p. 119 | Temperance by Rev. Jas. Brand

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Feb 21, 1884

Temperance.

By Rev. Jas. Brand

Only Evil Continually.

1. THE liquor traffic, as it now exists, is the child of a master passion for money, just as drunkenness is the child of a master passion for drink. The deterioration of the moral sense, the decay of will power, the loss of manhood, are the characteristics of the drunkard. He becomes the slave of one tyrant passion. He becomes supremely selfish. The same is true of the liquor-seller. His aim is not malicious, but simply selfish. The temptation to make money easily, rapidly, without work, without giving an equivalent—that is the ruling principle. The result is the same as with the drinker—the lowering of manhood, the loss of the moral sense, the decay of conscience, the warping of the judgment, the defiance of all rights, human or divine, which interfere with the gratification of the master passion. It has all the malignity and relentless cruelty of pure selfishness. The grand indictment which Christian civilization is compelled to bring against the liquor traffic is that, like drunkenness itself, it is a violation of a great law of nature. It is a systematic violation of the Golden Rule. It is the opposite of love. The man behind the bar is not doing, cannot do, “as he would be done by.” He cannot love his neighbor as himself. The traffic is simply a system of preying upon the weaknesses of fellow-men for personal gain.

2. The nature of the business appears in the Satanic genius it develops for discovering the weak and vulnerable points of human nature, and concentrating its forces there to win and infatuate its victims. A drunkard, while breaking almost all other ties and obligations, is always fatally loyal to his tempter. He will perjure himself in court rather than betray his destroyer. A deadly friendship is cemented between them which no considerations of love or duty can break till the victim becomes a penniless wreck—then he is kicked out of doors.

3. The traffic is almost resistless from its ubiquity. It is everywhere. It follows the track of Christianity around the world. It is now found wherever there are temptable men. It waits till Christian civilization opens the commerce of the world, and then it rushes in and disputes with the missionary every foot of territory in heathen lands. It goes in advance of the church and the school to our Western frontier, and lays the foundations of society in the interest of the trade. The saloon is found in every hamlet and at every cross-roads. Country boys who are too remote from any church ever to hear a sermon, are still within easy reach of some saloon. In our great cities, not only the inexperienced are entrapped, but men, who under Christian philanthropy have reformed, find a thousand demon hands reached out to pull them down again.

4. This tremendous scourge of mankind gains additional power for evil by its natural connection with and affinity for all other forms of crime. Everything known to be debasing to human nature and dangerous to society is directly promoted by this universal vice. The dram-shop and the brothel are twin institutions. Six-sevenths of the prostitutes of New York drink. They all find their business promoted by the saloon. The gambler, the thief, the libertine, the office-seeker, and the city jurymen who have no other occupation but to sit as arbiters in liquor cases, find their natural head-quarters in the saloon. Fashionable liquor-dealers, who live in gilded houses, may resent such facts; but the magnificence of a criminal cannot change the moral law. The man who makes his living by the sale of intoxicating liquors in the fashionable saloon or hotel of the great city, and the poor Irishman who does the same in a shanty at the cross-roads, belong to the same gang, and are drawn by the very nature of their business down to the same infamous level with drunkards, gamblers, prostitutes, thieves, and conspirators against law, and constitute the peril of the nation.—Rev. Jas. Brand.