RUM AND OPIUM | AdventAI

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Mar 10, 1890

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 16, No. 10.

RUM AND OPIUM.

BOSTON rum and British opium are demoralizing portions of the Oriental world. They are checking missionary effort as effectually as anything on heathen soil. A man whose testimony cannot be questioned says that often while he is preaching, the taunt is thrown up to him from the audience, "Who brings the opium?" The wars of 1840, '57, and '60, cannot soon be forgotten, and are dark stains on the pages of English history. Such testimony to the estimate of a moral principle can scarcely be found, as when, at the command of the Chinese emperor, ten million dollars worth of opium was destroyed. The notable act of our fathers in throwing a few hundred chests of tea into the Boston harbor, as a protest against an iniquitous principle in government, dwindles in the comparison. And when the British authorities still pressed their case on China with argument and gun-boat, the pathetic answer of the heathen monarch awakens our heartiest admiration: "It is true that I cannot prevent the introduction of the poison; but nothing will induce me to derive a revenue from the vice and misery of my people."

Rev. B. P. Kephart, a missionary in Africa, says that the steamer that brought him had on board 10,000 casks of rum, eleven cases of gin, 460 tons of gunpowder, and fourteen missionaries, all on their way to Africa to convert the heathen. Rum, gin, gunpowder, and opium, from Puritan Boston and Christian England! The cheek should mantle with the blush of shame. Is there not enough loyal Christian sentiment in these two great nations to utter an indignant protest so loud that the governments shall be moved to action, that this shameful traffic in the bodies and souls of the heathen may be effectually stopped? —Selected.