p. 273 | Temperance by Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 16, 1881

Temperance.

By Theodore Ledyard Cuyler

REASONS FOR TOTAL ABSTINENCE.

THE young man who accepts and practices the principles of total abstinence is sure never to become a drunkard. The channel which total abstinence buoys out may not lead to Heaven, because to avoid one sin does not insure salvation. But it does lead to sobriety, and it infallibly leads away from all the disease, disgrace, and damnation caused by alcohol. In thousands of cases it has been the first step to the cross of Christ, and the full salvation of the soul. To these safe, sound principles I pledged myself in early boyhood and recorded a promise. I advocate a pledge for the reason that no gentleman will ask a pledged man to break it, and because it is a bond of union and organization. My friend over the ferry, in his widely circulated discourse, referred to a pledge as an ignominious "strait-jacket," and in another one he says, "It is a pernicious instrument for debauching the manly conscience." Is marriage a pledge? It is a two-fold pledge. The pledge is a binding instrument voluntarily taken to serve those ends. When before this pulpit many of you have stood up and pledged yourself to God, did you put yourself into an ignominious "strait-jacket," and so bind your free agency, and thereby violate your manhood or womanhood? When you signed your note or put your name on another man's note, did you do an unmanly thing? All commerce exists by pledges; mercantile credit stands on pledges. It is the government's pledge whereby you buy your real estate and pay your taxes. We merely adopt and carry out a pledge of union which binds the sense of obligation.

Again, the example to others in that very act is potent, and should not be disregarded. The unconscious influence wields a most powerful result. It is not what we say, but what we do, that carries the most weight. The example of refusing it is indicative of casting a vote on the safe side. We are responsible before God for what we do and say, and our example should be the best. The great Pauline principle of total abstinence is involved in the Greek word Kalon, which means, it is good, fair, beautiful and right. This means the surrender of a lawful privilege for the good of others. If there be a liberty to touch or let alone, is it a sacrifice of personal liberty to pledge yourself never to drink or to set before others an intoxicating cup? Brotherly love demands that that sacrifice be made to help your weaker brother, and in order to remove the stumbling-block from his path. I have a right to speak against this sin. If I went to the theater, though my motive might be pure, I could not warn any man in the congregation about going, as my lips would be sealed. I have withheld my vote from the institution, and I have a right to give my view. I dare not say to any young man that he must not attend a sensual place of attraction, if I have gone as a pastor to the institution, and thereby made itself its patron and advocate. He pleads my example and padlocks my lips. I know the principle which I advocate is ridiculed. My friend on the other side of the ferry has jeered at it. He says after all that it is no more than saying that all sick men die, because some men who are sick die. If some men will steal, why not lock up everybody in the penitentiary for the sake of keeping the thieves locked up? I answer, You are responsible for your influence and example. If a glass of wine on your table will entrap some young man, or some one who is inclined to stimulate, into dissipation, then you are thoughtlessly setting a trap for his life. You are his tempter. You give the usage your sanction, and to him the direct inducement to partake of the bottled demon that sparkles so seductively before him. If the contents of that sparkling glass make my brother to stumble, he stumbles over me. If he goes away from that table and commits some outrage under the effects of that stimulant, that act comes back on you in the eyes of God. For every crime that the drunkard commits, I believe in the last great day the dram-sellers will be held accountable. The man who puts the bottle to his neighbor's lips, is accountable for what those lips under the influence of the dram, and is accountable, too, for every outrage that the maddened victim of the cup may perpetrate during his temporary insanity. My friend, do you say that you "have a right to do as you please" in this matter of drinking? I answer, You have no right to do as you please in anything, unless you please to do right. That is a moral law. Think of that! Write it on your memory, and test it when you go home; it will last you for a lifetime. Is it too much to ask of every professed Christian, and every lover of his kind, that they will wholly abstain from everything that destroys? For the sake of your children do it! Do it for the sake of your brothers and husbands, and do it for the sake of your friends. Do it for the sake of frail, tempted ones, who cannot say no! Touch not that which has the adder's sting and the serpent's deadly fang.—T. L. Cuyler.