DANGERS OF MODERATE DRINKING.
By T. L. Cuyler
Let me point out to you three false lights which have been hung out by hands that ought to have shrunk from the deed. These false lights may tempt many a young man to steer away from the safe channel of total abstinence. The first one is that God's word approves and sanctions the use of alcoholic beverages! For one hundred years American slavery was buttressed by the same plea, that the Bible sanctioned it. But since the battle of Appomatox, the sharpest eye never discovered such a passage. Now the teachings of Scripture may be summed up in four heads:—
1. The Bible in various passages points out the evils and the perils of intoxicating drinks. It never pronounces a blessing on an intoxicant, and often warns men against its use. Several passages forbid such use.
2. The Bible in several passages approves and commends abstinence from intoxicating beverages. There is not a single verse in this book which condemns total abstinence.
3. The whole spirit of the word of God teaches self-control and self-denial, both for our own sakes and for the good of our fellow-men. The only passage in which the word "moderation" occurs, has no reference whatever to moderate drinking. It has not the faintest reference to the use of beverages. The word itself translated signifies constancy, calmness, quietness.
4. Every passage in the Bible is to be studied in the light of the whole book. The whole book teaches the same truths which God has written upon our bodily constitution. If alcohol poisons the body, disorders the brain, corrupts the character, damns the manhood, and destroys the soul, it is forbidden by the whole volume of the revealed word.
The second sophistry is that wine and ale and other alcoholic beverages are creatures of God, to be not refused, but used "in moderation and with thanksgiving." I have heard that quoted since I was a child. As to alcoholic beverages being good creatures of God to be used with thanksgiving, I deny as an absurdity. Alcohol is not a "good creature" of the God of love; for it is nowhere to be found in the whole domain of nature. While the Almighty has created innumerable fountains of sparkling water, he never created a gill of alcohol! It is the simple product of the fermenting vat and distillery. It is born of vegetable decay. God made the golden corn to nourish and sustain his mighty family; but distillation throws the golden grain into a vat of rottenness, and presses out of the rotting mass the fiery juice of alcohol. God hung the purple clusters on the vine to gladden the human eye and the palate; but fermentation turns the pure blood of the grape into the maddening intoxicant. God created poppies, but he never created opium. If he did create it, are there not poisons known in nature that may be sometimes sparingly used as a medicine, but common sense forbids them as a beverage?
The last sophistry that has been hung up to throw its delusive light at a dangerous gateway, is the following sentence uttered lately by a ministerial brother, whom I love as a friend, but reject as a safe teacher of ethics. I quote his words exactly. He says: "A third moral error of the total abstinence theory is its assumption that moderate drinking leads to drunkenness. The millions upon millions of our race who have been accustomed to drink wine and who never knew drunkenness, stand up against this atrocious dogma. And yet this dogma has actually become an axiom with the total abstinence reformers, and they would disdain to argue it." Yes, I do disdain to argue it, as much as I would disdain to argue that Fulton street leads to Fulton Ferry. All human observation settles that. I do not say that every one that goes down Fulton street enters the gate at the ferry, but I do say that those who are in the ferry-house must have gone through that street. If my learned friend simply meant to say that a very moderate drinker is not an enslaved drunkard, and may never become a drunkard, we grant it. We grant that Niagara rapids are not Niagara cataract. We grant, too, that some men who have launched their boats far up toward the head of the rapids have pulled out of the stream and have reached the shore. But this we declare, that just so long as Niagara rapids tend toward the cataract and draw with an increasing suction and momentum toward the cataract, so long by the immutable law of God will every use of alcoholic stimulants tend to drunkenness and draw to destruction. That some have resisted it and have not been drawn over does not alter the character of the tendency. There is not a moderate drinker in this house who is not constantly resisting the tendency while he remains a moderate drinker. I set before you all, the clear, straight channel of total abstinence. It is a safe channel, strewn with no wrecks of health, and wrecks of homes, or wrecks of hearts or eternal hopes. It has guided millions to competence and comfort and cleanliness of life. It has borne thousands to the cross of Christ. God has blessed the honest efforts of pulpit and platform and press to guide men and women into this safe channel, and as long as this pulpit stands, the true light shall shine on the safe channel, and no wife, or mother, or daughter, or sister, shall ever call me to account and charge upon my example, or the utterances from this pulpit, the wreck of a son, or a brother, or a husband, for time or for eternity. All I ask is to be on the safe side, on God's side, for this world and for the life everlasting.—T. L. Cuyler.