Temperance | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 13, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 11.

Temperance.

"Things Indifferent."

THE fact is, that the people do not need laborious efforts to uphold an indulgence in "things indifferent." They are led astray by them. The young man thinks that wine-drinking is a "thing indifferent," and next he acts as if it were a "thing indifferent" whether he be a drunkard or not. The indifferent cards are shuffled for amusement until he is educated for gambling; and what difference is it, if he spend whole nights in cheating and being cheated? The indifferent dance engages the young men and maidens, and they whirl through ball-rooms and trip into perdition with bad company. So of other amusements leading to vice. In the very last excesses of their sins, such persons still plead "indifference," for they do become indifferent to God, to conscience, to religion, to the soul, and to salvation. These "things indifferent" are the first steps toward wretchedness and ruin.

Are they indifferent? They might be, one says. They might be, if the person kept himself within the bounds of innocence. But where are those limits? Tell us just where a lamb becomes a sheep, and we may draw the line. Nay, we cannot then. For these things are not to be considered simply per se (by themselves). Their tendency and influence must be taken into account. There is no such thing as drinking a glass of wine per se. It is not an act beginning and ending in itself. Who doubts that the tendency of card-playing is to gambling, and that of dancing is to reveling, and that of occasional drinking is to frequent drinking and to intoxication? Who denies that many moderate drinkers become excessive drunkards? Who denies that many young men begin by imitating moderate drinkers, and end in the excesses of drunkenness? Look into the social circle where the glass circulates, and mark those who drain it. Follow them through life. Into how many hovels must you go? Into how many crimes? Into how many prisons? Into how many dreary abodes to bear a drunkard to his grave? The statistics of the past are alarming. The present increase of social tippling must make them frightful. In what had they their beginning? In those "things indifferent."

But are they indifferent? They cannot be if they lead to crime, to misery, to self-destruction. They cannot be if they insult God and blast the soul forever. Nay, they are matters of conscience. Ought I not to have a tender conscience in regard to my tastes, my appetites, my habits, and my influence? Grant that it be not a sin per se for me to take a glass of wine; ought I not to have a scrupulous conscience in regard to the influence of that glass upon others? If I take one in the drawing-room, they may take scores of them in the dram-shop. Surely, it is not a perverted conscience that reproves one for his evil influence. Then is it any perversion of conscience for one to feel that it is a sin to take the social glass? Surely not. Then total abstinence is based, not on expediency alone, but on conscience.

Will the church allow itself to be moved and placed upon the ground of total indifference? Will Christians take that position? It is not solid ground. It has not an enlightened, rectified, and sanctified conscience as the substratum for a good foundation. It is but a quagmire of quicksand. The church cannot stand securely upon it. Yet its white spire may be seen. The tried and the tempted will see it when laboring at the helm to make their entrance into the port of safety. They will see it in the wrong place, it having been removed from the foundations built for it by Christ and his apostles. They will not know of the removal; and, with an eye upon it, they will make shipwreck upon the hidden sands of intemperance.

Shall this be so? Shall our young men perish saying, "We began our career with the doctrine that our amusements and indulgences were 'things indifferent.' The church taught it to us. We were deluded by it; for it was so tenaciously held and so largely expounded. It made up the thunders that we heard, while the warning to abstain, lest we should injure ourselves and others, came in feeble whispers. Christians were ever saying, 'No harm, it is not a sin in itself,' but we scarcely heard the wise advice, 'Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.' We looked, we took, we drank, we gave, we were ruined." Shall they say this when writhing under the adder's sting? Not if the church stand on the ground of self-denial, and heed the doctrine upon which Paul insisted, "That no man put a stumbling-block, or an occasion to fall, in his brother's way." "When ye sin so against the brethren, and wound the weak conscience, ye sin against Christ."—Sel.