Christian Temperance and Reform
It must never be forgotten that the church of Christ is a temperance society instituted by God himself, and that to it all other temperance societies must be auxiliary. Paul gives us the true key when he tells us that temperance is one of the fruits of the Spirit—that is, a Christian grace or virtue. Religion alone can furnish the strength to resist temptation and save from falling. When men realize this, if they can be brought to repentance and prayer, there may be hope of real reform. Human law and its restraints may be valuable as a help, to a certain extent, the vicious may stand in fear of it; but it does not strike at the root of the evil, it does not reach the heart; no man was ever made better, no man was ever Christianized, by law. If the great evil of intemperance is ever to be done away, it is by the preaching of the gospel, by the spread of its principles, by touching the heart, by the divine law of love, which, while it denounces drunkenness as sin, is still full of pitying tenderness, knowing that it is human to err and God-like to forgive.—Churchman.