TEMPERANCE AS A BATTLEMENT.
WHEN Joseph Cook leaves the region of transcendentalism, and comes to that of plain, practical common sense, he has a terse and clear way of putting things. As an example we take the following from one of his sermons in London:— "You send up a balloon from Hyde Park on a clear day, and with a glass you may see the homes of four or five millions of men. Send up a balloon from Central Park in New York City when the atmosphere is clear, and by the aid of a glass you can look upon the homes of two or three millions of men. Modern populations are massing themselves in cities. The misgovernment of great towns under representative institutions is a proverb. The faster cities grow, the more rapidly do we come into the need of this battlement around the edge of the roof of our new house. But it is a fact that on both sides of the sea the cities are growing faster than the rest of the population. London increases faster than England, Berlin than Germany, and Paris than France, as well as New York City than the State of New York, Boston than the State of Massachusetts, and Chicago than the State of Illinois. In the United States we had only one-twenty-fifth of our population in cities in 1800. Now we have more than one-fifth. Some of your statesmen look across the Atlantic, and say that there is not one American city of over 200,000 population that is well governed. I repel that accusation. Nevertheless there is too much ground for it. We are troubled by an ignorant and intemperate class, derived largely from immigration from all lands. We have learned that we must educate them, and make them sober, and that otherwise in great cities our form of government will be a farce. You will find ultimately in Great Britain trouble in managing your cities, unless you reform the perishing and dangerous population. "Is there anything in the Bible to overturn the two great principles recognized by the ideal commonwealth of old, that the people are to be total abstainers, and that they should be led by a priesthood of total abstainers? "Consider that distilled liquors were not known in the world till the year 1150. The process of distillation came into Europe at that date from the Moors. Suppose that you were to treat out of existence all distilled liquors, then you would bring the world into something of the condition in which it stood during the time of our Saviour. The absence of distilled liquors would make the more terrible form of drunkenness and alcoholic disease impossible. It was against the lighter drunkenness of a world which had in it no distilled liquors that the fearful biblical denunciations of drunkenness were launched. The Bible denounces wine as a mocker, and proclaims that the weak strong drink of ancient times, at the last biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder. What would it say of the fierce and poisoned potations of our days? "Without claiming that the Bible absolutely settles the question as to the point I am discussing, I do claim that you were not proved, if you are a moderate drinker, that it settles the custom on your side. You are far from showing that there is anything in the example of our Lord giving the remotest justification to your use of distilled liquors and brandied wines. I am grieved with an indignation which I dare not express to the full when I hear preachers and church members quoting the example of our Lord in support of the use of distilled liquors, which were not invented until the twelfth century. If our Lord were in London or New York to-day, face to face with our present drinking customs; if he were here in person as he is in spirit, listening to the cries of orphans and widows; if he could see how the best portions of our civilization are imperiled by those who fleece the poor and sell to them strong drink, I believe, on my soul, that he would again, as he did of old, knot up the whip of small cords, and purge the church of moderate drinking, and in doing that he would only be giving efficacy to the texts,—'It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak,' 'Lead us not into temptation,' 'Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,' 'Do not drink wine, that ye may put difference between holy and unholy,' 'If meat maketh my brother to offend, I will eat no meat while the world standeth.' He would knot up his whip of small cords, and use them in the name of those secular principles to which I have appealed,—the necessity of temperance as a battlement to keep blood-guiltiness from the roof of the new house civilization is building, in giving large and sometimes unlimited political power to the people."