Temperance in England and America.
By Thos. Stocker
ENGLAND to-day is more than a quarter of a century behind America with regard to its temperance sentiment, methods, and activities. How comes this to pass? Is it because England moves much more slowly than America on all great questions of reform? This is no doubt true, but does not explain fully this strange phenomenon. I think there are several reasons for the difference in question, which perhaps are resolvable into one main reason. The main reason, I think, is, that the people of England have failed to comprehend the temperance question in all its relations to home, to health, to morals, to national prosperity, and to legislation. Of course there has been progress in this direction during the period above named. Dr. Lees, Sir. Wilfred Lawson, and others have not labored in vain. But there are comparatively few leaders of temperance thought in the British Parliament, in English pulpits, and its editorial sanctums, who seem to have thoroughly mastered the fundamental principles of the temperance reform. A few there are, and such are working nobly; but the public sentiment is far from being either correct or as powerful as it ought to be. For example among the highly cultured and intensely religious people of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, where Chalmers, Guthrie, and many others have labored earnestly for years to disseminate total-abstinence principles and save the victims of drink and licentiousness, the temperance sentiment is so feeble that seldom does a minister of the gospel advocate from the pulpit the duty of total abstinence from poisonous drinks as a beverage. The subject is too secular, it is not sacred enough for a Christian pulpit, or the Sabbath day. How do I know this? How? The knowledge came on this wise:— A few earnest temperance men desired the writer to speak on the present status of temperance in America, and I promised to comply with their desire, if I could have the use of a Christian pulpit on a Sabbath evening, so as to reach the ministers of the different churches that did not have service, but I was forbidden the use of such a place for such a subject, at such a time; and Edinburgh is a fair sample of almost all other places in Great Britain. Noble exceptions no doubt there are, but the rule is, that the pulpits of England and Scotland are not much used in the advocacy of the temperance reform. And certainly they are not used to show up the moral and political wickedness of the liquor traffic. With the present public sentiment such a work would be regarded as a desecration of the sacred desk. How different has been the course pursued by the Christian pulpit of America, with but comparatively few exceptions; hence we have one of the causes, and a main one too, of the strength of the temperance sentiment in America as contrasted with the sentiment in Great Britain. Whatever, therefore, some people may say against the seeming lack of zeal and activity of the Christian church with regard to temperance, one thing is true, the Christian pulpit of America has lent no small aid to the cause of temperance, and especially with regard to its legal phase. Let me give in support of this last statement some resolutions passed by a large body of delegated ministers of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1880. Or rather I will give the “declaration of principles” of that body, which are contained in the Discipline of said church. Here they are:— “Temperance in its broader meaning is distinctively a Christian virtue, Scripturally enjoined. It implies a subordination of all the emotions, passions, and appetites to the control of reason and conscience. Dietetically, it means a wise use of articles of food and drink, with entire abstinence from such as are known to be hurtful. Both science and human experience unite with the Holy Scriptures in condemning all alcoholic beverages as being neither useful nor safe. The business of manufacturing and vending such liquors is also against the principles of morality, political economy, and the public welfare. We, therefore, regard voluntary abstinence from all intoxicants as the true ground of personal temperance, and complete legal prohibition of the traffic in alcoholic drinks as the duty of the civil Government. We heartily approve of all lawful and Christian efforts to save society from the manifold and grievous evils resulting from intemperance.” Now here are principles that have the right ring to them, but we have no hesitancy in saying that there is no church in Great Britain that could, with the present state of public sentiment, adopt with safety such a declaration of principles.—Rev. Thos. Stocker.