Who Is Responsible?

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 21, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 40.

Who Is Responsible?

BUT who is most responsible for this stupid and wicked sanctioning of a demoralizing traffic? Let us see in the light of a further statement:—

At a church temperance meeting lately in one of the largest churches of New York, a clergyman in high standing declared that wine was one of the good gifts of God, a considerate use of which was justified by the Bible, and the license law was the best means of regulating its use in the community.

Are a mother’s tears and agony over the loss of her dear, and perhaps only son, brought about by the open licensed saloon, to be rebuked and silenced by a liveried servant of God, who preaches to a rich congregation in a large church? Is his exalted position to be any screen for his perversion of the Bible, and insensibility to the demands of poor, suffering humanity? Shall the wretchedness and misery, the debased manhood and degraded womanhood of our city slums, brought about by the sale of the poisonous liquid under the sanction of the churches of Christ, be sanctioned and tolerated by us because their example is a sufficient justification to relieve us from all personal responsibility?

Who can describe the untold horrors of the liquor traffic in its desolating influence upon the homes of our country; its ravages on the health, property, and welfare of the people? Truly it is a vile and hideous incubus on every department of our social economy, and should be antagonized by all the power and influence we can bring to bear against it. Nobody denies the enormity of the evil of rum-selling; but who is responsible? That is a burning question.—Demorest’s Monthly.