Temperance by John B. Finch

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 6, 1881

Temperance.

By John B. Finch

INDICTMENT OF THE LIQUOR TRAFFIC.

COMPARISONS bring out colors. Compare the traffic with other trades. The liquor men will admit that a minister is just as good as a saloon-keeper as long as he behaves himself as well. Then write with the propositions already stated, the principle of political economy taught us when we were boys at school; that there are but three ways of getting money or wealth—make it, have it donated to you, steal it. Some would say find it, but you cannot base a principle of political economy on chance. Change the form and it is in this shape—without making it or having it donated to him, any man who gets money is a thief. In the course of honest business, every man is bound to render a fair bargain in an honest trade, although it may be unpopular doctrine in this country. I say I have no sympathy for the accursed thing called sharpness, that lies to a man in a trade and then laughs about its trick; it is no better than stealing. I would as soon a man would steal twenty-five cents from my pocket-book as lie to me in a trade and get it in that way. When I have taken a man's word it hurts my faith in humanity to find my trust betrayed.

You hire a minister, you pay him money, (that is, I suppose you do), the minister is hired just as any other man is hired, and you expect he will give you value received for the money that he gets. I hire a minister, or help hire one, on the same basis that I hire a man to dig a ditch. I expect he will do good work; if he does not I will turn him off and get a new one as soon as I can; but when he is hired I am as much bound in honor to pay him what I agree to pay him as I am bound to pay a fellow who undertakes any work for me. You hire a minister and pay him if you are honest; a man who will cheat a minister is just as big a knave as a man who will cheat a merchant. I suppose you men down here always pay your ministers; they don't up in my country—unless they accept promises to pay. I call the minister up here and say to him, "You get money, now, sir, tell the people what you give them for the money they pay you; show them what you give them. Mr. Minister, they don't pay you for preaching, although it is pleasant and instructive to listen. They don't pay you just to run revivals, though it is a good thing to take the minds of the people away from this world to the future; and let me say here by way of digression, it has been my experience as an attorney, that you can collect debts after a revival that were not worth ten cents on the dollar before. The religion of Jesus Christ does make men honest. A town could afford, for the sake of business alone, to run a revival once a year. But, Mr. Minister, you are not living for to-day, for to-morrow, for next week, for next year; will you come up here now and justify your work? We don't want you to justify it by boys, by middle-aged men; we want you to come up here by the death-bed of the Christian and tell us, sir, if you will defend yourself there." Would not he come and say, "That is just the test I want to try; I don't want you to try me by the sunshine Christians, who work for the Lord on Sunday and the devil the rest of the week. Not by the people who are in the church as an insurance society, to keep from burning after they get on the other side; but I am willing to be judged by that class of people who have loved God and kept his commandments; apply that test and I am satisfied." Although this country is to-day ringing with the bitter tones of scoffers, the most fanatical infidel keeps his fingers off of such a test.

We want another trade, and we call the school-teachers to come up here. What do you give the people for what you receive? They pay you, and they expect that you will return value received. What do you give back? The teacher would come, and, calling up the educated merchant, doctor, lawyer, and tradesman, would say: "This is the result of my work." She would reach out her hand to the religious teacher, and say: "Educated conscientiousness and educated intellect is the only basis on which this Government can stand."

Let me say to you people, too, if I may say it in a temperance talk, that I believe in this country any system of education that does not educate the morals as well as the intellect, is a fraud and a failure. Come with me out to the frontier of this nation, and I will show you men who are graduates from the Eastern colleges that have fled there to avoid the effects of crimes committed in their former homes. They are vile and devilish. To make a symmetrical man or woman, the moral nature must be developed with the development of the wicked.

We want another trade, and we shout out to the blacksmith. We say: "You get money, come up here, and bring up a specimen of your work." He would come, and, holding up a horse-shoe, would say: "Here is my work. Every time that I put it on a man's horse he is better off, and I am better off, if he pays me." We stand him alongside the minister and teacher, and we call up a milliner to represent the ladies, and we say to her: "You get money, and it is a mighty important question to us married men what you give back." She comes up, and holding a finished hat or bonnet, says: "I made that—isn't it well done?" Although men make sport of these hats and bonnets, yet we are free to confess that our wives look a little prettier when they have them on, and when we take the thing and look at it, almost trembling, fearful lest we crush it, we realize that we could earn the money to buy it in a day, and with our clumsy fingers we could never make it; so, we make up our minds that it is a necessity, and we pass her over with the rest.

Now we have them, but we want one more—the man of the dram-shop in this State. "Come up, sir. You said a minute ago the minister was as good as the saloon-keeper, if he behaved himself as well. If the minister is just as good you must get into the same scales of political economy where we have weighed him. Now don't plead the baby act, but come. You dare not come. Do you hesitate? You get money, you toil not, neither do you spin, and yet few workmen can wear such clothes as you do. What are you giving back for what you get? Come up here, sir, get in; or, what is better, come up, bring a finished specimen of your work and hold it up here for the crowd to see, and show us its fine points! What would he bring? What does the dram-shop manufacture? It has always manufactured drunkards, first, last, and all the time. A dram-shop keeper is as distinctly a drunkard-maker as a man that makes shoes is a shoemaker. That is all he ever did make, that is all he ever will make. Show me a first-class sample of saloon work. Could you induce a saloon-keeper to come up here and hold it up? What does he say? You say to him, "You make drunkards." His very excuse is, "I won't have any old drunkards hanging around me." If it is a good thing to make a drunkard, a drunkard must be a mighty good thing after he is made. Suppose, ladies and gentlemen, the minister should come here and give you as a reason why his church didn't have to be indorsed, that he didn't have old Christians around his prayer-meetings. Would not that be a good advertisement for the Christian religion? That they did not want these men, that they were so old they were ashamed of them?

I saw by the papers that at the Des Plaines camp-meeting they had called together on the platform all the old men and women who had been in the Christian service fifty years, and there was a crowd gathered around the platform to hear their testimony, and the paper stated that the feeling pervading the audience was wonderful. Why don't the drunkard-makers come up here and call up a number of their veterans—a number of men whom they have worked on for ten, fifteen, or twenty years, with red noses, bleared eyes, ragged clothes, toes creeping out of their shoes? Bring them up here, and then stand up and exhibit them, opening the Bible—(let the saloon-keeper now act as end man in this show)—open the Bible and read: "No drunkard shall enter the kingdom of Heaven," and then call on them to testify. By their evidence we are willing to stand or fall. Why don't the drunkard-makers do it? Is their business so mean, so low, so devilish, that when they have broken down a man who has stood by them through thick and thin, when he has given his money, character,—everything, they kick him out, and say: "We don't want any old drunkards around us!" The business is afraid to meet its record. Such is the evidence in the case.

The temperance men must then continue to press the charges against the traffic, and work to perfect their plan of work against such a dastardly foe. Our work is to save drunkards, prevent drunkenness. Gentlemen and ladies, the temperance people believe in reaching down into the hole of debauchery, and getting hold of the poor fellows; I say, reaching with tears and prayers, and lifting and holding them up; but after we have got them out, we believe in plugging up the hole so other men will not fall in—save the drunkard and prevent drunkenness.—From John B. Finch's Speech, in National Liberator.