Temperance | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 26, 1882

Temperance.

Where Does the Responsibility Rest?

A YOUNG married man, with two bright, happy children, is the central figure in the picture I am going to draw, and I draw, not from imagination, but from real life. This young man was the victim of a habit that holds men with an iron grip. He had an inherited taste for liquor, and little by little it grew upon him to such an extent that he lost his place in a fine business house. Then commenced a desperate struggle on his part to retrieve himself and conquer the habit. Whoever has read the story of De Quincey's awful contest with his opium habit, can form some idea of the battle this young man fought with his appetite for drink. After many humiliating falls, he seemed to be on firm ground. Friends rallied round him and encouraged him. A mother, whose heart he had almost broken, took courage, and began to think that her only son, whom she had never quite given up, would at last hold out, and be once more a man. Dogs never push back a sinking man, when his hand is on the shore. Men do.

Hot weather came on, and the old appetite raged with intensity only equaled by the heat of dog days. Of course there was a saloon in the case. Of course when he entered that saloon he found there a so-called human being ready to sell him what in the twinkle of an eye would undo the work of many weary months. The first glass plunged him back into deep waters. The man who sold it to him knew just what he was doing, but he was like all the rest of his class, a heartless wretch, of whom nothing better could have been expected. But there was another party to this young man's downfall,—a party from whom better things might have been expected, and the worst of it is, he is but the type of a class. He is a church member. He is considered a pious man. It would hurt his feelings should any one call his piety in question. But he owns the saloon where this man fell. He leased it to a man who, as he well knew, would sell liquor in it.

Now where does a man's responsibility begin and where does it end? Can a man lease his building openly and avowedly for a house of ill-fame, and yet remain in church and escape censure? Even that is done. But it is at least spoken of as disreputable. But a church member can with impunity lease his property to saloon keepers to be used by them in their wicked business. What better is such a man than he who, seeing a brother coming up out of deep waters, pushes him back, just as his foot is upon firm ground? Ask that man what he thinks about it, and he will tell you that he has nothing to do about it. He will claim that he is not in the least at fault for what his tenant does.

John B. Gough has a very pertinent illustration of personal responsibility. He describes a man as tied to a stake and finally killed by a hundred stones thrown at him by a hundred different men. Tell the first man that he is responsible for the murder, and he will say, "No indeed; the poor fellow was almost as well as ever after I hit him;" and so they might go on till you get to the last one, and he, of course, scouts the idea of being a murderer, for he will coolly say, "The man was just about dead when I hit him. It was the other men before me who killed him." It is simply disgusting to see with what shameless inconsistency some Christians can sneak out of responsibility for the ruin of their brethren, where a penny is at stake. Whether such complicity with liquor selling as that is an offense for which a man can be excommunicated from the church or not, may be a question, but he certainly ought to be excommunicated every time he leases property for the sale of liquor. It don't look well for a man to talk in prayer-meeting about "entering in at the strait gate," and then on his way home pass a gate of perdition of which he is the owner, when the said gate with his knowledge and consent displays a sign that says to all passers by, "enter in," enforcing that invitation to take the broad road, by temptations that some men cannot resist. But why should a man be excommunicated for leasing a building to a saloon keeper to sell liquor in? Because it is fair to infer that he meant to inflict an injury upon individuals and upon society at large, when he leased the building. Is that a hard saying? Let us see. It is a well established maxim of law that if any act is likely to produce mischief, he who does that act must be presumed to intend that which his act was likely to produce. Who doubts that the leasing of a house to sell liquor in is likely to produce mischief? If in a civil case a man can be convicted of crime on the principle above stated, he ought surely before the church to be convicted of a willful, premeditated and intended wrong. And he ought to receive wholesome discipline for such ungodly conduct.—Church and Home.