p. 747 | The Gospel of Temperance by Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 11, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 47.

The Gospel of Temperance.

By Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

WHAT amazes and shocks me is to see the wine-bottle where it is as flagrantly out of place as a bonfire would be on the floor of a powder mill. No intoxicant has any business to be on the table of a family which contains any boys, or on the table of any miscellaneous social party, or in the cupboard of any professional man, or anywhere else, in short, except possibly in the hands of a very discreet physician. Every bottle that contains alcohol contains a serpent. The serpent in Eden was not a more perfect embodiment of deceit. A bottle of Bourbon or of Burgundy will deceive the very elect. I am constantly called to labor for the reformation of persons who began with the most honest resolutions to drink moderately; but their glasses insensibly enlarged and deepened until they became literally a pit of damnation! Some of the hardest cases I encounter are of those whose names are enrolled on church registers.

In yonder lecture-room I have heard a man pray most pathetically for deliverance from the tempter, and yet he has been tracked to a drinking-saloon on his way home from the prayer-meeting! More than once he has been the subject of most loving personal efforts (once or twice of necessary church discipline), and still does he cry out in agony from the bites of the serpent which he deliberately put into his own bosom when he was a young man. He never whines about being "a poor unfortunate victim," etc., etc.; he squarely admits that he is a heinous sinner against God and his own soul. But what shall be said of those Christian people who, from thoughtlessness or from tyranny of fashion, will set wine-bottles where they will produce just such conflagrations? In my honest judgment, Pat O'Rafferty, the grog-seller, will have no heavier account to answer for in the "great day" than will those reputable and professedly Christian people who place bottled serpents on their hospitable tables for the temptation and poisoning of their guests. Half the drunkards in the land had one or more partners at the outset. God's word declares, "Be ye not partakers of other men's sins;" how much worse to be their tempters!

The one momentous truth that must be instilled into the minds and consciences of the young, is that nobody can safely tamper with an intoxicating beverage. On the bed-rock of entire abstinence alone are they safe. I am willing to confess on this public page that I would no more dare to tamper with a wine-bottle than I would dare to thrust a fire-brand into one of the pews of my church edifice. The venerable president of my college told me how often in his student days he used to listen to the eloquent sermons of Dr. —; but those very sermons were delivered under the inspiration of the wine-cup? The excuse was, "I can preach better with the help of a stimulant." He delivered a discourse once on the sufferings of our Lord that melted his auditory to tears; but his nerves were all on fire with port wine while he was preaching! How this brilliant minister of Christ fell at last into open intemperance, and how bitterly he repented, and how he reformed and was reinstated, is still remembered by a few aged people. His temporary fall is a warning, trumpet-tongued, to all of us not to look upon a cup that stingeth like a serpent.

The only gospel of temperance I have yet learned, or which I dare to preach, is—let alcohol alone; it is a deceiver; it hath power to cast both body and soul into hell. This is the principle to teach to the rising generation. On this bed-rock of entire abstinence they can build safely. On that immutable rock let us maintain and enlarge the temperance reform.—Rev. T. L. Cuyler, in Temperance Advocate.