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that they lead us into great danger by their unguarded remarks 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 allowed the deacons to use it as a beverage. Did he mean unfermented wine? Then why did he limit the amount? This dilemma and all the other arguments from the Scriptures are as mere cobwebs to the lances of these valiant 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 controversy, and, therefore, I have to charge the total-abstinence propaganda with wresting the Scriptures and despising their authority.

THE BIBLICAL ARGUMENT ANALYZED.

I know that there is a wing of their army which acknowledges 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 inapplicable 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 position a giving-up of the contest, as indeed it is. For who will believe 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, but 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 circumstances, women may mount platform and pulpit as ex

horters and preachers, for verily, under 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 God. If moral questions that are not in the Scripture are to be 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 were 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 sentiment and example on moral conduct in us who believe in the Bible is a very dangerous thing. Of course, for the Buddhists who have lately become fashionable in our country it is of no consequence. And to them this division of my argument 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 intemperance 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 crusade 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 standard.

EXCESS AND MODERATION.

The right system must be one that recognizes practically the difference between excess and moderation, and the difference 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

orders and ribbons 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 thousand inhabitants of each town, and these sellers should be under heavy bonds not to sell to minors or drunkards, and not to allow disreputable characters to gather at their places. The law should likewise make the collection of evidence 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 extravagance 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 destroyers 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 land 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 sense, 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

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 free 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 and establish foundations of order and peace in the land that shall save us from a moral slough.

CONCLUSION.

Let me, in conclusion, distinctly say that I do not oppose the principle of total abstinence from all that intoxicates for 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—the forcing total abstinence upon the community as the duty of all; the putting under the ban every one who does not follow that standard; the insisting upon total abstinence as the only safety against drunkenness. It is this headlong movement, 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 inveigh. And let me also repeat that I am attacking a system and not persons. I have no war with men, but with error. 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. CROSBY.

BY REV. DR. MARK HOPKINS,

Ex-President Williams College, Mass.

TH

HE recent lecture by Dr. Crosby, entitled "A Calm View of the Temperance Question," is divided into four parts: 1. Preliminary Propositions; 2. The Prudential Question; 3. The Moral Question; and 4. His own System. Of these each requires attention.

His preliminary 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 drunkenness." 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 of 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

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