A SAFE BRIDGE | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 11, 1880

A SAFE BRIDGE.

We believe in temperance in all things; but we also believe that total abstinence is the true temperance in regard to intoxicating liquors.

The man who never drinks will never become a drunkard, nor by his example cause another to become a drunkard—that is certain. It is a safe rule for all. It is the only safe rule for many. There has latterly been a revival of the old quibbling with words over the matter, and men whose vocation, position and character should make their every word emphasize the danger of the drinking habit, have been placed before the public in the equivocal attitude of sanctioning if not commending a "temperate use" of all the good things of life, including "good" liquor.

There are no good liquors; the only degrees are bad, worse, worst. And the least bad will make drunkards, or excessive drinkers, of seventy-five per cent of those who habitually use them, just as surely as the superlatively bad. Fire burns and alcohol blights, without much regard to the fuel or the form. The difference is in degree, not in kind. Men should abstain, not only because there is peril in moderation, but because there is no good reason for indulgence at any time. Nothing is better established than the fact that to produce and maintain the highest physical condition, and to fit men for the utmost endurance of what they are capable there must be no liquor used.

What is true of the body is even more true of the mind. The illusion that made a connection between gin and genius was long ago dispelled. Alcoholic fumes breed instant disorder in the brain. Even the poets who have sung the praises of wine have done their writing with clear heads. They learn from experience that they must sing first and drink afterwards. The rational conclusion is, therefore, the one reached by Col. Higginson—that as "men are habitually better off without alcoholic stimulants, it is better to go without them all the time." Abstinence is the safe bridge. It carries men over temptation and all the perils incident to a habit that is, however we may prate about "moderation," confessedly the monster evil of society.—Golden Rule.