus and Gambrinus. She consecrated him in infancy to Grod, and he has for himself acknowledged the claims of our holy Cliristianity and the duties of the church; but years ago he signed the pledge, and the promise on that bit of paper where, in his childish hand, the words are written, is very precious to his mother, and has been a safeguard to him. Oh ! no, Dr. Crosby ; human experience testifies that it is a good thing to sign the x)ledge.
Not all will keep it? No, there are many repulses in the great battle of human life. Terrible the conflict is, and some shall fall and fall, and yet at last be victors. In the State-House yonder are kept the flags carried by Massa- chusetts regiments in the war. Some of them are bright and clean, and could have seen little service ; others are faded and torn ; others are little else than the bare stafi" from which the beautiful colors once waved, but they are there noiv, saved from the smoke and shot of battle. They have been in the hands of the enemy, and they were some- times trailed in the dust by traitors ; bat they were rescued, and are now more precious to this commonwealth because saved at such terrible cost. Some of those that sign the pledge, and break it again and again, and try again and again— these shall come up at last, '^ saved tJiough as hy fire:'
Yes, human experience does justify our plea for the total- abstinence pledge.
Again Dr. Crosby says: '' Distilled liquors should be ex- cluded from common use as a beverage both by pubhc opi- nion and by law." In this we heartily agree with the learned gentleman ; but when he says '^ the use of vinous
70 Moderation vfi. Total Abstinence.
and malt liquors should be under wise regulations " we de- mur.
THESE MILDER LIQUOES
are intoxicating in proportion as they contain much or little of the poison alcohol. They are not drunk for the grape, the barley, the hops; these could be procured in other forms in greater pmity, and at much less cost. 'Tis the stimulation of the alcohol the drinker wants. And the exclusion of these vinous and malt liquors by '^ public opinion and by law " is justified not alone because they do themselves in- toxicate, but because experience shows that their use leads to the use of distilled liquors, which even Dr. Crosby admits should be excluded because of their known deleterious results.
What shall the State do in its relation to this traffic ? It cannot enforce total abstinence by law — that would be sumptuary legislation and contrary to the spirit of our civi- lization. The law does not deal with individuals for the individual's good ; it does not regulate private acts, unless such acts directly interfere with the rights of others. It does not enforce all the claims of the moral law, though it must never operate in violation of any of its mandates. The Bible says, '^ Thou shalt not lie." A man may knowingly and willingly deceive; he may in his heart purpose and plan, and his lips may speak the wicked lie, and yet the law be unable to touch him. But if he lies on paper ; if he pro- mises to pay or to do, and does not pay or does not do, the law steps in and says: ''You must do what you said you would " — not that the man may be made pure in heart and right before God, but that civil society may be protected from failure in its commercial or general interests.
Society does not say a man shall not drink liquor. He may drink, and drink, and drink, and unless he staggers in the street or lies in the gutter— unless, by his being in the condition of dnmkenness, he becomes a pubhc nuisance — the law does not interfere, and then not for his own sake but for the sake of society, that is offended by the sight of his drunkenness or endangered by his possible and probable
Reply of Mrs. J. E. Foster, 71
acts caused by drunkenness. Political- economists tell us that a large proportion of the pauperism, insanity, and crime of the country is caused by intemperance, and it uses such methods as it thinks proper to suppress intemperance. 'Tis the right of self-protection that inheres in the body pohtic, just as it is the first law in individual life.
THE EIGHT OF THE STATE
to regulate or prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxi- cating liquors has been again and again affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States. It is not denied by any able jurist, though much talk is had as to the propriety of the exercise of that right.
0 dear friends ! when you are considering this great question of temperance legislation, make people state ex- actly what they mean. Call for some specific statement, and do not try to answer till you get it. I well remember a learned gentleman, whose name is familiar to you, in whose home I was and to whom I recited in algebra, and I some- times was wonderfully puzzled, and would go to him and say: "I wish you would help me; I don't understand it." ' ' Well, what don't you understand ? " he would ask me. But all I knew was, the whole thing was in a mist. ^' Well, my dear," he would say, '' when I know just what it is you don't understand, then I will try to help you." And when I had found out exactly what I didn't know, I found I knew the problem before me. So in this matter, when our opponents stand and proclaim against prohibitory legislation, because they are puzzled about this or that, make them stand and state just what they mean; and when they have stated the case they will be willing to leave the platform which they themselves have laid down.
1 said the Supreme Court of the United States had over and over again confirmed the right of the State to prohibit.
Justice McLean has said : " A license to sell an article, foreign or domestic, as a merchant, or innkeeper, or vic- tualler, is a matter of police and revenue, tvithin the power of the State " (5 Howard, 589). And again : '^ It is the settled construction of every regulation of commerce that, under
'72 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
the sanction of its general laws, no person can introduce into a community malignant diseases, or anything which contaminates its morals or endangers its safety " (Ibid.)
There are lawa that keep malignant fevers out, and to prevent boats with pestilence on board coming up from New Orleans. There are laws against the circulation of obscene books and pictures ; and, on the same general principles, there are laws against the manufacture and sale of Intoxi- cating liquors. What more do you ask in support of my theory ? And notice, dear friends, I am not reading from the enthusiastic appeal of some temperance orator; I am not quoting to you the words of some special pleader ; I am not using the words of the beloved lady who is our queen in this temperance work, because they might be overdrawn, but I am using
THE LANGUAGE OF THE SUPEEME COUET
of the United States. You cannot go behind those returns.
''If the foreign articles be injurious to the health or morals of the community, a State may, in the exercise of that great and comprehensive police power which lies at the foundation of its prosperity, prohibit the sale of it." That you will find in the 5th Howard, on page 592. And again : " No one can claim a license to retail spirits as a matter of right " (5 Howard, page 592).
Saloon-keepers sometimes talk about their rights, and say the State has no right to prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors. But, as you see, the law says : "No one can claim a license to retail spirits as a matter of right."
And again I quote from the same authority : ''If any State deems the retail and internal traffic in ardent spirits injurious to its citizens, and calculated to produce idleness, vice, or debauchery, I see nothing in the Constitution of the United States to prevent it from regulating or restraining the traffic, or from prohibiting it altogether, if it thinks proper."
The clear brain of Massachusetts once said that it had the right, and it did prohibit it, and the State of Iowa says it
tte2oty of Mrs. J. E, Foster. 73
now. (Applause.) That cheer came in too soon. We pro- hibit distilled liquors, but we let in wine and beer a la Crosby. Justice McLean says any State may prohibit this traffic if it deems it " calculated to produce idleness, vice, or de- bauchery."
IS IT so?
Ask the gentlemen who preside in your courts and repre- sent the judiciary of Massachusetts; ask the honorable Mayor of Boston ; ask those gentlemen who know and are competent witnesses, and may be brought here and sworn, if it does not produce '' idleness, vice, or debauchery." Yes, yes, yes! Close the saloons of Boston, and you may about clear out its police courts. Close the saloons of Boston, and a large number of men who walk about the streets, dressed in blue coats and brass buttons, in a splendid state of preservation, may be dispensed with. Last evening I spoke in one of your suburban towns, and the minister who presented me in his pulpit passed to me a report in which it was stated that a day or two before a young man of twenty-two— just ready, you see ; the law couldn't sell to him until he was twenty-one, so he was just ready, a fresh and beautiful victim— had been sold three glasses of brandy, taken to the police-station, and there had died. Now, dear friends, I suppose his mother, if he has one, is broken- hearted to-day ; I suppose his sisters, if he has any, are broken-hearted to-day ; and I suppose his young wife, if he had one— why, the life has gone out of her heart to-day. But never mind about that ; the State does not consider women's hearts — not at all. What does the State consider ? That it has lost a citizen ; that if that man had lived he would have paid for his bringing-up. Do you say that is a rough, cold way to look at it ? I know it; but we are talk- ing coldly to-day ; we are taking calm views of things, we are. The State regards every citizen as of so much value to it. Why ? Because he is able to increase the State's wealth, whether by labor of hand or brain; he is a pro- ducer of wealth, and when he dies he is so much lost to the State, so much value gone out of it ; and hence the State,
74 Moderation vs. Total Ahstineyice,
to protect itself from this loss through 'idleness, debauch- ery, or vice," may put away the liquor-trafiQc and suppress it throughout her borders.
IN THE DOG ORDINANCES
of great cities is a familiar illustration of the exercise of this police power.
I want to maintain my position as a member of the great company of temperauce reformers going up and down the land, and so I will tell you a story. Away out en the prairie there was a woman who lived in a little town. She had two boys, and during one hot summer — one awful summer, so hot it was on the prairies that they came near burning up — a dog in the town bit her boys and they died. And the woman grieved, and her husband grieved ; and she went to her neighbors, and they sympathized with her, and they had it written up in the paper, so that everybody heard about it and everybody was sorry. A woman in a town ten miles away heard about it, and her s\mpathy with the woman was increased by her solicitude for her own boys — for she had two boys — and she thought : We have dogs in our town, and my bojs might be bitten the same as those others, and die the same way they died. Of course her sympathies were more intense by her sohcitude for herself. She was so alarmed and distressed that she talked with her husband about it. Of course she did that. It is the first thing a woman does, anyhow. Not because Paul told her to do it — not that. She did it simply because it is woman's nature, to do it, and if Paul had had a wife he never would have written that ; he would have known she would do it anyhow.
So this woman went to her busband in great solici|||jde and sorrow, and said : '^ My dear, did you hear about those boys over there ? " and he replied, '' Yes, my dear, I did; isn't it dreadful r' '' Well," said she, ''I should think it was dreadful that two boys in one house should be bitten by a little, miserable dog. Just think of it ! Are you not afraid, John, that our boys may be bitten?" '' Well, Mary," said he, ''I have thought about it, and it is a perfectly awful thing
Reply of Mrs. J. E. Foster. ^5
to think of, too.'^ '' Well, I should think so, I should think so," said she; and they talked and talked about it till she became distracted, and said, "John, don't you think any- thing can be done about it?" ''Well, I don't know,'' he said. '-It is one of the first principles of good government that a man's property must be protected, and if a man put his property into a dog the G-overnment must take care of him and protect his property." " But is a dog more precious than a boy ?'' '' Well, no, of course not, Mary ; but I do not know" — and he talks, and talks, and talks; you know it, women, you have heard it all. Fiijally, getting no com- fort by discussing it, and in her great solicitude, she goes across the street to another woman. And this other woman has two boys, and those women talked and talked, because their interests were ommon. Gentlemen, we women have so many common interests — more than you have ! A wo- man's station in Ufe, her surroundings, do not influence her motherhood as a man's surroundings influence him.
These two women talk on the ground of a common inte- rest in their children, and get no satisfaction from each other, because they can do nothing but talk. And the first woman tells what her husband says, and the second tells what her husband said to her. and the testimony of the two husbands is brought up in that little committee of two.
I won't burden you by telling you more than that they talked, and talked, and talked, and gained no satisfaction anywhere ; and so they went down-town to the mayor of that little town, and they talked to him about it, and he ex- pressed greit concern and sympathy with the u'omen in their solicitude for their children Be was a wonderful gentleman. I am mistaken ; it was not the mayor, it was the chief of police.
Let us remove the scene to the office of the chief of police. He talked with them about their concern and alarm for their boys, and said (what men always say when we go to them with our troubles! : ^' Xow, dear ladies, we sympathize with you; we know how you must feel ; of course you have great solicitude — of couise you have; and it would be a fearful thing if any dog in our town should go mad and bite your
'% Moderation vs. Total Abstinence,
boys " And tbey Ihink tlicy k;io\v that just iibout as well as the chief, how terrible that thing would be.
They talk and talk, aud ask for an ordinance requiring the police of the city to shoot any dog not muzzled. He re- plies just about as the husbands talked, saying that this could not be allowed ; a proper and good thing, aud yet he is not quite sure about it. And they, becoming weary, for they have talked about it a good while this time, begin to cry.
Women often do so, gentlemen, and you know you do not like to have them. This man did not like to have women cryiug around, and he said : '' Ladies, I have given you my syni[)athy and expressed my solicitude, but, if you will ex- cuse me, let me give you a little advice." 1 hey thought that comfort was coming now. He says: ''Dear ladies, your concern for your boys is justifiable; but have you thought of this : you could do better service in your home than here ? Have you thought of training your boys proper- ly, and telling them about this disease of hydrophobia, how a dog looks when he is going mad ? If you teach your chil- dren at home there is no danger of hydrophobia." They looked at one another, and said : " We have taught our boys in the home ; we thought of that years ago ; we knew what hydrophobia does, and so we have taught our boys always of the terrible danger if bitten by a mad dog. We have told our childi-en to run whenever they see a dog ; but, sir, the dogs are everywhere : they are on the road to school, on the road to the church ; and the only way to do, it seems to us, is to put the dogs out of the way." And you know that those women were right, were they not, gentlemen?
But how is it when women come to supervisors, common councils, and legislatures, and ask for laws to prevent their sons and brothers and husbands from being led down to drunkards' graves ?
WHAT IS THE REPLY WE HEAR?
Not always, gentlemen, for some of you are always gene- rous and noble, and the number is increasing every day, but some men say to us women : " If you do your duty in your
Reply of Mrs. J. E. Foster. 77
home and teach your boys what a terrible thing intempe- rance is, if you throw around them the surroundings and comforts of a beautiful home, they will never go astray."
0 gentlemen ! tell that to the women of this land who are the mothers of the sixty thousand who went down last year. Some of those mothers were as true and faithful as your mother was to you; but they went down, slain by riMU, tempted by the saloon and the open grog-shop, and it is the very refinement of cruel y for men to say to women that if they did their duty in their homes there would be no trouble from intemperance. We have done the best we could, and now we want you to help us.
But I must hasten. This pohce power of which I have spoken can say to the rumseller : '< You shall not make, you shall not sell." This power to which I have called your at- tention is in the State, not in the general government ; and for a moment let us consider the relations of the general government to the liquor-traffic in the State. The Constitu- tion of the United States gives to Congress certain powers. It has no other. Among those powers the pohce power is not to be found. That rests in the State, not in the general government ; the relation of the general government to the liquor-traffic is a purely commercial relation. It does not deal with the traffic as the State governments do in sup- pressing the evils of intemperance. Not at all. The gene- ral government does not care about the evil of intemperance ; it only deals with the traffic for the purposes of revenue. It says money must be raised to run the machine, and it must be gotten from the commercial interests of the land ; and so it taxes certain articles of commerce.
It taxes whiskey and tobacco — and we are coming for your tobacco presently, gentlemen; we haven't time now, but we shall by and by. So the general government comes within the commjmwealth of Massachusetts, and says to the Med- ford men (I mean its rum makers) and to distillers every- where : " If you make rum you must pay so much per gallon as revenue to the government." It does not say : ''You can distil, or you can brew." It could not say that. The police power says that, and the police power is in the State, not in
78 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
the geoeral government. But you say : '' What does the man get! Isn't it a license!" It used to be called a li- cense, but it is not now. It is a special tax raised by the general government. When he pays his money he gets a paper saying that he has paid it. It is no protection to him against the State.
But you say: ''Does not the general government protect the importer?" It protects him while the liquors are in his possession in the origiaal package, or in the hands of ihe person to whom he has sold them, as long as the packages are unbroken ; but a package broken is never safe after the duties are paid upon it which admit of its introduction. Thus John Doe imported liquors to the value of $200,000, and paid his duties, and said : '' I am going to get my money back," and so opens his packages and draws off some liquors from the casks, and begins to sell ; but then Massachusetts comes in and says: "No, sir; you don't sell one glass of that liquor."
"■ Not when I have imported it f " " No." '' Not when 1 have paid the tax f " Never mind about that," the police power in the State says. He asks the question : *' Does not the right to im[)ort imply a right to sell ?" And the law answers: '' No, sir; it does not." " Cannot I sell the liquors I imported?" '' No, you cannot." ♦'Why?" ''Because the police power thinks you ought not to." It is a question of police power entirely within the jurisdiction of the com- monwealth. Let me give you authority. If I were before a court or a jury I would never i:et a judgment or a verdict if I did not give authorities, and as great interests are involved in the cause I plead to-day as in any case in any court of justice. Not one man is on trial for his life here to day, but our children, all of them.
A little while ago, in the performance of my professional duties, I sat by the side of a poor woman under sentence of death, she having been accused and convicted of the crime of murder. The Supreme Court granted her a new trial, and I was trying to save her from capital punishment.
But as I sat there that day with that poor woman at my side, there was the judge, there was the prosecutor for the
Rephj of Mrs, J. E, Foster. 79
State, all the machinery of civil law, following up that wo- man who was charged with having killed a man. And it was right it should be so; but when I thought that in that same State there were hundreds and thousands of men who were licensed by the State to do worse things than that woman did, I said : ^' This is not as it ought to be, not as it should be — not at all."
In support of the position I have taken, that the general government does not protect the liquor-trafBc after the original packages are broken, or after it has passed from the hands of the importer,
JUSTICE DAKEELS,
of the Supreme Court, said of imports that are cleared of all control of the government which permits their introduc- tion :
" They are like all other property of the citizen, and should be equally the subjects of domestic regulation and taxation, whether owned by an impoi'ter or his vender, or may have been purchased by cargo, package, bale, piece, or yard, or by hogsheads, casks, or bottles " (5 Howard, 614).
In answering the argument that the importer purchases the right to sell when he pays duties to the government, Justice Daniels continues to say :
"No such right as the one supposed is purchased by the im- porter, and no injury in any accurate sense is inflicted on him by denying to him the power demanded. He has not purchased and cannot purchase from the government that which it could not ensure to him — a sale independently of the laws and policy of the States " (5 Howard, 616).
The reason that Massachusetts does not put away its im- porters and wholesalers and retailers is because Massachu- setts don't want to. Massachusetts can do it. It is in the power of the State to do it, and that power is wholly legiti- mate. Then, if prohibition is the right of the State, how shall it prohibit ? What sort of a law shall take hold of it ? I am here this afternoon, gentlemen, to ask fov constitutional prohibition. That is the latest thought of our temperance workers. It is the conclusion to which they have come
80 Moderation vs. Total Aistiimice.
after long years of patient investigatioo. I ought to say, perhaps, t is the coDclusion to which many of them have come — to which the association which I represent has come.
REASONS FOR CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.
For as clear and concise a statement as I have been able to make allow me to call your attention to a tract prepared by myself and published by the National Temperance So- ciety of New York, eutitled '' Reasons for a Constitutional Amendment."
I. The province of free civil government is so to consoli- date and arrange the general sentiment and principles of the people, in a system of rules and regulations, as will se- cure individual protection and conserve the greatest good to the greatest number.
II. This system of rules and regulations is prescribed in what is known as the civil law. Civil law is either consti- tutional or statutory.
III. The constitution is the original statement of princi- ples and agreement of mutual obligations, with such amend- ments as the people from time to time may make.
IV. The statutes are ruJes and regulations in detail, set- ting forth the rights, duties, and remedies of the citizen under the constitution, and the mode of procedure by which these may be enforced.
Y. The constitution is adopted by the direct vote of the people, and can be amended or repealed by them alone. Statutes are made and repealed by the people's representa- tives— the Legislature.
VI. A universal sentiment prevails that intemperance is a gigantic evil. This sentiment, embodied in rules and regu- lations, has given diverse legislation concerning the liquor- traffic.
VII. The right of the State to regulate or prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors has been many times affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States.
VIII. The history of this legislation demonstrates that I)rohibition is the only legal remedy for the evils of intempe- rance—that it alone protects the individual and the State,
Reply of 3frs, J. E. Foster. 81
IX. Prohibiti m may be embodied in constitutions and statutes. If in tlie constitutions, it is the direct voice of the people, and can be repealed by them alone. If in a statute, it is the creation of the Legislature, and subject to the tricks of politicians, the devices of demagogues, and the general fluctuations of partisan interests.
X. All that can be said in favor of prohibitory statutes anplies with equal force to constitutional prohibition ; and, furthermore, constitutional law possesses dignity and perma- nence, and. being the voice of a majority of the voters of the State, will secure to itself a better enforcement than bare statutes can receive. All parties and factions are con- fessedly bound by constitutional law.
In short : 1. The province of government is to protect the individual and conserve the general good.
2. Government does this through tbe civil law, constitu- tional and statutory.
3. Constitutional law is organic.
4. Statutory law is functional.
5. The constitutional is the voice of the people; the stat- utes, of the Legishiture.
6. Intemperance is an evil demanding some sort of legis- lation.
7. The State has the right to regulate or prohibit.
8. Prohibition onli/ lemedies the evil.
9. Prohibition may be constitutional or statutory.
10. Constitutional prohibition is permanent and maybe enforced. Statutory prohibition is fluctuating and difficult of enforcement.
Application of the foregoing truths :
It is the duty of every temperance man, woman, and child to labor with head, hand, and heart for constitutional prohibition.
HOW DOES CONSTITUTIONAL LAW GEOW ?
At first reformers are thought to be wild. Boston once thought some of its reformers were wild. It would go on its kfiees to them now and wipe the dust from their shoes. By and by other men take up the cry, and many people
82 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence^
hear, and at last all have to listen, for there is such a din in the air. Then on and on the sentiment grows, and the peo- ple become educated on the subject, legislation is had upon it, and by thinking and thinking there is evolved out of thought the grand principle underlying it all, and then the people get ready to pat it into constitutional law. It was so in the matter of slavery, and I need only refer to it to recall it all to you. Gentlemen, some of you here to-day whose hairs are white remember how Boston mobbed you in the street, and stid the idea grew on and on, and a great many listened, thea eveiybody listCLcd, ai d then came legislation, and then war and the legislation (.f the sword, and then down into the Constitution went what ? The grand princi- ple that the cidor of a man's face did not make any difie- rence in his relation to the government. This matter of intemperance has been talked about and talked a»bout, and legislation has been tried in various forms, and the conclu- sion has at last been reached that the true line of attack upon the liquor-traffic is to educate the people until they are ready to put it into the Constitution. A constitutional law is permanent ; for the people make it and only the peo- ple can repeal it. It is dignified because it is the will of the people ; not the result of partisan influences, but an upris- ing of the whole people. Gentlemen, I am not here to talk about partisanship. I believe in party spirit. We must have it in order to secure the necessary friction and agita- tion that comes from contending party interests. The other day as I looked through the glass in your State-house and saw those old flags, tattered and torn with shot and shell, and soiled and ragged as they are, some of them with only the staff left, I said to myself: " I don't wonder that the men of Massachusetts love the party that carried the flag." I don't wonder at that, but I say when a great moral ques- tion is to be settled it is a good thing to get it out of party lines if you can. If it is submitted as constitutional law every individual man votes upon it, not as a Eepublican or a Democrat, but as a citizen.
But some objector says : " Well, you must get it through the Legislature anyhow." Surely. '' Then if you have a
Reply of Mrs, J. E. Foster. 83
Legislature that will submit it to the people, won't the same Legislature give you a statute ? " No, uot at all ! The same man that will vote to submit the question to you won't vote on the bare question. Why f Well, they don't like to do it. It is hard to bear responsibility, and the men whose heads are clear enough always to know what is right, or to think they know, which answers the same purpose, are very few.
I don't want to speak lightly of the average legislator; I wouldn't in this honored presence, surely, but I may speak of our Legislature away out West in Iowa. I find usually about three classes of men in that Legislature ; a fine Legisla- ture we have in Iowa. There were a few grand men, strong men, men that had convictions and souls, men whom the lusts of office could not kill, men whom the spoils of office could not buy, men who could stand and face a dema- gogue and damn his treacherous viUianies without winking; strong men these, who lived above the mists, but they were very few. They would vote right always, but they didn't count enough ; there were not enough of them. There was another class of men, clean men, well-shaved men, well-con- ditioned men, who didn't drink liquors and didn't go to sa- loons, and had no sympathy with the drinking customs of society, but somehow they didn't always vote right; they seemed to want to vote right, and when you talked to them you thought they were going to, but when the vote came they didn't. You couldn't seem to blame them. They swayed, and swayed, and swayed. They illustrated that principle in mechanics which is known as ^' the universal joint." Do yotiknow about it?
THE UNIVERSAL JOINT,
as perhaps you ladies do not all know, is a ball in a kind of socket, and it is set into places in machinery where the power is needed to go all S( rts of ways, and this joint goes just whichever way it is wanted.
It is a very useful thing in great machinery ; it prevents friction, and it goes so or so, or thus and thus, or any way. Touch it on one side and it goes right over on to the other side. And it is just so with some of these men. They seem
84 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
to have somewhere at the base of the spine a universal joint, and whenever a httle pressure is brought to bear — remember I am talking about the Iowa Legislature — on one side, they go over to the other side. Now, it is not the fault of those men j they cannot help it ; it is the way they are put up, but it is very unfortunate if your cause is in the hands of such men. You never know where they will be when the vote comes around. What are you going to do with such men ? Why, just prop them up, that is all. If you can set around these men something against which they can lean, so they will be solid long enough to vote, why, you are all right. They won't resist; they will stand there if they are only set You know, ladies, how it is with the toys we buy for our chil- dren—those Noah's arks, full of all kinds of animals, sheep, cows, and dogs- -they don't stand up well ; but if you ]3an them against something they make very good sheep, and cows, and dogs indeed. It is the same with these gentle- men I have spoken of. What shall they lean against ? Con- stitutional law, which is the will of the people.
What do they say when you ask them to vote upon a stat- ute permitting the people to vote an amendment ? '^ Oh ! of course, of course we are perfectly willing to let the people vote." And if you have constitutional law and want statute law to enforce it, then they say, ''Why, we must, we must, because there is the constitution, and that is what the peo- ple have said must be done. We are sworn to support the constitution." So I say the objection is not well taken that you can get a bill through the Legislature for prohibition just as easily as you can get an enforcing statute after you have got your constitutional provision.
Another great argument for constitutional prohibition is this, that it remedies the evil of
THE GOVEEXMEXT OF GEEAT CITIES.
And now I approach a problem that has been so grandly set forth upon the platform of Tremont Temple that I speak with timidity. I remember, in my home in the West, read- ing the utterances of that great man. Oh ! what shall I say of him — of Joseph Cook ? I remember that here he has
Rephj of Mrs. J. E. Foster . 85
stood and talked to Boston audiences, and we have got it out there through those blessings, the newspapers; and I re- call that he said on one occasion, ^' The tendency of our civi- lization is to mass in great cities," and that whereas fifty years ago, or thereabouts, one twenty-fifth of the population of this land was in great cities, now one-fifth of it is in great cities. Do you not see the tendency to mass in the cities? What makes the vote of the cities? The criminal classes. What makes the criminal classes? The grog-shop. And thus to-day this land of ours is under the dominion of the grog-shop.
IS THAT XOT TRUE ?
Is there a flaw in my line of argument ? Do I over- state ? I wish I did. I wish it were not so, but so it is. How shall legislation be brought to bear upon the city of Boston and upon the city of New York ? Only by bringing into it the cool, calm vote of the rural districts. If every man at his shop and his farm can vote directly upon the ques- tion of license or no-license, dram-shop or no dram-shop, don't you see that we put into legislation a pure, clean stream ?
Another thing — and I know before me are large numbers of Christian ministers, and to you, gentlemen, I appeal to- day— the foundations of all good government are in this book, the Bible. You know it. It is acknowledged in the commonwealth of Massachusetts more strongly than in our wilder, newer West, and you men of God sit in your studies and stand up in your pulpits before your congregations, and your spirits groan within you because of the iniquities that stalk abroad in this land ; but how can you touch these ini- quities? You preach ; but when you ask, ^' Shall I go down into the dirty poo's of political life?" you hesitate, and you say, " Perhaps I had better, and perhaps I had better not," and so the question weighs on your mind and you hardly know what to do. I remember how the evil of slavery burned into the soul of my grand old father. I can remem- ber how, right here in Massachusetts, he used to walk back and forth in his study and groan out, ''Oh! slavery! slavery ! slavery ! " and always at family prayers when he prayed for us he prayed for the slave. Yes, and I remem-
86 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence,
ber, too, how, before the bar of the General Conference of the church of which he was a member, he was reproved because he dared to pray that the Lord might not descend in wrath upon a slave-holding church.
Ministers of the cross of Jesus, you won't have to go into partisan poUtics to secure constitutional prohibition, and the influence of the church can be brought to bear upon constitutional law as it cannot upon State statutes. Dear friends, the prophet says : '^ The government shall be upon his shoulders." It will never be upon his shoulders save as the principles of Christ's Gospel are brought into Christian legislation, and the church of Christ must carry it there. Might I interpolate a question here and ask, '^ Who com- pose the majority of the Christian Church?" When the women of the Christian Church shall impress their thought upon the law, then this traffic will go. And I say to you Christian men, to you legislators, to you all, in the language of yesterday's Sunday-school lesson, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." Constitutional law remedies the evils of great cities, and we ask, therefore, as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, for constitu- tional prohibition.
Dear friends, I had intended at this place and time to make an appeal for the work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, because the honorable gentleman, Dr. Crosby, has said that the measures adopted by temperance advocates are very objectionable. I did not thiok it was necessary to defend the methods used by those grand old men of the church, but I did intend to say a few things for our woman's methods of work. But the honorable gen- tleman who presided here has so beautifully set forth our work and pleaded for it so grandly that why need I say a word ? And the President of our National Association has embodied it all in her own sweet self and in her eloquent words, so that it is not necessary that I should say a word. Dear friends, I pause here. The methods adopted by Christian women have been the result of their best thought; they stand for total abstinence, for prohibition, for constitutional prohibition, and for organized Christian temperance efiforts to set forth all this.
Reply of Mrs. J. E. Foster. 87
IN THE SANDS OF EGYPT,
by the shores of the Nile, there stands the great pyramid ; for twenty centuries it has stood and looked unwinliing at the sun ; it covers thirteen acres of solid masonry ; it mounts up and up as if it would pierce the skies; it has been the wonder of the centuries, and in its proportions, its angles, its measurements, are bid great truths of physical science — geometrical, astronomical, mathematical, geodetical. Dis- coverers and scholars walk about its base and look up at itsnuge sides, and say, ''We wonder who built the pyra- mid ? " For, though much surmise as to its origin and in- t«>nded use has been indulged in, history does not tell us. Of late certaiu Christian scholars, in their studies of this great wonder of the world, have thought they discovered not only physical truth set forth in base and capstone, in measurement and line, but that Scripture truth is suggested also ; that in its openings, its passages, its chambers, in the finishing of the stones which pave the floors, and line the sides, and are in the ceilings, in the number and size of these, in their sotting here and position there, is written dimly some- times, but still discernible to the careful student, the history of God's past and present, and his future dealings with the human race ; that it is to physical truth what the Bible is to spiritual — a revelaticm ; is the ''altar unto the Lord in the midst of Egypt." Wonderful is the suggestion and bold the faith that grasps and holds its lessons.
Dear friends, there is being built on these Western shores a great pyramid, an altar unto the Lord ; its foundations were laid by the church of God ; its sockets were set by men brave, and true, and strong; its base is the square of the circle of all the influences that cluster about our homes, about our national life. With great labor was the rubbish cleared away to give it room, and carefully were the first stones put in their places. Slowly has the pyramid arisen.
DO YOU SEE THE BUILDEKS ?
There comes the Wasbingtonian throng with pledge, and song, and great huge stones, the Rechabites, the Sons of Temperance, the Good Templars, the Temple of Honor, and many men and women who carry no flag and walk
88 Moderation vs. Total Abdmence.
under no bauner, but carry stone and mortar, square and chisel, a d help to build. Then comes a band of little chil- dren, with banners and rausic ; they sing, " I'm glad I'm in the army, I'm glad I'm in this army,"
and they help to build. Then comes a band of reformed men, with ribbons of red and of blue, clothed and in their right minds. They march solidly up, and
" Plold the fort, for I am coming," rings out full and strong, and they help to build.
And, last of those I see, then comes a band of praying women. They walk very slow, for in their compai.y are wounded ones, mothers bereft and wives heart-sick; but calm and strong I hear the tones,
" My faith looks up to thee, Thou Lamb of Calvary."
And thus they build! And the stones these multitudes have brought have been kept in i)lace and squared into line by righteous law. And so this pyramid is being built, and by and by it shall be finished, and with singing a:^d shout- ing the capstone shall be put in place, its crown and glory, its bond of perfectness. What shall the capstone be ? JSlatlonal constitutional prohihition ! And then the pyramid shall stand, and, though the waves beat upon it, it shall rot fall, for 'tis founded on the rock of God's eternal truth. And in the far-off years, when all these builders shall have passed away, a grander civilization shall surge about the base of this great pyramid — grander because they shall be children born of men and women that did not drink — abd, looking at its rugged sides and gazing at its perfect crown, shall cry, ^^ Who built the pyramid ? who built the pyramid ? " Then you and I, perhaps, shall look over the battlements of hea- ven and see the very stone we set in place, and the shouts of glory will be louder, the halleluiahs longer, ay, the rest sweeter, because we helped to build.
At the close of the lecture many of the audience crowded on to the platform to shake Mrs. Foster by the hand and congratulate her upon her brilhant effort.
JOSEPH COOK'S
PULPIT AND TEMPERANCE.
By THEODOEE L. CUYLER, D.D.
[From the Independent :\
JOSEPH COOK has built a Monday morning pulpit in Boston, whicb is visible over the whole continent and across the sea. In that pulpit he has struck some sturdy and unanswerable blows in favor of prohibitory legis- lation against tippliug-houses and in favor of the principles and. practice of total abstinence from all intoxicants. Dur- ing his absence in Europe his lecture committee have ad- mitted to his pulpit my genial and eloquent friend, Chan- cellor Crosby, who has opened his broadsides against nearly every position whicb Mr. Cook has taken upon the subject of temperance. If that pulpit is to become, like certain clubs in Boston, the theatre of ''free discussion," then I submit that they might as well invite Prof. Huxley to assail Mr. Cook's positions on evolution, or Col. IngersoU to assail his views on tbe inspiration of the Word and the doctrine of atonement.
One of the most remarkable things about Dr. Crosby's discourse is iis title. He calls it a '' Calm View of the Tem- perance Question," and then dashes Into a heated tirade against the '' wild radicalism of teetotalers," whom he de- nounces as fanatics, as unmanly, as twisters of Scripture, as radical agitators, and as infatuated defenders of a system that is utterly impracticable and is '' increasing the drunk- enness in the land" ! If my friend utters all this when he is calm, what might we expect from him if he were excited ?
90 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
When I reached the folio wing sentence in his discourse I was inclined to name it a '' comical view of temperance," for I could not refrain from the Christian liberty of a hearty laugh. He asserts that the total- abstinence system is con- trary to revealed rehgion and harmful to the interests of the country, and exclaims :
" I charge upon this system the growth of drunkenness in our land and the general demoralization among religious communi- ties; and I call upon all sound-minded thinking men to stop the enormities of this false system."
As soon as I could take breath after this phihppic, I began to recall some of the names of the most conspicuous advocates of the total-abstinence movement, and iu the front rank I find Albert Barnes, Bishop Mcllvaine, Lyman Beecher, Bishop Alonzo Potter, aud Theodore Frelinghuy- sen, among the dead ; aud Joseph Cook, Charles H. Spur- geon, Dr. Richardson, Canon Farrar, Bishop Lightfoot, and Bishop Ellicott, among its living defenders. These great and good men do not endorse all the weak and extravagant utterances of certain zealots -, but they do maintain and practise the '^system" which Dr. Crosby so bitterly de- nounces. Weak enthusiasts often utter crude arguments in favor of the Gospel system j but Dr. Crosby none the less holds to and preaches faifh fully that very system. We total- abstainers are ready to stand by the solid principle's which such great and godly leaders as I have just named are de- fending. They constitute our system of doctrine and prac- tice; but we are not responsible for every foolish speech of every foolish fellow who sets up for a ^^ temperance lec- turer."
The chancellor's foremost argument against our total-ab- stinence movement is that it has proved impracticable and is a failure. If he will allow me to use his own frankness, I will say that he is the very last man who ought to utter that taunt. The whole nation knows that for several years he has intre- pidly led a movement in the city of New York to enforce a weak excise law which is hopelessly vitiated by a clause that permits endless dram-selling under the name of hotel-keep-
Joseph Cook's Pulpif and Temperance. 91
ing. So strong was Dr. Crosby's faith iu this rickety law that he once rashly affirmed that under it he would clear New York of grog-shops in six months ! We older workers in the reform, while we honored his zeal and courage, felt assured of his inevitable failure ; not from his fault, but the fault of his '^ system." During the very time that his society were doing their utmost I looked into the doorway of a full-rig- ged dram-shop which was driving its accursed traffic within a stone's throw of Dr. Crosby's residence. That death-deal- ing establishment (the nursery of '' moderate drinkers") and its six or seven thousand partners were no more af- fected by Dr. Crosb}'s well-meant efiforts than the abut- ments of the East River Bridge would be by the stroke of a mallet. We teetotalers do know, from sohd statistics, that hundreds of thousands have been reached, and benefited, and protected, and blessed by the total- abstinence pledge. I can testify to the immense service which it rendered to me and to others when I was a student in college. An in- calculable good has been wrought by our ''system " and our ''propaganda" ; and, in view of his own honest efforts in New York City, it would be well for Chancellor Crosby to be modest in inviting comparison as to '• systems."
On the scientific question the chancellor takes sides very positively with Dr. Anstie, who claims that alcohol is not a poison, but a true food to the bodily man. He denounces us total -abstainers as guilty of ''a moral error" because we prefer to hold the opposite opinion, which is defended by such eminent physicists as Lallemand, Dr. B. W. Richard- son, and Sir Henry Thompson. In dealing with the drink- ing usages of society we know that in their actual effects alcohohc drinks poison millions by striking right to the brain, and practically they feed nobody. This inevitable and invariable tendency of alcoholic stimulants to strike to the human brain is the most overwhelming argument in fa- vor 01 the wisdom and safety of total abstinence. Dr. Cros- by has very prudently fought shy of it.
He pronounces the total-abstinence pledge a " strait- jacket" and a pernicious instrument for debauching the conscience ; but in another part of his discourse he distinct-
92 Moderation vs. Total Abdineiice,
ly says : '' I do not oppose the principle of total abstinence for the individual. It is every man's duty to abstain if his own conscience commaud it." Now, if my conscience com- mands me to let intoxicants alone, then, in the name of common sense, where is the harm of my recording my con- scientious purpose on a pledge I And if we teetotalers, by our '^ propaganda," can so enlighten^- the consciences of young men that they shall agree to let alcoholics alone, where is the harm of their banding together into a tempe- rance society with its wholesome pledge ? Does Dr. Crosby consider a pledge in wedlock to " love each other," or a pledge of fidelity to Christ in church-membership, a "strait-jacket"? Yet in both these cases conscience, as well as judgment, leads to the employment of a binding in- strument. The fact is that Dr. Crosby yields about all that the most thoughtful and wise abstainers claim in this last- quoted passage. He admits that total abstinence is a good thing for the individual, and so well do I know him that I am sure he would rejoice to see everybody avoiding intoxi- cants. Now, all that we members of the temperance '' pro- paganda" are aiming at is to persuade everybody to do just this very good thing.
Probably we shall have harder work to persuade some people to adopt this wise course after they have read some of the extraordinary declarations in Dr. Crosby's Boston discourse. One of these declarations is that it is ^-atro- cious dogma to assume that moderate drinking leads to drunkenness." I do not know of a more dangerous bait that could be nailed up over the bar of a fashionable saloon than this most ill-considered sentence. No sane man ever asserted that every moderate drinker becomes a di'unkard; but just as long as '^ wine is a mocker," and just as long as moderate drinking is the door of entrance to all the drunk- enness that has peopled hell, just so long will we teetotal- ers stand outside ot that door, and, in the name of brother- ly love, will warn every man, woman, and child against en- tering it.
The space accorded to a brief article forbids even a refer- ence to many of the remarkable declarations in this frank.
I
Joscjjli Coolvs Pulpit and Temperance. 93
bold discourse. Some of tliem are remarkably pithy and sensible, and we '^ fanatics " may profit by them. Some of them will aff(U'd quite too ready and convenient pleas for tampering with the bottle and for jeering at that reform which God has so signally blessed. I leave Brother Crosby to the owner of that lofty Boston pulpit. The eccentric John Randolph was accustomed to ride on horseback to the Capitol ; and, on reaching his desk in the House, he often swept his rawhide riding- whip across the desk, and sent all the bills which the page had laid there flying over the floor. When Joseph Cook returns from Europe he may find some singular documents lying on his pulpit ; and if he uses the rawhide of bis logic on this '' View of the Temperance Question," perhaps it will not continue to feel so '^ calm."
RELATIONS
B
By EZRA M. HUNT, M.D.
[From the Independent.']
THE remarkable temperance lecture of Rev. Dr. Crosby at Boston has such an admixture of grand truths and pernicious errors, and such protests against methods which do and which do not deserve to be protested against^ that it is not wonderful that the medical and sanitaiy vievv of the question is also given ex-cathedra. Under the divi- sion of moral questions the first four, at least, come withiu the range of the physician and the sanitarian. The first conceals a real issue under a form of pert statement : ^' The first moral error of the total-abstinence system is in turning a medicinal prescription (proscription f) into a bill of fare for all mankind." This boldly assumes the only reason the teetotaler has for avoiding the use of alcohol to be that it causes drunkenness. This is a moral and social reason ; but we know of no teetotaler who separates that view from an- other. The teetotaler believes, on what seems to him, and has seemed to multitudes of leaders in human knowledge and in physical investigation, good and sufficient evidence, that the use of alcohol in those quantities in which it is af- forded even by wine and fermented liquors is injurious to health. He leaves it out of the bill of fare of all mankind for the same reason that he would leave opium out ; not merely because the ojjium-eater may abuse it, but because
94
I^elations of Distilled and Fermented Liquors. 95
it is Dot needed at all., except as a medical prescription. The abstainer does not ask you to put a man on a sick- regimen — i.e., abstinence according to Dr. C— to keep bim from becoming sick, but to keep him from a sick-regi- men when well. The comparison of the imprisonment of the thief is, therefore, the thing which is '^ wholly uncon- nected." The very thing which the lecturer himself does is to turn a medical prescription into a bill of fare for gen- eral use, only the alcohol must be put up by a beer formula.
" The second moral error found is the assumption that moderate drinking leads to drunkenness." Strange that this should be called an atrocious dogma ! Strange that be- cause multitudes who drink moderately do not fall into drunkenness it should be taken as axiomatic that moderate drinking has no tendency to cause excessive drinking ! In this respect alcohol has the law of all of its class of medi- cines, and of many more decided narcotics. There are thousands of wills strong enough to resist it ; but these are not generally those wno "live on the confines of health, whose digestion is feeble, circulation languid, and nervous system too excitable." The fact that thousands of such and of others from being moderate drinkers have come to over- indulgence does show that moderate drinking has some ten- dency to cause drunkenness. Thousands of people have taken opium drops or pills, and not become opium ine- briates ; but the fact still remains that the moderate daily use of opium does tend to opium excess. Multitudes of those who have not lost their self-control, and tens of thou- sands of those who have, can testify that the tendency of this article, alcohol, is to create a taste and desire. It is a medical fact true of this and many other medicinal articles. To deny it is not merely disputing total-abstinence testi- mony, but denying a law of acquired taste and attachment that prevails as to alcohol, opiam, chloral, tobacco, and some other articles.
The third moral error specified also has to do with a medical and sanitary question. The blunder of the total- abstainer is said to be that he does not discriminate between things that differ. The illustration is that distilled and fer-
96 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
merited liquors dififer. The answer is tliat the total-ab- stainer does discriminate between distilled and fermented liquors as to degree ; but does not, because of the presence of alcohol in both, make a discrimination which ignores the leading and damaging similarity. He knows that six per cent, is not thirty per cent. ; but it is the alcohol that gives type to each and that allies them too closely to enable us to call this want of discrimination '' a blunder that has the pro- portions of a crime.'' The clincher given to prove the differ- ence is from Dr. Parkes ; but Dr. Parkes is imperfectly quoted. He first asks the question : "If distinctly hurtful in large quantities, is it not so in these smaller amounts '! " He then says : ''As a scientific question, I do not see how an answer can be at present given." He then says : " Fail- ing, as it appears to me, in accurate information on this point, the usual arguments for and against the use of alco- hol cannot be held to settle the point,'" which he says are (a) {h) (c), etc. Under c he has the sentence quoted by Dr. Crosby, which even in this form, as not his own, he guards by adding: "It must be allowed, I tbink, there are some persons of this class who are benefited by alcohol in small quantities, and chiefly in the form of beer or light wine. Unless these persons wilfully deceive themselves, they feel better and are better with a little alcohol." Noie, also, that Dr. Parkes is e\idently one of those guilty of the moral outrage of indiscrimination. Had Dr. Parkes been read as to other utterances, and in his reply to Anstie as to food value, etc., he would never have been thus quoted. Sir Henry Thompson recently, in his letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury, as quoted by Judge Pitman <p. 38), says : " The habitual use of fermented liquors to an extent far short of what is necessary to produce that condition (drunk- enness), and such as is quite common in all ranks of society, injures the body and diminishes the mental power to an extent which I think few people are aware of." He, too, in the same paragraph, forgets to " discriminate," and calls them alcoholic beverages. He, like Parkes, Is also not a pledge man or a pleader for a total-abstinence general law. The fourth moral error alleged by Dr. Crosby also touches
Relations of Distilled and Fermented Liquors. 97
medical and sanitary questions. This error, he says, is in classing alcohol as a poison, and not a food. Dr. Anstie is quoted as having ^^ clearly shown" this ; but Dr. Parkes's reply is not quoted. " Even if complete destruction within certain limits were quite clear, this fact alone would not guide us to the dietetic use of alcohol. We have first to trace the effect of the destruction and learn whether it is for good or evil. Few seem to think that the destruction must give rise to useful force ; but I cannot see that this is neces- sarily so." It will be noticed, too, that this reply meets the experiments of Binz, which have been the chief physiologi- cal staple of the food argument for alcohol for some time past. Outside of experiment, Anstie sought to prove the food value of tobacco and opium, just as he did that of alco- hol. Dr. Crosby concludes that wines and beers have but three to ten per cent, of alcohol in the form best adapted for beneficial effect. So far as our chemistry tells us, the form of the alcohol is just the same, only the flavoring and the addition of actual food is different. We do not recog- nize this as the '^ alembic in which nature has turned a powerful and dangerous element into a beneficial minister." It is because the use of fermented as well as distilled li- quors is in the direction of injury to the public health that we have felt constrained to enter a brief and humble excep- tion to the physical part of this address.
AN OPEN LETTER,
By Rev. Dr. A. J. GORDON.
EEV, DR. A. J. GORDON, pastor of the Clarendon Street Baptist Church, as Chairman of the Boston Mon- day Lecture Committee, wrote the following letter to the Boston Traveller :
"As considerable comment has been passed on the recent Monday lecture of Dr. Howard Crosby, it may not be improper that, as chairman of the committee having charge of these lec- tures, I should make the following statement :
" These lectures were designed to be religio-scientific. Emi- nent men among college presidents and theological professors were invited to participate in them. As Chancellor of the University of New York, Dr. Crosby was engaged as one of the speakers. So far as I am aware of, it was expected when he was asked to lecture that he would appear in some subject of a scientific or theological nature, in which his scholarship would enable him to shine so conspicuously. That he chose to come before us in the character of a belated reformer, advocating views that belong to the dark ages of the temperance reform, was his own responsi- bility. It is certainly to be regretted that so eminent a preacher and teacher should be found giving utterance to opinions that were calm only in their cold and dogmatic contempt of sentiments which the great mass of temperance workers hold to be absolutely vital to any real success in batthng against intemperance, and healthful only through the violent revolt which they must awaken in the minds of hundreds who will read them. Such sentiments will be sure of enthusiastic applause from every bar and liquor-saloon in the city. They who sell intoxicating drinks, from high to low, disapprove of drunkenness as strongly as the eminent divine, holding equally with him that moderation should be the rule. It is
A'ii Open Letter. 99
grateful to be able to say, to the credit of the Christian and tem- perance sentiment of our city, that the views evidently met with almost no sympathy from the audience to which they were ad- dressed, so that while the lecturer was pursuing his announced purpose of ' carrying the war into Africa,' he stood among his hearers as ' a solitary sentinel pacing around the deserted citadel of his own opinions.' "
THE "CALM VIEW."
Comments of the Press.
THE following extracts are from the editorial comments of sundry leading and intluential religious and secular journals upon Dr. Crosby's address, ''A Calm View of Temperance." Zion's Herald, of Boston, says :
" Much wonder is expressed that Chancellor Crosby should have been invited to appear in the Monday Lectureship as the opponent of the well-established views of the great majority of New England Christian men and women upon the temperance reform. The platform which he was to occupy, it was well known, had already been dedicated by Joseph Cook to the most advanced total-abstinence and prohibitory opinions. Certainly there were men on the Lecture Committee whose publicly-an- nounced sentiments are totally opposed to nearly every position taken by Dr. Crosby. If arrangements had been made for a frank discussion — for some able champion, like Wendell Phillips, or Neal Dow, or Dr. Mark Hopkins, to follow on the same plat- form upon a succeeding Monday — no exception could be taken. As it is, just at this moment when a special effort has been made to unite the temperance forces upon the lowest possible moral ground of total abstinence, it takes on almost the appearance of a direct insult to the sentiment of the community to put forward upon such a platform such reactionary views.
" The lecture was misnamed. It was not a * calm view ' of the subject. The lecturer, indeed, was perfectly self-possessed, as he always is ; his language, except in a few instances, was not vio-
100
I
Comments of the Press, 101
lent and never vituperative ; but he was not calm. His opinions were presented as dogmatically, and positively, and earnestly as the English language admits of its being done. He was evidently very much aroused. The discourse was not at all a calm discus- sion of the question, but a heated and special defence of positions he has taken against the attacks of those differing from him on the temperance question. One of his severest indictments against the advocates of total abstinence was the bitterness and severity of their invectives against those differing with them in opinion ; but nothing could exceed the contempt which the doctor ex- pressed for those who dare to hold a different interpretation from himself of certain passages of Scripture — albeit some of them are his peers in Biblical scholarship — and views at variance with his own opinion of the nature and effects of wine and fermented li- quors. This heat to which he refers, and which he exhibits, arises from a partially sanctified liuman nature ; and Dr. Crosby certainly is one of the legitimate descendants of Adam.
" This leads us to say that the lecturer was guilty of the same offence which he charges upon radical temperance men, in that he fails to show a ' discrimination between things that differ,' He includes all the upholders of total abstinence in the same category, as seeking to ' intimidate ' and ' bulldoze ' the commu- nity— both ministers and laymen. This (course of bulldozing) he declares to have been the ' curriculum ' of the radical school of temperance reformers for the last forty years. Now, while in the ranks of noble temperance workers have been many men of the ancient prophetic type, who have used the Old Testament Scrip- tures in the spirit of the former covenant, and have denounced ' Meroz ' for not coming up to the help of the Lord in sublime and terrible sentences, and often with little mercy, the great body of leading reformers have been of another class. Among them are the chief ministers of our churches ; some of our high- est magistrates and legislators ; our most honored judges and in- fluential business citizens ; men whose words have commanded the respect of all who have listened to them, and whose tempers have certainly been under as good control as that of their censor. No, doctor, that was not a calm view of temperance or of tempe- rance men. You were thinking of some violent newspaper cor- respondent, or lively platform speaker, who has dared somewhat audaciously to question the wisdom and eflBciency of the positions you have, doubtless conscientiously, taken. A whole denomina- tion of Christians, nearly two millions strong, from bishops down
102 Moderation vs.- Total Abstuieuce.
to the humblest member, have for years taken this radical posi- tion and upheld it in the pulpit and in church discipline ; but "who ever dreamed of intimating that they had sought to establish, these views by intimidation and bulldozing ? It was not a very complimentary intimation which the doctor made, that hundreds of ministers revolted from the extreme views of radical temperance men, but failed to take a stand against them through fear of the unhealthy public sentiment which demands their acceptance and denounces their opponents. We believe this to be an unintended but real slander upon the moral courage and convictions of our ministers.
"The ridicule heaped upon those who hold that moderate drink- ing is the fruitful fountain from whence the flood of intempe- rance is fed, will not change the fact. It is the experience of the whole temperance reform. No successful progress was made in it until total abstinence took the place of a temperate use of li- quors. It is the confession of tens of thousands that the appetite, afterwards unquenchable, has been fostered at first by the occa- sional use of wines, and the testimony is equally voluminous and unanswerable in reference to the use of cider and other fermented liquors. No assertion or dogmatism can alter the character of these long-observed and verified facts. And, what is more serious, the later study of heredity has shown us the impressive truth that the moderate use of wines in parents often entails upon children a maniacal appetite for stimulants, which predestines them almost hopelessly to a drunkard's grave.
" Dr. Crosby was hardly ingenuous in his defence, by profes- sional quotations, oi the wholesomeness and food-like character of small amounts of stimulants, and light ales and beer. There was nothing offered in his address to intimate the fact that the weight of opinion, as has been made to appear in late articles in the Contemporary Review, and in the testimony of the highest pro- fessional authority, is against any such theory. The most authori- tative utterances of physicians of the widest practice is just the opposite.
' ' Has the doctor ever stopped to think what it is that has aroused such a public sentiment in favor of total abstinence ? Why are men so earnest in their pleas for prohibition ? What in- duces men to yield their own possible safe liberty of indulgence ? What means this army of mothers and sisters with their appeal- ing voices and ears ? Why is wine denounced and the weaker drinks ? What makes men sometimes so frantic in their cries for
Commenls of the Prcs>i. 103
rescue ? Why do they in their aroused anxiety pronounce curses u[)on apathetic apologists ? Wliat is at the bottom of all this ? There must be some terrible evil, and there is. All other schemes to save our families have been tried for centuries. Human hearts hive been wrung to their breaking, age after age. The unbroken march of the awful army of drunkards to their fearful graves has been too frightful for human endurance. Dr. Crosby himself well s:iid, 'Total abstinence is the effectual cure of intempe- rance'; and it is the only hope. The temperate use of liquors is only the constant nourishment of an appetite that at its full strength man, with all his moral power, is not adequate to struggle with. Some men escape, but thousands fall. How can any Christian man plead for himself a liberty that becomes a license to rum his fellow-men ?"
The Preshifterian Journal, of Philadelphia, says :
" We do not know any Christian tol:al-abstainer who has used towards opponents such uncharitable language as Dr. Crosby has here employed.
" It is also true that he has exposed himself to ridicule. It pro- vokes an almost irresistible smile to read his declaration that ' the total-abstinence propaganda has been an overbearing and tyran- nical power ' which has been ' bulldozing ' the church and the country. Who are this propaganda ? . . .
"General Assembly after General Assembly of our beloved church, to which the New York chancellor owes allegiance, has taken the total-abstinence position which he assails. Have those Assemblies been part of the infamous propaganda? . . .
'• Dr. Crosby's fundamental assumption is an error. He cannot maintain it. His position will inevitably go down before this re- form movement, which is the movement of God ; but in the mean- time our New York brother has ministered rare comfort to drink- eis and liquor-producers, and that is to be sorely regretted."
The Boston Congregationalist says :
•'Chancellor Crosby's recent Monday lecture upon the tempe- rance question may be called on the whole a plea for moderate drinking as opposed to total abstinence. . . .
" We lose nothing by giving up the use as a drink of any wines that we can get, or of any of the lighter alcoholic liquors, while the injury that may come to ourselves out of the habit of using them, or the harm that our example may do to others, may be
104 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence.
very great. It is raost wise, therefore, and most Christian to let them alone.
" It is not fair either, in reckoning the evil that comes from the use of strong drink, to make account only, as Chancellor Crosby appears to do, of cases of utter and downright drunkenness. There is, indeed, always a certain danger that moderate drinking may lead to such drunkenness, and this is well worth thinking of; but there are other serious dangers short of that, even if drunkenness is not reached. There is an impairment of clearness and force of mind and body that affects many men who are not drunkards. There is a wasting, too, of money, and often of time, and an exposure to bad company, and a tendency in general to- ward dissipation, which belong with the use of such drinks in stages far short of drunkenness, and which throughout society as a whole may probably make up the larger part of the mischief wrought by intoxicating drinks. These thmgs, over and above the liability to absolute drunkenness, are to be taken account of.
" There is nothing of argument either in the saying that a man may more suitably exercise self-control at some point along the line of moderate drinking than at the point of total abstinence, and when he has not entered on the line of drinking at all. It may be easier, and it is easier, to stop before one has begun; and there is no virtue in beginning for the sake of trying to stop at some harder place. The ease of total, abstinence is part of what makes it best.
"Try this thing apart from yourself, and in your thought of your own son or daughtei', and see if you would not feel the most of security as to their future if you knew they never would use any of these drinks at all. If that be true it covers the whole case, and it makes it wise and right for you, too, never to use them yourself. "
The Herald and Presbyter, of Cincinnati, says:
"Dr. Crosby, several years ago, started out on a crusade against the whiskey-shops, proposing to at least restrict and regulate them. He was unwilling to adopt total abstinence, local option, or prohibition. We advised all to let him go on and do all he could, and we said, Let other temperance people hold their prin- ciples and use their own methods without pursuing him with re- proach. The doctor has turned his face and guns on the old
Comments of the Press. 105
temperance workers, and now Lhey are obliged, in self-defence, to fight him and all who are in league with him. There are some wild temperance reformers, without doubt. Dr. Crosby takes the responsibility of opposing all schemes, except his own, as meth- ods of promoting temperance that are inexpedient, ineffectual, immoral or unscriptural. Much that he says is erroneous and ir- relevant, while in some respects his views are correct. His argu- ment reminds us of the slavery discussion from 1830 to 1860. He is like those who classed together and opposed alike the organi- zation of anti-slavery societies; refusing to use anything produced by slave labor; the doctrine that slaveholding is a sin per se ; running off slaves ; keeping slavery out of free territory, and gra- dual emancipation. They denounced free discussion and church action as mixing politics and religion, and claimed that the Gos- pel is the only remedy for all evils. In the meantime the irre- pressible conflict grew in intensity and ended in war. Whiskey is a hundredfold worse than slavery. It produces more suffering and death. More lives are lost every year by drunkenness than in any year of the war. Whiskey is the handmaid of lust, of di- vorce, of murder, of political corruption, of Sabbath-breaking, of profanity, and almost every vice, and it is increasing in power and influence, and becoming more and more haughty and defi- ant. Its opposers are of all sorts — wise and unwise, sound and unsound, active and indolent but they are all opposed to its evils, and when the crisis comes they will see eye to eye. In a free country great revolutions often come very suddenly. The public conscience may suddenly get into a rage. Every sane and intel- ligent mind knows that the Government is in duty bound to pi-o- tect her citizens from the *voes and ruin of the whiskey-shops. It may not be long until the whiskey party overact, and stir up and unite the friends of temperance to make short work of the evil. Then regulating the abomination will not be thought of. Its de- struction will be inevitable."
Tbe ^yestern Christian Advocate, of CinciDnati, says:
" Real temperance is wounded, if not slain, in the house of its professed friends when religionists like Governor Andrew, How- ard Crosby, and Dr. Todd take up arms in defence of social drinking. In the best classes of the American people — the native middle classes, the bone and sinew of the land — a large proportion of the men and women are in favor of prohibiting the manufac-
106 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
ture and sale of ardent spirits for use as a beverage. But since the Atlantic Ocean became a steam ferry-way, the temperance cause has suffered from the introduction of foreigners with their ale, and beer, and wine drinking usages. The lower cla'^ses every- where, particularly in cities, have become corrupted by saloons and beer-gardens, and the Sabbath is the great day for carousal. And this evil is aggravated by the example of a very large num- ber of people belonging to the fashionable (we do not say upper) classes, who have permitted their habits to be moulded in accord- ance with those of the upper classes in foreign lands, and conse- quently have brought home with them the social drinking cus- toms of those countries. The temperance cause has to fight in both these directions.
" Prohibitory laws will not suppress all drinking, any more than laws against lotteries, gambling, and prostitution prevent and suppress these vices. But they will place society on the right side. Any form of license system only brings society and gov- ernment into league with vice, acknowledges its legality, and shares the profits of its villanies. In spite of the opposition of the Todds and Crosbys, a better age than the present will place intoxication and its accessories in the category of social crimes, which the law will forbid, and which all good men will labor to exterminate."
The Advance, of Chicago, says :
" If only it had been a calm view!
" If that is a calm view of what the Christian temperance peo- ple are doing in this country toward counteracting what intem- perance is doing, what would a perturbed view be? A discourse so full of evidence of exasperated prejudice, and so ' rich in abu- sive epithet,' we have not seen for a year at least. Such variety and impassioned affluence of disparaging epithet and other char- acterization must have severely taxed even Chancellor Crosby's well-known genius for language. . . .
" On some points we agree with Chancellor Crosby. First of all in this^ that ' there is no more important question before the American people to-day than this : How shall we stay this surg- ing tide of intemperance? ' We agree with him in this: * That it is to be answered on one side by the practical voice of society and on the other by the edicts of our legislatures.' In this, also: That ' we should act with an even mind on so grave a subject,
Comments of tlie Press. 107
aud see to it that every step we take is solidly founded on right reason.' But as we look forth upon our country and other countries, in city and in villages, and note how infinite the woe and disaster, the degradations and sorrows, the blighting and the curse, caused by the use of intoxicating drinks, fermented or dis- tilled, we have no heart to turn back and fire off broadsides of abuse and scorn into the faces of that now vast, and, thank God! fast-growing array of Christian men and women, who, even if with some mistakes and blunders to be lamented, are, neverthe- less, the ones who are striving most earnestly to stay the surging tide! At this point we are obliged, by our sense of Christian manliness and self-respect, sharply to part company with the lecturer. Perhaps as fair representatives of the grand total-ab- stinence temperance movement of our generation might be taken Hon William E. Dodge and Dr. Cuyler, not stopping to name others; for ourselves, we do not care to fire off rhetorical bomb- shells of abuse at their feet.
' ' To-day, in all liquor-dealers' associations, in saloons and other tippling places. Dr. Crosby is the most popular ' divine ' in America. The Journals published in their interests are exultant over his counterblast at the temperance people and his commenda- tion of moderate drinking. "
The United Freshyterian, of Pittsburgh, says:
"Even when drunkenness is not reached, there is the impair- ment of mental and moral power, the waste of money and time, and the demoralizing effect of even moderate drinking habits to be«taken into the account. From such effects, more widely than from extreme drunkenness, the morals, usefulness, and happiness of men, the peace and comfort of families, and the good order of society are suffering.
*' Then, as a question of expendiency merely, where is it best to stop? Can any one believe that it is safer or easier to stop after a habit of drinking has been indulged, to however limited an extent, than before it has been formed ? Or is there any one who does not feel in regard to a friend more security as to his future when assured that he practises total abstinence ?
* • All this Dr. Crosby appears to overlook, as also the impor- tance of good example in this as in everything else. The indi- vidual liberty for which he pleads, as recognized by Paul, is by
108 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
the same authority put under tliis regulation : ' If meat make my brother to ofiend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth.' "
The New York Weekly Witness says:
'• In sober sadness we give our opinion that the malignancy of the Evil One himself could not devise a greater injury to society in general-than to put the advocacy of moderate drinking and op- position to total-abstinence societies in the mouth of an influen- tial and generally-esteemed minister of the Gospel. The mis- takes of every man's life have been many, but this is, in our view, a master-mistake calculated to send thousands to the pit.
" The fact that Dr. Crosby occupies a prominent position in the training of ministers, who are in turn to influence congrega- tions and society in general all over the country, renders his mis- take doubly fatal, and wecannot but hope that the Lord will open the eyes of the good doctor lo see the evil he has been doing, and induce him, as far as he can, to counteract it ere the opportunity for his doing so passes away for ever."
The' Central Christian Advocate, of St. Louis, says :
" He cannot see that this present condition is the natural pro- duct of the system that he advocates. The temperance cause certainly has not produced the drunkenness which he condemns. The doctor is at lea&t twenty years behind the times. Probably he does not see the crowd of tipplers, and drunkards, and dram- shop keepers who find comfort in his position."
The Michigan Lever says:
*' The reverend gentleman has the thanks of all the liquor-deal- ers in the country. They endorse him to a man. Now let him extend his logic by telling people to practise little sins and avoid big ones. Sin, carried to excess, is a very bad thing, but if peo- ple could so govern themselves as only to commit minor trans- gressions the world would be better, this preacher could say. He might go on and show that the Master made a mistake by urging a warfare on all sin ; that He could have accomplished more by moderation and toleration. Such men only serve the cause of evil, for they encourage its abettors."
The Methodist, after quoliDg what Dr. Crosby says against the pledge, says :
Comments of the Press. 109
" To which a * free lover ' would add that, ' instead of regulating marriage ' from within, the customs of the country ' debauch the conscience ' by tying up married couples with a pledge to live to- gether ' until death parts them.' It might be interesting to have a definition of the point or line where pledges to do just and comely things become immoral and debauch the conscience. Every Christian has made a pledge to his church to do right ; is that also ' a moral error ' ? "
The Western Christian Advocate says :
" The views set forth by the chancellor would strike at Gods law in the Ten Commandments, and make against all human laws for the prevention and suppression of crime. By the same course of reasoning society should allow everybody to carry deadly 'wea- pons and trust to the virtue of every individual not to make dead- ly use of them. Society should make no laws against prostitution and its agents, no laws against usurious interest, and no barriers to monopolies, allow free marriage and free divorce, and a hun- dred other things that are now regarded as needing restraints and within the purview and province of legislation."
The Boston Transcript says :
** Chancellor Crosby lias done more to discourage those who are seeking to influence sons, husbands, and brothers to abstain ab- solutely from the use of alcohol, to the end that they and theirs may be saved from sorrow, disgrace, and ruin, than all the rum- shops in Boston."
The National Baptist, of Philadelphia, says : << A great opportunity was thrown away ; the division among temperance people was made more bitter ; the enemies of tem- perance were encouraged ; and apparently much more harm than good was done."
The Lewiston (Me.) Journal says :
** The trouble with men like Dr. Crosby is that they fail to take notice of stern facts. Drunkenness is most prevalent where mod- erate drinking is fashionable and no prohibitory laws vex the tip- pler. Most men become drunkards by trying to drink mode- rately, and failing."
The Christian Leader says :
*' Chancellor Crosby certainly has a view of temperance, but he
110 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
is a queer man to call it a * calm ' one His definition of calm- ness must indeed be a puzzle to lexicographers. We have sub- mitted to the penance of a careful reading of the lecture, which, when given in the Monday course, so amazed, we may say so chagrined, his audience. His * calm view of temperance ' may be condensed into something like this : ' You men and women who advocate total abstinence are a set of liars, tricksters, hypocrites, and infidels ; only you do not know that you are. You deal in lies, and tricks, and perversions of Scripture, yet your motive? are good ! ' Xow, it strikes us that while a man may deal in fal- lacies and not know that he does, it is a contradiction in terms to say that he deals in falsehoods and tricks, not knowing them to be such. But the chancellor evidently has a new dictionary."
The Washingtonian, of Chicago, says :
" Dr. Howard Crosby occupies an unenviable position as a re- tarder of true temperance work. He is now spending his time and talents in trying to show that men should drink beer and wine moderately. Dr. Crosby appears to be knowingly blind. He denies that moderate drinking leads to drunkenness. He certain- ly knows better. . . . The arguments of Chancellor Crosby are the veriest humbug, and he should no longer insult temperance peo- ple by professing to be in sympathy with the cause they advo- cate."
The American Wesleyan says :
" On his own principles his position is untenable. His Biblical argument for moderate drinking does not prove that we should so drink now. It by no means follows, on Biblical principles, that a practice once allowable is always to be allowed."
The Buffalo Christian Advocate says :
" Now, we should like to know what hope there is of securing and maintaining a law that shall give license to only one seller * to one thousand inhabitants in each town,' without first getting a majority of the people to adopt total abstinence ? "
The UpiscojKilHecorcler says :
*' The attitude of so great and so good a man as the chancellor of the University of New York towards the temperance question must cause grief and surprise to many. The evils of moderate drinking, as the inevitable precursor of intemperance, seem to us
Comments of the Press. Ill
to be beyond contradiction. The drinking usages of society, from the days of Noah down, have only brought distress and anguish upon the world. Drunkenness has never existed unless intro- duced by those usages . . .
" If there was any necessity for the use of alcohol as a beverage we can understand that men should contend for the right to use it in moderation ; but apart from its use in a medicinal point of view it cannot be shown to have ever been of benefit. It there- fore passes our comprehension that any man can be found to de- fend its use in moderation even. To totally abstain from it as a beverage is safe for ourselves ; it is of incalculable advantage by way of exaoiple to others — our brethren for whom Christ died — and it has yet to be shown that it has ever injured any one."
The Evangelical Messenger says :
"Dr. Crosby, chancellor of the University of New York, in a recent ' Monday lecture ' in Boston, shocked the Bostonians, and the friends of temperance reform generally, by his defence of ' mode- rate drmking.' While we can admire the courage of a man who dares enunciate opinions that will leave him without a following — except that one of doubtful utility, the liquor interest — we cannot refrain from expressing our regret that he should lend the power of his great name and influence to justify a habit which the ex- perience of years has proved to be as perilous as climbing along the crevice of a glacier or the mouth of the bottomless pit. The difference between a moderate and an immoderate drinker is often more fanciful than real."
The Standard, Chicago, says :
" We believe that it is Dr. Crosby's plan to regulate the trade in intoxicating drinks, so as to prevent the wholesale poisoning now practised, and so as to afford opportunity for the testing of his principle that restriction in the sale and moderation in the use of such drinks are what the case needs. We should respect- fully submit to him that all the facts of the present situation testify to the utter abortiveness of all measures of this kind."
The Springfield (Mass.) Bepublican says :
" Dr. Crosby makes one great mistake upon the question of total abstinence, in relying so confidently upon the fact that a man may drink wine and beer and yet not become a drunkard. The temperance question is most vitally a question of the working
112 Moderation vs. Total Ahstmence,
classes. They are the most under temptation, the most easily de- graded to pauperism and crime in case of excess of indulgence. Eut for them moderate drinking means, not a glass of claret at a dinner-table, but an occasional drink of whiskey at a saloon, then semi-occasional drinks, then two at a time, and so on till every- thing is lost. And when Dr. Crosby talks to such people about the 'unmanliness,' the 'intimidation,' the 'deception' of total abstinence, and attempts to save the wines of polite society by saying that the State ought to suppress the sale of distilled spirits and license the other, he is playing with fire without the ghost of a chance of turning on his extinguisher."
The New York Herald says :
" Dr. Howard Crosby has raised a storm by his anti-prohibition speech, and it is not unlikely that it will in the end contribute largely to the cause for which he has such unbounded contempt."
In a letter to the Boston Traveller Hon. Neal Dow writes :
"Old temperance men like me are much puzzled to know how it can be that educated and intelligent men, especially if Chris- tian men, can differ in opinion as to the causes and the cure of intemperance, unless influenced by interest, appetite, or passion, as intelligent men should not, as Christian men cannot, be.
" Dr. Crosby affirms that drunkenness does not come from drink- ing. I was astonished at that, as every abstainer may well be ; but it is not worth while to do more than notice that amazing statement, which no drunkard even will deny to be entirely un- true. I assume that all the world except Dr. Crosby will admit that drunkenness comes from the drink, and the habit of drinking more and more from the first glass, it maybe at the father's table, to the last glass preceding a robbery or a murder.
" All the doctor's talk about Bible wines and Christ's drinking habits contains not one word, or thought, or fact that is new; it has all been answered, and well answered, many times by many scholars as ripe as he can claim to be, knowing the Bible and Bible history, and the language of the Bible, and the Greek as well as lie, whose conclusions were directly the reverse of his. . . .
"I assume that eveiybody knows, except Dr. Crosby, that drunk- enness comes from the drink. Where does that come from ? Through the open door of moderate drinking. There comes in its train upon the world a horrible procession of poverty, pauperism,
Comments of the Press. 113
wretchedness, and crime. Sufferings without number, that can be measured by no scale of woe ; mumbling idiocy, wild insanity, secret plundering, bloody robbery, midnight incendiarism, and fearful murder ; women in want, wretchedness and rags ; help less children, knowing nothing but gaunt hunger, dreadful abuse, sin and shame— all these and more come in upon the world only through the open door of moderate drinking. We teetotalers are striving with all our might to shut that door to keep these horrors out. Dr. Crosby and others like him are struggling to keep it open.
"On both sides we are actuated by a purpose. We say if that door can be shut the morrow's sun would rise upon a sober world; there would be, there could be, no more drunkenness, and no more of the sin, shame, and misery coming from it. That and that only is our motive. We make great and many sacrifices of time, labor, money, and anxious care to accomplish it. Dr. Crosby and those with him resist with all their power. Why ? They have and must have some motive, as we have. What is it ? ' If that door be shut where and how can we obtain our drink ? Don't talk to us about the general good, the interests of the church ; we will not consent to be shut out from our ' wine and mild beer.'"
THE VOICE OF SCIENCE.
I'^HE following are some of the later declarations of eminent physicians and scientists concerning alco- " hoi : Dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson says :
'"Alcohol produces many diseases ; and it constantly happens that persons die of diseases which have their origin solely in the drinking ol alcohol, while the cause itself is never for a moment suspected. A man may be considered by his friends and neigh- bors, as well as by himself, to be a sober and a temperate man; He may say quite truthfully that he was never tipsy in the whole course of his life ; and yet it is quite possible that such a man may die of disease caused by the alcohol he has taken, and by no other cause whatever. This is one of the most dreadful evils of alcohol, that it kills insidiously, as if it were doing no harm, or as if it were doing good, while it is destroj-ing life."
Of his research concerning alcohol, as a scientific en- quirer, Dr. Richardson says :
"To the research 1 devoted three years, from 1863 to 1866, modifying experiments in every conceivable way, taking advan- tage of seasons and varying temperatures of season, extending ob- servation from one class of animals to another* and making com- parative researches with other bodies of the alcohol series than the ethylic or common alcohol.
" The results, I confess, were as surprising to me as any one else, They were surprising from their definitiveness and their uni- formity. They were most surprising from the complete contra- diction they gave to the popular idea that alcohol is a supporter and sustainer of the animal temperature.
" I. That it is an entire fallacy to suppose that alcohol, m any of its forms as intoxicating drink, is the gift of God to man.
"II. That if the habit of drinking intoxicating beverages is never indulged, it is never felt as a want.
114
The Voice of Science. 115
"III. If this habit be indulged, the difficulties of throwing it off are tenfold increased.
" IV. You may further teach by history and example — but al- ways better by example— that the hardest work, mental and bodily, is best carried out without the stimulating effects of this agent which so many look to for support in all their labors.
"V. That alcohol has no claim, in a scientific sense, to be con- sidered as a sustainer either of bodily or mental life or work.
''VI. That in alcohol there is nothing that can build up any tissue or supply any force.
" VII. That in approaching the subject of temperance, and in showing the uselessness of the most mischievous of all agents within the reach of men, you are promoting a good which extends beyond your own time."
The followino- is from a declaration sent to the Interna- tional Temperance Congress at Brussels, Belgium, August, 1880, by the council of the '^ British Medical Temperance Association," embracing in its membership upwards of two hundred leading physicians and surgeons of Great Britain, with Dr. B. W. Richardson as president, and J. J. Ridge, M.D., B.S., B A., honorary secretary :
** Passing from the particular art of prescribing alcohol to our observation of the action of alcohol on persons generally — ^that is to say, to its employment as a beverage — we are led to the follow- ing conclusions:
" That alcohol cannot in any sense be considered as a necessity for the maintenance of healthy life.
" That it is not a food in any tnie and practical sense of that term.
" That labor of the severest kind, mental and bodily, can be carried on without it, and that the steadiest and best work is best done without it. "
The International Medical Congress, Section on Medicine, held in Philadelphia, 1876, adopted the following conclu- sions concerning the use of alcohol :
"1. Alcohol is not shown to have a definite food value by any of the usual methods of chemical analysis or physiological inves- tigation.
116 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
" 2. Its use as a medicine is chiefly that of a. cardiac stimulant and often admits of substitution.
"3. As a medicine it is not well fitted for self-prescription by the laity, and the medical profession is not accountable for such administration or for the enormous evils arising therefrom.
"4. The purity of alcoholic liquors is in general not as well as- sured as that of articles used for medicine should be. The various mixtures when used as medicine should have definite and known composition and should not be interchanged promiscuously."
About two hundred physicians, surgeons, etc., of New York, Brooklyn, and vicinity, recently signed the following medical declaration :
"1. In view of the alarming prevalence and ill effects of intem- perance, with which none are so familiar as members of the medi- cal profession, and which have called forth from eminent English physicians the voice of warning to the people of Great Britain concerning the use of alcoholic beverages, we, the undersigned, members of the medical profession of New York and vicinity, unite in the declaration that we believe alcohol should be classed with other powerful drugs ; that, when prescribed medicinally, it should be with conscientious caution, and a sense of grave re- sponsibility.
" 3. We are of opinion that the use of alcoholic liquor as a beverage is productive of a large amount of physical disease ; that it entails diseased appetites upon offspring ; and that it is the cause of a large percentage of the crime and pauperism of our cities and country.
'•3. We would welcome any judicious and effective legislation — State and national — which should seek to confine the traffic in alcohol to the legitimate purposes of medical and other sciences, art, and mechanism."
The American Medical Association also adopted substan- tially the above declaration.
Dr. James Edmimds, of London, says:
" It is admitted by every one that alcohol is the cause of more than half the insanity we have. I am not so familiar with the facts on this subject here as I should naturally be at the other side of the Atlantic. . . . It is a fact which cannot be disputed, that disease of the liver, disease of the lungs, disease of the tis-
' Tlie Voice of Science. 117
•sues of the body, are induced directly by the use of alcohol, and that, as a general rule, you may say that where you have alcohol used most largely and most frequently there these diseases and degenerations in the tissues of the body become most marked."
Dr. Willard Parker, of New York, says :
' ^ Alcohol has no place in the healthy system, but is an irritant poison, producing a diseased condition of body and mind. It has been demonstrated that the use of alcohol when employed moder- ately, as many young men often use it, as they think with im- punity, makes the average of life thirty-five and a half, while that of non-users reached an average of sixty-four and one-sixth years, a difference of about twenty-nine years to each individual ; a thousand individuals, 39,900."
Sir Henry Thompson says :
" I have long had the conviction that there is no greater cause of evil, moral and physical, in this country than the use of alco- holic beverages I do not mean by this that extreme indulgence which produces drunkenness. The habitual use of fermented li- quors to an extent far short of what is necessary to produce that condition, and such as is quite common in all ranks of society, injures the body and diminishes the mental power to an extent which 1 think few people are aware of. Such, at all events, is the result of observation during more than twenty years of pro- fessional life devoted to hospital practice, and to private prac- tice in every rank above it. Thus I have no hesitation in attri- buting a very large proportion of some of the most painful and dangerous maladies which come under my notice, as well as those which every medical man has to treat, to the ordinary and daily use of fermented drink taken in the quantity which is convention- ally deemed moderate.''
Dr. N. S. Davis, of Chicago, says :
" The use of alcoholic drinks diminishes man's capacity to en- dure both mental and physical labor, increases his predisposition to disease, and shortens the average duration of life."
W. B. Carpenter, M.D., says:
'Alcohol cannot supply anything which is essential to the due nutrition of the tissues."
118 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
Albert Day, M.D., Superintendent of the Washingtonian Home, says :
'^ have treated nearly 7,000 cases of inebriety, and ei?hr- tenths of that number originated from wine and malt liquors."
THE VOICE OF SCRIPTURE.
FROM a vast number of authorities a few names are chosen of men no less able in scholarship than devout in life. Tbey have this advantage over some others, that they wrote after having made a personal and patient examination of tbe whole Bible.
Rev. Dr. Adam Clark, on Gen. xl. 11, says :
" From this we find that wine anciently was the mere expressed j^ice of the grape without fermentation. The saky, or cup-bearer, took the bunch, pressed the juice into the cup, and instantly de- livered it into the hands of his master. This was anciently the yayin [wine] of the Hebrews, the oinos [wine] of the Greeks, and the mustum [new fresh wine] of the ancient Latins."
Bagster's ^' Comprehensive Bible " quotes Dr. Clark with approbation.
Parkinson, in his " Theatrum Botanicum/' says :
" The juice or liquor pressed out of the ripe grapes is called vinum [wine]. Of it is made both sapa and defriitum, in English cute — that is to say boiled wine, the latter boiled down to the half, the former to the third part" ("Bible Commentary," xxxvi )
This testimony was written about a d. 1640, centuries be- fore there was any temperance organization.
Dr. Thomas Scott says :
*' Heavenly blessings are represented by a cup of wholesome, ex- hilarating wine ; but the wrath of God by a cup of wine mingled with ingredients of that kind which tend to produce fear, distress, and despondency ; from this cup (not the other) the Lord dis- penses to sinners."
119
120 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
Dr. Ralph TVardlaw, of Prov. xxxi. 4-7, says :
" I pity the state of that man's mind who can . . . allow him- self to suppose that this passage contains an inspired toleration of excess — a permission and encouragement to seek relief in the in- sensibility of intoxication — to make wine the refuge from melan- choly. Would it be fair to set this one passage against the whole Bible ?— one text against its entire scope, and unnumbered posi- tive, and pointed, and damnatory prohibitions ? . . . But when men do take hold of a passage like this, and quote it with a leer while they are putting the bottle to each other's mouths, and drinking themselves drunk, they only discover the bent of their minds."
Dr. F. R. Lees says :
" In the Hebrew and Greek Bible a dozen words, with their special meanings, are all hidden under the English terms 'wine' and ' strong drink ' ; and some of these words clearly and undeni- ably denote wn/erme'/i^e^ and w/i/;'/(>j'2C<'<?*/'^ wine. About sixty texts of the authorized version refer to wine (or what is sup- posed to be wine) with approbation, where the context shows or implies it to be a natural and unfermented product. Not more than fifty-two texts can he 'proved, by the context, to refer to in- toxicating wine, and not one of these is connected with the Divine blessing. On the contrary, one-half of them describe it as evil, as a mocker, and a stupefier, or else prohibit it, either in general, or in special cases."
Again :
'* The Bible teaches clearly and fully by a series of con- tinuous and consistent testimonies that intoxicating drink is an evil article, poisonous to the body, seductive to the soul, and cor- rupting to the circumstances of man; or to put the idea in another shape, we hold that the Bible vindicates its claim to inspiration by having anticipated on this point the fullest witness of science and having exhausted the teachings of human history."
Rev. James Smith, M.A., says :
'•We submit upon the whole question that Scripture teaching cannot be held as sanctioning or commending any kind of intoxi- cating liquor, that all its statements, examined in the light of
Tile Voice of Scripture, 121
science, experience, and history, are capable of a more satisfactory explanation without the necessity of, that any such sanction is given, and that even if it were given to such fermented wine as was in common use in those days, no argument can warrantably be based on that in favor of our own drinking usages. ... A thorough examination of the subject shows that the Bible is slan- dered when it is represented as sanctionmg such drinking usages as ours, which are the giant curse of our country and the great enemy of religion ; and that Scripture teaching, when rightly read and impartially interpreted, is in perfect harmony with the teaching of science and the testimony of ex-perience.
"We find, then, that the temperance reformation is in perfect harmony with Scripture principles bearing on personal religion, our duty to our neighbor, and to the cause of God. In view of the relation which drink, and the fashions and customs associated with it, bear to the true character and work of the Christian church as a witness for Christ, does he not say to all his pro- fessed followers through the temperance reformation: 'Lovest thou me more than these 9 ' "
Rev. Dr. George DuflOield says :
*' Never has there been a book more abused by wine-bibbers and drunkards, for their justification or excuse, than our English version of the Bible. . . . The contrast given in the sacred Scrip- tures between the wine that intoxicates and that which contains not alcoholic poison is too strong and clear to admit of appeal to them, with any hope of success, by the advocates of moderate drinking. . . . Let all the passages in which wine, according to our English translation, is spoken of be examined in the original, and due respect be paid to the import of their terms, and there will not be found any approval, direct or indirect, of drink that intoxicates."
Dr. Dawson Burns, in '^ Christendom and the Drink Cfurse,*' says:
"From all that has been advanced it appears a reasonable con- clusion that the regard to personal well-being which Christianity enjoins, not only for the sake of the individual himself ^ a unit, but also for the sake of the society of which he is a living factor, is better complied with by abstinence from alcoholic beverages than by most-carefuUy regulated use. "
122 Moderation vs. Toted Ahstinence.
Tayler Lewis, LL.D., says :
''Anti -temperance critics are fond of charging the zealous tem- perance advocates with perversions of Scripture and strained in- terpretations. This is doubtless true in some cases, but the fault is far more apt to be on the other side. The whole scope and spirit of a precept is often overlooked by the wine advocate, and some mere contrast or illustration (belonging not to the inspired heart of the passage, but to the necessarily imperfect human lan- guage in which it is conveyed, and to the imperfect human knowledge which is ap inseparable accompaniment of such lan- guage) is elevated into all the dignity and authority of a precept, commanding us directly to drink wine, as though it were good per se — a duty, in fact, the neglect of which would be the slight- ing of the Divine beneficence. The much-talked of sin per se of the other side, however strained and harsh it may sometimes ap- pear, is far more sound and rational. Thus, for example, Proverbs xxxi. 6, 7 is taken by some as not only a perfect justification of wine-drinking as a common practice but even as a command to do so in certain cases. When we look, however, at the whole passage, and study its spirit, we find it to be one of the strongest abstinence texts in the whole Bible."
Eev. Dr. Albert Barnes, in his commentary on John ii. 10,
"The wine of Judea was the pure juice of the grape, without any mixture of alcohol, and commonly weak and harmless. It was the common drink of the people, and did not tend to produce intoxication."
Dr. Patton says :
" All acquainted with Mr. Barnes know that he would not make «uch a statement until he had given the subject a patient and thorough examination. Having scrutinized all the authori- ties, he has thus recorded upon the printed page his clear and honest convictions."
The Eev. Dr. Jacobus, commenting on the wine made by Christ, tays :
" This wine was not that fermented liquor which passes now under that name. All who know of the wines then used will
The Voice of Scrijdiore. 123
understand rather the nnferraented juice of the grape. The pre- sent wines of Jerusalem and Lebanon, as we tasted them, were commonly boiled and sweet, without intoxicating qualities such as we here get in liquors called wines. The boiling prevents the fermentation. Those were esteemed the best wines which were least strong."
Dr. John J. Owcd, in his '' Commentary," says : "As wine was a common beverage in that land of vineyards in its unfermented state, our Lord most likely drank it."
Dr. Patton adds :
" The Saviour did not turn aside from his work to clear him- self from the charges which malignity and falsehood brought against him. He simply said : ' Wisdom is justified of her chil- dren ' — that is, ' My work and my character will ultimately shield me from the power of all false accusations. Those who know me will not be affected by them, and those who hate me will not cease from their calumny.' "
Dr. Eliphalet Nott, president of Union College, says:
" That unfermented grape-juice was called wine is as apparent as it is that it was used as a beverage. It was not only called wine, but it was also accounted to be 'good wine.' . . . The juice of the grape in its natiu-al state is either wine before fer- mentation or it is not. Be it, then, that before fermentation, though often called wine, it is not so, but merely something else out of which wine is made. This admitted, then all the com- mendations of the fruit of the vine previous to fermentation, with which the Bible abounds, are not commendations of loineatall, hut merely commendations of that out of which wine is made; and all the condemnations of wine with which the Bible also abounds are condemnations of the fruit of the vine, not before but after fermentation, and are therefore condemnations not of that out of which wine is made, but condemnations of the veritable article made — wixe itself."
Again asks Dr. Nott :
"Can the same thing in the same state be good and bad, a symbol of wrath and a symbol of mercy, a thing to be sought after and a thmg to be avoided ? Certainly not. And is the Bible, then, inconsistent with itself ? No, certainly."
124 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence,
Rev. Dr. William Patton says :
*' More than thirty-fire years since, when revising the study of Hebrew with Professor Seixas, an eminent Hebrew teacher, I submitted to him the collation of texts which I had made with the request that he would give me his deliberate opinion. He took the manuscript, and a few days after returned it with the statement: * Your discriminations are just ; they denote that there were two kinds of wine, and the Hebrew Scriptures justify this view.* Thus fortified, I hesitated no longer, but, by sermons and ad- dresses, made known my convictions."
Commenting on Gal. v., 19-24, Dr. Patton says :
•* Temperance, which is self-restraint /?'owi, and not iiiy the use of whatever is injurious, is here placed in opposition to drunken- ness. To be safe, abstain."
Again, closing his work " Bible Wines," he says :
*' Besides these testimonies, a goodly number of men, well read in ancient lore and learned in the original languages of the Word of God, have, by patient study, been led to the same conclusion. The company of such is rapidly increasing both in Great Britain and America. We do not despair, but confidently believe that the time is not far distant when no drinker, nor vender, nor defender of alcoholic wines will find a shelter and a house of refuge in the Scriptures of God. Let there be light I"
Dr. G. W. Samson says :
** The Egyptians and Hebrews had an unfermented wine, as a chain of authorities from Moses, the historian and lawgiver, to Fuerst, the latest Hebrew lexicographer, attest. . . . Modem investigations lead to the conclusion that tirosh was must, or un- fermented wine. This will appear — for the testimonies to this effect are numerous, and their study most effective — by the tracing of its Hebrew origin, of the cognate Arabic, of the Greek trans- lation made about B.C. 300, of the Talmud comments, of the Latin version of Jerome, prepared about a.d. 400, and of several later versions. . . . ' Wine is a mocker ' ; ' At the last it blteth like a serpent ' ; ' It is not for princes to drink wine ' ; these are unquali- fied in their declaration, and hence all qualified utterances that seem to modify their manifest assertion should not override but be made to harmonize with these declarations."
The Voice of Scrii^tiire, 125
Prof. Moses Stuart says :
" ' Facts show that the ancients not only preserved their wines unfermented, but regarded it as of a higher flavor and finer quah- ty than fermented wine.' There is no ancient custom with a bet- ter amount and character of proof than this. ... My final con- clusion is this— viz., that whenever the Scriptures speak of wine as a comfort, a blessing, or a libation to God, and rank it with such articles as corn and oil, they mean— they can mean— on/^ such icine as contained no alcohol that could have a mischievous tendency ; that wherein they denounce it, prohibit it, and con- nect it with drunkenness and revelling, they can mean only alco- holic or intoxicating ivine.
"If I take the position that God's Word Siudicorks entirely har- monize, I must take the position that the case before us is as I have represented it to be.
" What, then, is the difficulty in taking the position that the good and innocent wine is meant in all cases where it is commended and allowed ; or that the alcoholic or intoxicating wine is meant in all cases of prohibition and denunciation ?
"I cannot refuse to take this position, without virtually im- peaching the Scriptures of contradiction or ineonsisteiicy. I can- not admit that God has give liberty to persons in health to drink alcoholic wine without admitting that his Word and his works are at variance. The law against such drinking which he has en- stamped on our nature stands out prominently — read and as- sented to by all sober and thinking men ; is his Word now at variance with this ? Without reserve, I am prepared to answer in the negative."
Re7. Canon Farrar, D.D., F.R.S., says:
*' When a youth I was mainly a water-drinker. When I was an undergraduate, although I had heard little or nothing of the temperance movement, I never had once a bottle of wine or spi- rits of any kind in my rooms. When I became a man, my thoughts and energies were greatly turned in other directions, and if I thought of total abstinence at all (which I scarcely ever did), I re- garded it as a somewhat harmless but perfectly amiable eccen- tricity. It was only two years ago that my attention was first seri- ously called to the enormous evil of drink, and to the immense misery it is causing not only throughout the length and breadth of this land, but almost even the entire world. And when I came
126 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence.
to London, from the first moment when my attention was called to it I almost entirely ceased to touch any fermented liquor; and seeing what I did see — for I suppose none but a London clergy- man in such a parish as mine really knows the extent of the evil — I saw it would become inevitable for me veiy soon to sign the pledge. But I did not wish to act hastily in the matter, or to plunge into it in a sudden fit of enthusiasm. There were certain facts about which I wished to speak from my own knowledge, and certain truths which I wished to resolve from my own experience, and therefore, though I continued to drink water, I did not al- ways refuse wine, for reasons which were well known to my friends, until about a year and a quarter ago, when I signed the pledge at the oflBces of the Church of England Temperance Society."
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE SOCIETI
Hon. 'Wm. E. Dodge,
President.
H. B. Spelman,
Treasurer.
J. N. Stearns,
Cor. Sec. and Pub. Agent.
THE NATIONAL TEMPERANCE SOCIETY, organized in 1865 for the purpose of sup- pling a sound and able temperance literature, have already stereotyped and publiPhed over eight hundred publications of all sorts and sizes, from the one-page tract up to the bound volume of 500 pages. This list comprises books, tracts, and pamphlets, cont^ning essays, stories, sermons, argument, statistics, history, etc., upon every phase of tl3 ques- tion. Special attention has been given to the department
FOR SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARIES.
One hundred and eight volumes have already been issued, written by some of the best aathors in the land. These have been carefully examined and approved by the Publication Committee of the Society, representing the various religious denominations and temperance r^rganizations of the country, which consists of the following members :
PETER CARTER, Rev. W. T. SABINE, A. A. ROBBINS, Rkv. HALSEY MOORE,
T. a. BROUWER, Rev. R. S. MACARTHUR, J. B. DUNN, D.D., Rev. a. G. LAWSON, J. P. NEWMAN, D.D.
Rev. ALFRED TAYLOR- R. R. SLNCLAIR. JAMES BLACK, J. N. STEARNS.
The volumes have been cordially recommended by leading clergymen of all denomina- tions, and by numer-ous Ecclesiastical bodies and Temperance Organizations all over the tand. They should be in every Sunday-school Library. The following is a list of some of the latest and the best issued :
Our Homes. By Mart Dwinell Chellis. 12mo, 426 pages $150
Rose Clifton. By Mrs. E. J. Richmond. 12mo, 400 pages | 50
Over the Way. By Mrs. H. J. Moore. 12mo, 213 pages i QO
White Hands and White Hearts. By Ernest Gilmore. i2mo,
278 pages j 00
Amid the Shadows. By Mrs. M. F. Martin. 12mo, 412 pages. . . 1 25
Sought and Saved. By Miss M. a. Paull. 12ino, 396 pages 1 25
True to his Colours. By Rev. T. p. Wilson, M.A. 12mo, 349 pages. 1 25
step by step. By Mrs. J. McNair Wright. 18mo, 92 pages . 40
Firebrands. By Mrs. J. McNair Wright. 12mo, 357 pages 1 25
The Brewer's Fortune. By Mary Dwinell Chellis. 425 pages. 1 50
Ripley Parsonage. By Faye Huntington. 12mo, 351 pages 1 25
Mr. Mackenzie's Answer. By Faye Huntington. 352 pages... 1 25
The Curse of Mill Valley. By Mrs. s. m. hartough. 331 pages, i 25
His Honor the Mayor. By Helen E. chapman. 395 pages 1 25
From Father to Son. By Mary Dwinell Chellis. 420 pages... 1 25
The Pledge and the Cross. By Mrs. s. m. i. henry. 256 pages, i oo The Wife's Engagement Ring. By T. s. Arthur. 278 pages... i 25 A More Excellent Way. By Miss m. e. Winslow. 217 pages... i qo
Alice Grant. By Mrs. E. J. Richmond. 12mo, 352 pages 1 25
The Queer Home in Rugby Court. By Miss Annette l. noble.
12mo, 450 pages i 59
Barford MiHs. By Miss M. E. Winslow. 12mo, 246 pages 1 QO
Norman Brill's Life- Work. By abbey Eldridge. 218 pages. . . 1 00
A Day with a Demon. By Mrs. J. McNair Wright. 18mo, 96 pp. 40
No Danger. By Mary J. hedges. 12mo, 360 pages 1 25
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Caught and Fettered. By Mrs. J. ?. Ballard. i2mo, 252 pages.. 1 00 Address J N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent,
58 Reade Street, New York City,
Text-Book 0F""TEMPERAr^cL
By Dr. F. JR. LEES, F.8.A., of England.
Price Reduced. -Price $1 25 in cloth, 50 cents paper cover. This highly important and much needed work is a complete compend <A the theory and doctrine of total abstinence, and of the historical, Biblical physiological, statistical, and philosophical arguments for Teetotalism, con laining all that is necessary to give a thorough and intelligent comprehen. iion of temperance principles and of the duty of individual abstinence. Th« work will be divided into nine parts, in which its subjects will be embraced according to the following summary of contents .
Part I. — Temperance as a Virtue. Showing how it begins with S«lf- Denial, is opposed to Sensual Gratification, and expresses Obedience to Divine Law. Part II.- -The Chemical History of Alcohol. Embracing the Chemi-
cal History, Nature, and Properties of Alcohol. Part III.- -The Dietetics of Temperance. Food, Physic, or Poison? Showing that neither Health nor Strength is given by Liquors. Part IV. — The Pathology of Intemperance. Embracing the Question of the Action of Alcohol upon the System, giving Experi- ments, Statistics, and Illustrations. Part V. — The Medical Question. Showing the Nature of Disease and its Remedy ; demonstrating that Alcohol is not a Curative Agent, and presenting a variety of convincing Arguments, Statistics, and Quotations against the Use of Stimulants under the Pretence of Healing Physical Disoiders. Part VI. — Temperance in Relation to the Bible. Embracing Ancient Teetotalism and the Bible Argument for Total Abstinence, popular and critical. Part VII. — Historical. Embracing the History of Drinking Usages, of Attempts in Ancient Times to stop the Evil, and of the Rise and Progress of the Modern Temperance Reformation. Part VIII. — The National Question and the Remedy. Embracing the Results of Intemperance, as exhibited in its Effects upon the Moral, Social, Industrial, and Pecuniary Interests of Men, witb Reliable Statistics, and the History of Prohibition in America Part IX. — The Philosophy of Intemperance. Setting forth the Remedy
for the Evil — Personal, Social, and National. Part X. — Summary of the Argument.
Questions upon the text are given at the bottom of the page, so that lessons may be given out to children and youth in schools. Bands of Hope, and families, and in this respect will supply a demand for a permanent, ac- curate, and standard Text-book upon the subject to be introduced into the common schools of the country.
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No better text-book ever was published for the purpose of educating th« public sentiment of the nation upon the great fundamental doctrines of tb* rarse and the true remedy for the evils of intemperance. The book will be sent bv mail on receipt of price.
Address J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent,
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TEMPERANCE FUBUGATIONS.
■♦ « »
The National Temperance Society have recently published the following pamphlets in cheap form, that they may have a wide cir- culation among temperance workers :
The Church and Temperance. By Hon. wniiam E.Dodge.
A valuable paper presented to the Pan-Pre.sbyterian Couticil in Philadel- phia. 12mo, 36pp $0 10
The Alcoholic Liquor Traffic. By Hon. Charles H. Joyce, M.C. An address delivered before the House of Representatives. 12mo, 24 pages 10
Alcohol and the Church. By Hon. Robert C. Pitman. 12mo, 24 pages 10
Alcohol and the Human Brain. By Rev. Joseph Cook.
12mo, 24 pages. An able scientific Address 10
Ten Lectures on Alcohol. By B. W. Richardson, M.D. 12mo, 338 pages. Comprising " Cantor Lectures," "Alcohol on the Body and the Mind," "Moderate Drinking," and " The Liberty of the Abject." Cloth, §1.00. Paper edition 50
Ten Talks on Temperance. By Canon Farrar, D.D. 12mo, 200 pages. Cloth, 60 cents ; paper 25
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Readings and Recitations. No. 3. By Miss l. Penney.
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Juvenile Temperance Reciterii The National Temperance Society have just published a new and valuable collection of 66 Recitations and Declamations in Prose and Verse, for u^e in Sunday-schools, Bands of Hope, and other children's organizations ; written by some of the best writers in the land. 64 pages 10
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ALCOHOL AND HYGIENE.
An Eletnentary TeocUBook for Schools,
laclior of "Catechism on Alcohol," "Juvenile Temperance Manual," and "The Temperanca
School."
i2mo, 231 pages. Price 60 cents.
THE NATIONAL TEMPERANCE SOCIETY has just published a new and valuable text-book on alcohol, with the above title, prepared with great care and skill, by Miss Julia Colmau. It is designed especially to meet the wants of a younger grade of pupils than the '' Temperance Lesson-Book" by Dr, Richardson ; is free from difficult and technical scientific terms, but based upon the latest teachings of enlightened science con- cerning alcohol and its effects upon the human system.
The great question of temperance, the relations of alcohol to health, are here set forth simply, concisely, and comprehensively. What is alcohol ? how is it made ? and what effect does it have upon those who take much or little under various circumstances ? are the main questions treated as fully as could be expected in a book of this size. The questions at the bottom of every page are so planned as to draw out, in the answers of the scholars, the most important facts. The leading statements also have references to an Appendix, where quotations from well-kno^vn authorities are given in proof, " with chapter and verse " care- fully recorded. It covers in the successive chapters a wide range of topics, which are treated in a familiar, pleasant style, and accompanied by marginal numbered questions for recitu. tion and review. It meets admirably an urgent need of primary, public, and private schools, and \\ ill be a most welcome help in giving temperance instruction in connection with all juvenDe temperance organizations. It should be speedily brought into general use. The following is the table of contents :
Lesson.
\,— What is Alcohol? II,— The Origin of Alcohol. HI. — Alcohol from Grapes. IV ,— Alcohol from Grain. \,—The Brewer and the JUaTver, VI. — Distillation of Alcohol. VII.— ^ Bit of Chemistry. TIU^— Alcohol is Greedy of
Lesson. JLXIL,— Alcohol and Severe Cold.
XX.— ^ Brain Poison. XXI. — One Cause of Insanity. XXII.— T/ie Great Deceiver. XXIII. — Some Deceits of Alcohol. ILXW.— Would You Like a Clear Head ? XXV.— I>o Ton Want a Steady Sand? Water. ~ 1 XXVI.— ^ Chapter of Accidents.
Ul..— Alcohol and the Xerves. XXVII,— CWwies Caused lyy Alco-
X. — Alcohol as a Poisoi%. hoi,
li.1 —Alcohol in the Stomach. \ JLX.VI11,— Alcohol Wastes JPro- yilt .—Alcohol an Intruder, perty.
""''"' "' ' XXIX. — Disease from, Alcohol.
J\L\.yL.— Death from Alcohol. XXXI.— -J.»t Artificial Apjietite. XXXII.— TF/taJ Shall I Do About It? XXXIII.— TFiue, Cider, and Beer. JLILX-YV ,— Achievements of ub^ stainers.
'X.m.—The Danger Signal. XIV.— Js Alcohol Food ? XV, — Does Alcohol give Strength? XVI,— T/*c ITat Made by Alco- hol. XVII,— JTow Alcohol Treats the lAver. XAFIW.—Alcohol in Hot Climates.
Address J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent,
58 Reade Street, New York.
Talks on Temperance
BY
Rey. Ganon Fakrar, D.D, F.E.S. 12mo, 198 pages; cloth, 60 cents; paper cover, 25 cents.
The National Temperance Society has recently piiblislied the 12 Sermons and Talks by this eminent divine. They are iilled with sound convincing arguments against the lawfulness, morality, and necessity of the Liquor Traffic, as well as stirring appeals to all Christian men and women, to take a firm, decided, outspoken stand in favor of Total Abstinence from all intoxica- ! ting liquors.
i He gives the trumpet no uncertain sound, when he proclaims I war against Alchohol, but urges every motive, and brings to bear \ every incentive, to enlist recruits from every class.
OVER 40,000 COPIES
> jave already been sold in England, and we trust that, with the ^ery low price at which they are sold, they will secure a wide cir^ culation in every community. The following is the Table of
OOIVTEIVTS:
1. Betiireen the Living and the Dead.
2. Reasons for Being an Abstainer.
3. Total Abstinence for the Sake of Ourselves and others.
4. The Vow of the Nazarite.
5. The Vow of the Rechabites.
6. The Serpent and the Tiger.
7. Our Duty as a Nation.
8. Abstinence from Evil.
9. Address to Teachers.
10. Experience of a Total Abstainer.
11. Duty of the Cliwrcli.
12. Fallacies about Total Ab^tlaience.
It will be sent by mail on receipt of price.
Address J. N. STEA.RNS, Publishing Ageut,
58 Reade Street , New York
TEN LECTURES ON ALCOHOL
By BENJAMIN W. RICHARDSON, M.A., M.D., F.R.S.
Fellow of the Royal College of Physiciant^ London, etc.
i2mo, 340 pages, cloth, $1.00. Paper covers, 50 cents
The National Temperance Society have just published in one volume all the Lectures by Dr. Richardson on Alcohol, which n:iakes one of the most valuable and cheapest books ever published. It comprises the following :
On Alcohol. With an Introduction by Dr. Willard Parker, of
NewYork 100
This book contains the " Cantor Lecturee " delivered before the Society of Arts. These justly celebrated lectures, six in number, embrace a historical sketch O* alcoholic distillation, and the results of an exhaustive scientific inquiry con- ;ming the nature of alcohol and its eflFects upon the human body and mind, /hey have attracted much attention throughout Great Britain, both among phy- •icians and general readers, and are the latest and best scientific expositions of Jcohol and its effects extant.
The Action of Alcohol on the Body and on the ]^ind. st
Two able and important lectures, the result of careful and extended research- M as to the results of alcohol from a scientific stand-point, and are among the rWest contributions to this branch of the subject.
'Moderate Drinking^; For and Against, from Scientific Points
of View 47
It is a thoroughly scientific and impartial discussion of the subject of the moderate use of alcoholic beverages, by one who stands in the front rank of }he most distinguished scientists in Great Britain, and .is such possesses a rare value for circulation among the young, and all who may not yet have arrived at mature convictions as to total abstinence. It is one of the moat valuable con- Iributions its gilted author has yet made to temperance literature. It ought to be In the hands of all college students, and of young men, ministers, teachers, and intelligent people eveiywhere.
The Hedical Profession and Alcohol. An Address
before the British Medical Association 33
It is a scientific plea for total abstinence, of great power. It embodies »1bo a very earnest appeal to members of the medical profession to join in the pending vitally important warfare against alcoholic beverages. It is a most valu- able puolication to place in the hands of the physicians of this country, among whom it should have the widest possible circulation.
The Liberty of the Abject, and Kl^hy I became
an Abstainer 13
S4Q
Addrew J. N STEARNS, Publishing Agent, 68 Beade Street, New York,
University of Connecticut
Libraries
39153027290461