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 introduced by those usages

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...

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 therefore passes our comprehension that any man can be found to defend 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 example to others-our brethren for whom Christ diedand 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 moderate drinking.' 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 experience 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 respectfully 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.) Republican 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

classes. They are the most under temptation, the most easily degraded to pauperism and crime in case of excess of indulgence. But 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 everything 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 Christian 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 drinking. 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 untrue. 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 may be at the father's table, to the last glass preceding a robbery or a murder.

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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 he, whose conclusions were directly the reverse of his.

"I assume that everybody knows, except Dr. Crosby, that drunkenness 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,

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 auxious 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.

HE following are some of the later declarations of eminent physicians and scientists concerning alco

THE

hol:

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 of alcohol, while the cause itself is never for a moment suspected. A man may be considered by his friends and neighbors, 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 destroying life."

Of his research concerning alcohol, as a scientific enquirer, Dr. Richardson says:

"To the research 1 devoted three years, from 1863 to 1866, modifying experiments in every conceivable way, taking advantage of seasons and varying temperatures of season, extending observation from one class of animals to another, and making comparative 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 uniformity. They were most surprising from the complete contradiction 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, in 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.

"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 always 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 considered 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 following is from a declaration sent to the International 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 :

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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 following 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 true 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 conclusions 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 investigation.