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 BOOK 178. 1.M72 c. 1 
 
 MODERATION VS TOTAL ABSTINENCE # 
 
 ODERATION VS TOTAL ABSTINENCE 
 
 3 T153 DDDbBBOT 1 
 
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 dedca 
 
 MODERATION 
 
 TOTAL ABSTINENCE 
 
 OR, 
 
 DR. CROSBY 
 
 EVIEWERS. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 The National Temperance Society and Publication House, 
 
 58 Reade Street. 
 1881. 
 
 530 
 
THE BIBLE WINE QUESTION. 
 
 The jSTational Temperance Society has published a variety of Books and Tracts upon ti 
 Wine Question, by some of the ablest writers in the world. The investigation clearly sho\ 
 the exlj^tcnce of two kinds of wine, the fermented and unfermeuted, and presents nuraeroi 
 and convincinfr authorities. 
 
 TJie Divine I^aw as to Wines. 12rao, 326 pages- By Geo. W, Samson, D.D., 
 
 former President of Columbian University, Washington, D. C 14) 
 
 Years of careful study have been given to its preparation, aided by personal ob- 
 servation and extensive inquiry in Eastern lands. The whole question is treated from 
 a stand-point and acquaintance with the subject which commands the attention of 
 scholars, scientists, ministers, and all who are interested in a thorough investigation 
 of this most important subject. 
 
 Oible ^ViiieN, or the liUAVS of Ferinentatioii, and Wines of tlie 
 
 Ancients. 12mo, 139 pages. By Rev. Wm. Patton, D.D. Paper, 25c. ; cloth, 
 
 It presents the whole matter of Bible Temperance, and the wines of ancient times, 
 
 in a new, clear, and f?atisfactory manner, developing tbe laws of fermeuiatiou, and 
 
 giving a large number of references and statistics "never before collected, showing 
 
 conclusively the existence of unfermented wme in the olden time. 
 
 Bible Rule of Temperance, 18mo, 206 pages. By Rev. Geo. Duflield, D.D. 
 This is the ablest and most reliable work which has been issued on the subject. 
 The immorality of the use, sale, and manufacture of intoxicating liquors as a bever- 
 age is considered in the light of the Scriptures, and the will and law of God clearly 
 presented. 
 
 Coiuinuniou Wine, or Bible Temperance. 133 pages. By Rev. Wm. M. 
 
 Thayer. Paper, 20c. ; cloth 
 
 An unanswerable argument against the use of intoxicating wine at Communion, 
 and presenting the Bible argument for abstinence. 
 
 Scripture Testimony against Intoxicating W^iue. By Rev. Wm. M. 
 
 Ritchie, of Scotland. ISrao, 213 pages 
 
 An unanswerable refutation of the theory that the Scriptures favor the idea of the 
 use of intoxicating wine as a beverage. It takes the different kinds of wines men- 
 tioned in the Scriptures, investigates their specific nature, and shows wherein they 
 differ. 
 
 Gospel Temperance. 12mo,114pp. ByRev. J. M. VanBuren. Paper, 25c.; cloth. 
 This work is intended to supply the felt necessity for an authoritative law on the 
 subject of Temperance. It gives a clear explanation of that law, with its applications, 
 and the duties it imposes. 
 
 Tlte Cliurcli and Temperance. By John W. Mears, D.D 
 
 Tlie Moral Duty of Total Abstinence. By Rev. T. L. Cuyler, D.D 
 
 Tlie Wines of tUe Bible. By Eev. C. H. Fowler, D.D 
 
 Four-Page Tracts. $3.00 per Thousand. 
 
 Timotliy a Teetotaler. 
 Uomestlc Wine. 
 
 Tlie ^ ine-Cup and tlie Gallows. 
 Ctuestions with Bible Answers. 
 Wiiere did Timothy get liis Wine ? 
 Siiall We Drink ^Vine? 
 Sliali We use Wine and Beer? 
 A Word to Scriptural W^ine 
 Drinkers. 
 
 Wine and Expediency. 
 
 Win e- Drinking— the BeginnI 
 
 and tlie £ndlng. 
 Timothy Titcomb's Testimon 
 
 against Wine. 
 Wine- Drinking in France. 
 Tlie Sabbath and Temperance. 
 The Cliurch and Temperance. 
 The Miracle at Cana. 
 
 Eight-Page Tracts. $6.00 per Thousand. 
 
 Bible ^Vines. I Does the Bible Sanction the use < 
 
 Does the Bible Favor Moderate W^ine at the Iiord's Supper ? 
 
 Drinking? I Bible Opposed to W^iue- Drinking 
 
 NATIVE WIXES. Twelve Pages. $9.00 per Thousand. 
 
 Address J. N. STEARNS, Publishing; Agent, 
 
 58 JReade Street, New Tor) 
 
?s. Tola 
 
 V\C.3 
 
 OR, 
 
 DR. CROSBY AND HIS REVIEWERS. 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 The National Temperance Society and Publication House, 
 
 58 Reade Street. 
 
 1881. 
 

 Copyright, 1881, 
 
 BY 
 
 J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent. 
 
 H. J. Hewitt, Printer, Ti Rose Street, New York. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 A Calm View of the Temperance Question, 
 
 By Chancellor Crosby, 5 
 
 A Review of Dr. Crosby, . By Rev. Dr. Mark Ilo^^Uns, '25 
 
 A Reply to Dr. Crosby's '* Calm View of Temperance," 
 
 By Wendell PhilUp.% 89 
 
 A Reply to Dr. Crosby's " Calm View of Temperance," 
 
 By Mrs. J. E. Foster, 59 
 
 Joseph Cook's Pulpit and Temperance, 
 
 By Theodore L. Cwjler, D.D.. S9 
 
 Relations of Distilled and Fermented Liquors, 
 
 By Ezra M. Hunt, DI)., 94 
 
 An Open Letter, . . . By Rev. Dr. A. J. Gordon, 98 
 
 The "Calm View"— Comments of the Press, . . .100 
 
 The Voice of Science, . ....... 114 
 
 The Voice of Scripture, 119 
 
A CALM YIEW 
 
 OF THE 
 
 TEMPERANCE ODESTION. 
 
 By chancellor CROSBY, or New York. 
 
 An Address delivered in Treino?it Temple^ Jan. lo, 1881, 
 in the Boston Monday Lecture Course. 
 
 I^HE object of temperance societies is to prevent drunk- 
 enness. The cardinal principle in tbese societies is 
 total abstinence from all tbat can intoxicate. That 
 total abstinence, if adopted by all, will prevent drunken- 
 ness no one will dispute. The object of temperance socie- 
 ties would be gained. 
 
 But two questions arise after contemplating tbese propo- 
 sitions : first, will tbis plan of total abstinence be adopted ? 
 and, secondly, ougbt it to be adopted? The first question is 
 prudential, the second is moral. 
 
 THE prude:ntial qtjestio:n-. 
 1. Will tbe plan of total abstinence from all that in- 
 toxicates be received by men in general? We desire 
 to use in all measures of reform a plan that is practica- 
 ble. We cannot be satisfied with mere testimony to a 
 theory that will be unproductive of results. Herein re- 
 form differs from religion. Religion demands adhesion to 
 a truth stamped by the conscience, even though that truth 
 find no other adherent. But reform lies in the domain of 
 the expedient. It seeks to make society better, and if it 
 cannot raise society to the highest level it will raise it as 
 high as it can. It will not prefer to let society wallow be- 
 
 5 
 
6 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 cause it cannot place it in an ideal Utopia. The most reli- 
 gious and conscientious man will be glad to see men leave 
 off strife and discord, even if they do not act from the high- 
 est motives or attain to the heights of a genuine charity. 
 His conscience will not be injured by their improved condi- 
 tion, however much he would like to see them still more 
 enlightened. It is an important point to make clear to the 
 mind this distinction between the conduct of reform and the 
 movement of personal religion, for confusion here has led to 
 much false action. A common argument of the radical agi- 
 tator is that his conscience cannot stop short of total absti- 
 nence in the temperance question, and on that ground he 
 will not have any afifiliation with one who seeks to subdue 
 the intemperance of the land by any other method. But his 
 argument is a complete non sequitur. His conscience con- 
 cerns his own personal habits. In the matter of other peo- 
 ple's habits he is simply to do the best the circumstances 
 allow. The conscience that prescribes his personal habits 
 may make him long to see others like him, and may make 
 him work to that end, but it cannot rebuke him if that end 
 is not attained, but only an approximation is gained ; nay, it 
 should make him work for the approximation with all zeal. 
 
 Too often that which is called conscience is mere obsti- 
 nacy of opinion and personal pride. A large part of the 
 fanaticism that history records has been made in this way. 
 Men have gone to the stake as martyrs, or sufferers for con- 
 science' sake, when the heresy they professed never went 
 deeper than their sentiment, and might readily have been 
 altered by a free judgment. While this fact does not justffy 
 their persecutors or palliate their guilt, yet it certainly de- 
 tracts from the merit of the martyrdom. In this matter of 
 arresting the progress of drunkenness we may have very 
 different views of the means to be used, and we may consci- 
 entiously adhere to our own plan of working toward the 
 end, but we cannot conscientious! i/ object to the means em- 
 ployed by others unless they contain an immorahty. Nay, 
 more, we must conscientiously wish them success. 
 
 If this principle of sympathy and co-operation on the part 
 of all who seek the abatement of intemperance were once 
 
A Calm View of the TcmiJcrance Question. 7 
 
 established, -ue should see effects that are now thwarted by 
 the divisions and mutual hostility of those who profess to 
 have the same end in view. One ol the reasons for this con- 
 firmed hostility of the total- abstinence advocates against 
 Lbe reformers who do not adopt that principle is found in 
 Lbe power of a false usage. I refer to the word ^' tem- 
 perance." 
 
 MEA:jfIXG OF THE WORD " TEMPERAXCE." 
 
 The word has been violently wrested from its legitimate 
 meaning. By a persistent use of a moderate word for radi- 
 cal measures the great unthinking public, so far as they are 
 seekers tor the common good, have been led to see in these 
 radical measures the only path of duty. They have learned 
 to consider all that was opposed to the party called by the 
 name of temperance as inimical to temperance, and so have 
 enormously swelled the radical ranks by their unenlightened 
 adhesion. The label has been afiQxed to the wrong goods, 
 and the unsuspecting purchaser has not noticed the fact. 
 So potent has been this deception that I undertake to say 
 that there are thousands of worthy citizens who have no 
 other idea of the word ' ' temperance " than that it means 
 the total abstinence from all that can intoxicate. With such 
 we have to begin with first principles. We have to show- 
 them that tbe Latin temperantia signifies the moral quality 
 of moderation or discreetness, and that the English word 
 *' temperance," as used in all good standard English works, 
 means precisely the same thing. We have to show them 
 that the temperate zone does not mean a zone which totally 
 abstains from cold or heat, but a zone that is moderate in 
 both; that a temperate behavior is not a behavior that 
 totally abstains from severity, but one that is steady and 
 reasonable in its course; as Cicero says (" Fam.," 12, 27): 
 ^'Est autem ita temperatis moderatisque moribus ut summa 
 severitas samma cum humanitate juugatur."' And while 
 quoting Cicero I may quote his definitions of temperance as 
 given in his '^ De Ftnibus "—first, '^ Temperantia est modera- 
 tio cupiditatum, rationi obediens" (2, 19, 60) ; and, secondly, 
 '* Temperantia est quae, in rebus aut expetendis aut fugien- 
 
8 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence. 
 
 dis, rationem ut sequamur monet" (1, 14, 47). Now, what 
 a fearful prostitution of a Doble word is seen in the popular 
 use of the word '' temperance" to-day ! And this prostitu- 
 tion is a work wrought within the last fifty years. From its 
 high position as signifying a grand moral subjection of the 
 whole man to the sway of reason it is degraded to the maimed 
 and mutilated function of representing a legalism that pro- 
 hibits man from any drink that can intoxicate. To what 
 base uses has it come at last ! This false use of a word has 
 had special influence upon that portion of the unthinking 
 public who rightly reverence the Scriptures. They see that 
 temperance is put in the list of Christian virtues ; and as 
 temperance now means total abstinence, what can they do, 
 as loyal believers in the Scriptures, but sign the pledge, and, 
 furtheiTuore, count all who do not as aliens from God's 
 truth ? They are as honest and as enlightened as the good 
 Presbyterian woman who only needed to see the words 
 ^'general assembly" in the Bible to know she was right and 
 everybody else wrong. 
 
 Now, the use of a false argument always reacts against 
 the user, and, while the ignorant and semi-ignorant multi- 
 tude will be deceived, the thinking classes (;f society will 
 shun a cause that rests on misrepresentation. The word 
 '^temperance," as seized and appropriated by radical and 
 intemperate souls, is a false flag, and, as a false flag, will 
 disgust and alienate true and enlightened souls. Especially 
 will this be the case when it is found to be only one of many 
 false lights held out to attract the masses. Another ot these 
 deceptions (of course I do not say these are wilful deceptions 
 by all that use them ; I am only speaking of their absolute 
 character)— another of these deceptions is the circulated 
 theory of an unfermented, unintoxicatmg wine. There is 
 not a chemist nor a classical scholar in the world who would 
 dare risk his reputation on the assertion that there was ever 
 an unfermented wine in common use, knowing well that 
 7mist preserved from fermentation is called wine only by a 
 kind of courtesy (as the lump of unbaked dough might be 
 called ^^ bread "), and that this could in the nature of things 
 never be a common drink. Cato ('' DeRe Rustica," 120) shows 
 
A Calm View of the Tempercmce Qiiestion. 
 
 how by a very careful method malt could be kept for a whole 
 year, and other Roman writers show the same j but who can 
 pretend that these writers ever looked upon such preserved 
 juice as wine, when their whole object is to show how it can be 
 kept from becoming wine? Yet, with no other foundation 
 than this, the leaders of the total-abstinence cause have pub- 
 lished their bull affiiming that the good wines of antiquity 
 were uufermented, in utter defiance of chemistry, history, 
 and common sense. Because the grape-juice could, by means 
 of hermetically-sealed vessels under water, be kept grape- 
 juice, therefore the common wines of antiquity, the wine of 
 which writers speak when they use no qualilying phrase, 
 must have been unfermented. This is the logic used by 
 these infatuated defenders of the total abstinence principle. 
 
 DISTORTIOI^^ or SCRIPTUEE. 
 
 A third deception in this cause is the twisting of Scrip- 
 ture to its advocacy. No unbiassed reader can for a moment 
 doubt that wine, as referred to in the Bible passim^ is an in- 
 toxicating drink, and that such wine was drunk by our Sa- 
 viour and the early Christians. To meet this fatal blow to 
 the total- abstinence system in the minds of those who take 
 the Bible as their guide, the advocates of the cause have in- 
 vented a theory that is magnificent in its daring. It is no 
 less than the division of the word '^wine'' by a Solomo- 
 nian sword, so that the good and the bad shall each have .a 
 piece of it. Whenever wine is spoken of severely in Scrip- 
 ture, then it is fermented wine ; and whenever it is spoken 
 of in praise, or used by our Lord and his apostles, then it is 
 unfermented wine. And if you ask these sages why they so 
 divide wine — on what grounds they base this theory — they 
 bravely answer that our Saviour could not have drunk in- 
 toxicating wine, and God's word never could have praised 
 such, and, therefore, their theory. They start with the beg- 
 ging of the whole question, and then on this thin air they 
 build their castle. 
 
 It is not now my purpose to argue with these strange logi- 
 cians. I only wish to put this Scripture-twisting in the list 
 of deceptive methods used by the representative total-absti- 
 
10 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 nence reformers to promote their cause. I could add, in this 
 item, the false use of texts and the suppression of parts of 
 texts, but I leave the matter here. 
 
 The three elements of deception entering into their cause 
 is, as we have seen, the use of tbe word temperance for a 
 totally differeut thing, the fable about unfermented wine, 
 and the violent wresting of the Scriptures. Now, I unhesi 
 tatingly affirm that a cause having such falsehoods as its 
 main support can never be accepted by the public. Simple- 
 minded people may be gained to it, but the thinking people 
 will be repelled. It is true that some may adhere to it, in 
 spite of its falsehood, for other reasons ; but the three great 
 untruths that are flaunted on its banners will disgust most 
 men who have brains and use them. 
 
 A second reason why I believe the plan of total abstinence 
 will not be adopted by the people is its immanliness. To 
 stop the use of anything because of its abuse is an expedi- 
 ent for the weak and diseased, an exceptional plan for excep- 
 tional cases ; but to assert this principle among men in gene- 
 ral would be to degrade the race and remove all tbe incen- 
 tives and helps to moral gTowth. We know in the family 
 how mistaken a method it is to remove everything the child 
 should not play with out of its reach. Tbe wise parent 
 leaves the article in its accustomed place, and teaches the 
 child its rightful use. 
 
 SELF-COXTEOL. 
 
 The other plan only makes the child more and more de- 
 pendent on external checks, and prevents the growth of 
 self-control. The same reasoning holds good in the human 
 family at large. We are to develop self-control as much as 
 possible. A true civilization always seeks to do this. A 
 barbarous state of society requires man to hide everything 
 valuable in places unknown to others, and to go personally 
 armed to secure himself against attack. But a civilized 
 condition reveals a very diflerent state of things. Men live 
 in houses full of valuables, and walk the streets unarmed 
 and in security. Dependence is placed upon the common 
 self-control, and it is acknowledged to be a far higher and 
 
A Calm Vieiv of the Temperance Question. 11 
 
 more successful principle for the conduct of human life. Of 
 course there is a limit to this practical trusting of mankind, 
 and much wisdom is needed to mark this limit correctly in 
 any given instance. But the general truth is evident that 
 true civilization is in the direction of personal self-control, 
 and not in that of governmental prohibition. Weexpectlaw 
 to proJiihit crime, but we look to law only to regulate matters 
 that do not involve crime, but contain risk under certain 
 conditions. Now, the selling or drinking of wine is certainly 
 not a crime, and any legislation which prohibits it is open to 
 the charge of putting it in a wrong category and abusing 
 the popular conscience. A prohibition for certain times or 
 places may be defended without subjecting the act to this 
 false imputation ; but a total prohibition, the cardinal doc- 
 trine of the total-abstinence people, at once brands wine- 
 drinking with theft and Violence. Things that are not 
 vicious in themselves, but which may be readily abused to 
 vicious ends, certainly need legislative regulation, and such 
 regulation is a help to self-control, where prohibition would 
 be a hindrance. Regulation is a hint to put the people on 
 their guard, but prohibitioa is completely taking away the 
 subject from the people's notice. Now, the public mind re- 
 volts at being treated in this childlike way. It virtually 
 says : '' Give us certain wise rules about this thing, but for 
 the sake of respectable and dignified humanity do not sweep 
 it away from the earth." Eemember that we are not argu- 
 ing now on the merits of the total-abstinence theory, but only 
 on its feasibility. We do not say that it is a wrong principle. 
 We only say that people will not adopt it, and we are showing 
 the reasons why they will not. The community will not unrea- 
 sonably (as they think) be put into leading-strings and kept in 
 a permanent nursery — and that, too, by men who use manifest 
 falsehoods as prominent arguments for their position. There 
 is such a thing as the pubhc conscience, and people will 
 draw lines of distinction between things criminal and things 
 indifferent. They will naturally, therefore, resist any move- 
 ment that tends to obliterate these distinctions, and judge 
 of it as the action of a tyrannic opinion, and not of an ethi- 
 cal truth. They feel that their manhood is assailed, and if 
 
12 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence. 
 
 this assault is allowed in this form they may be exposed to 
 other assaults iu still more odious forms. Of course it is 
 eapy for the radical reformers to say that this opposition is 
 interested, and is only the struggle of evil agamst those that 
 woiil I fetter it ; but there are too many good, conscientious, 
 and thoughtful men who feel all this that I have said for this 
 allegation to be maintained. We cannot consent to go back 
 to mediaeval nonage, and have our day's allowance doled out 
 to us by a few who arrogate to themselves the paternal 
 management of the world. We cannot permit the system 
 of sumptuary laws to take the place of an enhghtened com- 
 mon sense. We cannot forego our reason on the plea that 
 the world is in danger. Nay, we must all the more assert 
 our reason against a false expediency that in curing, or at- 
 tempting to cure, one evil would create a hundred. Tbe fact 
 that there is a great danger is the very fact that should 
 guard us from pursuing any false way. Great dangers must 
 be met by great prudence, not by headlong impulse. It 
 looks brave to shout and fall pell-mell upon the enemy; but 
 it is wiser to set our batteries in sure places, and to order 
 line and reserves in the interests of a permanent victory. 
 Too many of our reforms are pushed without regard to the 
 character of the means, the end being insisted on as justify- 
 ing all means. The temperance reform has been an eminent 
 example of this heedlessness. 
 
 THE SPIRIT or rN' TIMID ATION. 
 
 • 
 
 And here I put the third reason why I believe the plan of 
 total abstinence will not be adopted by the people — because 
 of its spirit oi intimidation. Of course this is not inherent to 
 the cause, but it has been the invariable accompaniment of 
 it during its forty years' curriculum. And we now have to 
 deal practically with historic facts, and not with mere ab- 
 stract theories. Whatever may have been the cause, whe- 
 ther it be the weakness of the case or the unfortunate choice 
 of leaders and defenders, the total-abstinence propaganda 
 has been an overbearing and tyrannical power. It has used 
 a violence of language that can admit of no excuse. It has 
 condemned every one, however faithful in all moral and re- 
 
A Calm Vieiu of the Temperance Question. 13 
 
 ligious duties, who has refused to enter its ranks. It has 
 confounded all ideas of right and \Yroug, ealumniously de- 
 claring the man who drinks wine moderately is as bad as, 
 nay, worse than, the drunkard; asserting that all drinks, 
 whether vinous, malt, or distilled, are alike poisonous; vili- 
 fying those who teach any other doctrine by calling them 
 traitors to the truth — Judas Iscariots betraying the Master 
 —and exercising where it could a fearful proscription in 
 driving good men from the pul[)its of the land because they 
 would not and could not conscientiously pronounce their 
 shibboleth. The principal printed organs cf this propaganda 
 have been full of these fierce onslaughts upon the character 
 of respectable men, and the harsh and cruel judgments 
 spoken of have been carried out with the spirit of the Inqui- 
 sition. The political world has lately invented a word for 
 this way of settling a disputed question. They have called 
 it " bulldozing." It makes peace by creating a desert. It 
 produces unanimity by shutting the mouths of the other 
 side. The world is apt to think that such conduct indicates 
 a cause that cannot be sustained by reason, and the reaction 
 is likely to be excessive. It is exactly that reaction which 
 is now making the cause of rum and ruin more successful 
 than ever. Men, in their revolt from tyranny, rush into 
 licentious extremes ; and however honest the tyranny may 
 have been, or however true the cause it supported, it has 
 only itself to blame for the harm it does. A man may put 
 bis hand on the safety-valve and exclaim : ^' See how I have 
 stopped the noisy escape of the steam," and certainly every- 
 thing looks calm and peaceful ; but a few minutes afterward, 
 when the steam has had time to gather its strength, our 
 hero will have a difi^erent cry. A little success here and 
 there by the total-abstinence crusade may impress many 
 with the idea that this is the true way to make men tempe- 
 rate. A partial success in Maine has been proclaimed as 
 proving the question against the painful failures everywhere 
 else, but no careful observer will either approve the speci- 
 men or take it as a proof against our general position. 
 Maine is but a small part of our country, and has no great 
 seething population made up from every nation on earth. 
 
14 Moderation vs. Tatal Ahstine^ice. 
 
 It has a highly-educated people, who can bear an experi- 
 ment in morals with something of a philosophic spirit. A 
 few strong-minded and high-minded people can become as- 
 ceticS; but the great world cannot, and we must legislate 
 for the great world. Even Maine cannot permanently keep 
 its Maine Law. 
 
 There is a general notion in the public mind that the pre- 
 sent condition of Maine in regard to the liquor question is 
 that of a temporary repression ; and whether that notion be 
 right or WTong, it belongs to that public opinion which has 
 to be regarded in all prudential planning. The general 
 thought of the community concerning this repression is that 
 it belongs to a system of intimidation that can never be a 
 permanent institution in this land. 
 
 I have thus far considered only the prudential question. 
 The total- abstinence scheme may be in strict accordance with- 
 theoretical virtue. It may be the grand end to which all re- 
 forming processes should tend. All we have endeavored 
 thus far to establish is that it is a plan that cannot succeed^ 
 if we are to judge it by its past history and methods, as well 
 as by its intrinsic principles, and that therefore to push the 
 plan is to defeat the great end we should all have in view — 
 the cessation of drunkenness with its fearful ruin to body, 
 soul, and society. We have endeavored to show that the 
 public mind will not receive a system whose principal agen- 
 cies have been falsehoods and intimidation, and whose prin- 
 ciples they consider to be at war with a proper manliness or 
 self-respect. We repeat (that no one may mistake us; that 
 these falsehoods and intimidations are not necessary parts of 
 the system, but have been its constant adjuncts in point of 
 fact; and we also repeat that our argument regarding man- 
 liness is not (so far as we have gone) so much a charge 
 against the system as a statement of what a very large por- 
 tion of respectable and virtuous thinkers think of it. It is 
 from such considerations, we hold, that the plan of total- 
 abstinence as a method of eradicating drunkenness and its at- 
 tendant vices will never be adopted by the community. One 
 other thing I desire to repeat before taking up the other 
 branch of my subject, and that is that 1 make no charge of 
 
A Calm View of the Temperance Question. 15 
 
 purposed falsehood on any of the total-abstinence leaders. 
 Their main arguments are falsehoods, as I have shown, but 
 I am quite sure that the excellent men who are often found 
 leading the crusade are honest in their use of these false 
 statements. They take up these weapons without suffi- 
 ciently examining them. They see that they can be made 
 effective, but do not stop to enquire whether they are legiti- 
 mate. Their praiseworthy zeal outstrips their judgment 
 and prudence. I honor the heart and energy of very many 
 of these men. They show a philanthropy and consecration, 
 involving often self-denial and loss, which demand our ad- 
 miration. They are, indeed, too often mixed up with low, 
 hypocritical self-seekers who make the temperance cause a 
 mere lever to raise money, but that does not detract from 
 the sterhng devotion of these noble souls. And while I 
 differ from them altogether in my views, and am thoroughly 
 convinced they are doing unmeasured harm to the com- 
 munity by retarding practical reform and disseminating 
 pernicious principles, at the same time I would not refrain 
 from J ielding this honest and hearty tribute to their inten- 
 tions, and disclaim any personal reproach while criticising 
 the system they advocate. 
 
 THE MOEAL PHASE OF THE QUESTION. 
 
 2. The prudential question being thus treated, I turn to 
 the moral question before us : " Ought the plan of total ab- 
 stinence to be adopted ? " Is it a healthful and legitimate 
 method of doing away with drunkenness ? A man stands at 
 a great disadvantage who argues in behalf of his belief that 
 the total-abstinence system is immoral, because he at once 
 ex[)Oses himself to the assaults of slanderers who impugn 
 his motives and deny his honesty. Radicalism has so ruth- 
 lessly mobbed down independent thought by its intimidating 
 processes that editors who have no faith in the total-absti- 
 nence system still uphold it in their columns, and ministers 
 deem it prudent to say nothing against a cause so popular 
 in religious circles. Men are loath to come forward and be 
 bespattered with mud thrown in the name of truth and god- 
 liness. They are loath to lose the support and good- will of 
 
16 3fodercdion vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 the many whose fanaticism despises argument and brooks 
 no opposition. Hence, if any one is constrained to speak, 
 he is tempted to come forward as a humble apologist and 
 modestly plead his cause with many concessions and 
 compromises. Surely this is not for the advantage of the 
 truth. 
 
 In this address I take no apologetic position. I carry the 
 war into Africa. I have no contest with men, but with 
 false principles. I assert that the total-abstinence system is 
 false in its philosophy, contrary to revealed religion, and 
 harmful to the interests of our country. I charge upon this 
 system the growth of drunkenness in our land and a general 
 demoralization among religious communities. And I call 
 upon sound-minded, thinking men to stop the enormities of 
 this false system by uniting iu reasonable and wholesome 
 measures for the suppression of drunkenness, for the lack of 
 which this false system has all its present success. Between 
 fanaticism on the one hand and licentiousness on the other 
 there ought to be a large mass of solid folk, whose union 
 and efficiency would moderate and reduce, if not destroy, 
 both extremes. 
 
 1. The first moral error of the total-abstinence system is 
 in tuinirg a medicinal prescription into a bill of fare for all 
 mankind. That a drunkard should carefully avoid every 
 form of alcoholic drink nobody can deny. He is a dis- 
 eased man, and his restoration depends on this restric- 
 tion. Now, by what logic does this man's duty become mine? 
 Because I have admitted total abstinence as a correct princi- 
 ple in his case, am 1 bound to admit it as a correct principle for 
 all f Are the sick to be the norm of the well? Is the mat 
 ter of diet to be regulated by the needs of the drunkard ? 
 Why nor, then, by the needs of the dyspeptic ? Ah ! but (say 
 they) it is to save you from becoming a drunkard. Well, is 
 the logic any way improved by this explanation ? You would 
 put me on a sick-regimen to keep me from becoming sick ! 
 Because total abstinence is absolutely necessary to a drunk- 
 ard's recovery, you would make it necessary to one who is 
 not a drunkard. Do you not see that, if you are going to 
 prove your latter proposition, you must have another premise 
 
A Calm Vieio of the Temperance Question. IT 
 
 than jour former one ? The two are wholly uncounected. It 
 is an oflence to the moral sense of the community to spread 
 over it the restriction of the drunkard, as it would be to im- 
 prison all the community with the imprisonment of the thief, 
 lest by liberty they should all fall to thieving. 
 
 DOES MODERATE DRIXKIJ^G LEAD TO DRUXKE:N'NESS? 
 
 2. A second 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 accus- 
 tomed 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 re- 
 formers, and they would disdain to argue it. They are so 
 determined to have it true that they have performed the 
 paradoxical operation of putting the moderate drinker in the 
 place of the drunkard as the criminal to be punished with 
 scorn and contumely. This strange mixing of things reminds 
 me of the calhng good evil and evil good which a high au- 
 thority makes a mark of very deep depravity. You will find 
 that the principal shafts of the total -abstinence literature 
 are directed not at the drunkard, but at the moderate 
 drinker. The drunkard is pitied and coddled, while the 
 moderate drinker is scourged. Now, this sort of moral jug- 
 glery is not beneficial to the community. It distorts and 
 perverts judgment, and involves moral distinciious in cha- 
 otic confusion. It overthrows the ordinary reason that is so 
 useful in all the relations of life, and leads men to clannish 
 obedience to some ruling mind. It is the old trick of the 
 Jesuits, to weary the mind in mazes, so that it may in sheer 
 fatigue seek to be guided by them. 
 
 3. A third moral error of the total-abstinence theory is its 
 want of discrimination between things that differ. Every- 
 thing that has alcohol in it must be tabooed. As if all the 
 drinks that had alcohol in them were of the same efiect when 
 drunk ! Brandy and hock-wine and lager-beer are all alike 
 the devil's poison, and must be banished from the lips of all 
 true men. This assault upon common knowledge is a blun- 
 der that has the proportions of a crime. To say that cer- 
 
18 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 tain drinks that are wholesome and beneficial are the same 
 as ' certain drinks that are pernicious and destructive is a 
 moral outrage which the whole community should indig- 
 nantly repel. Beers and unbrandied wines are promoters of 
 health and strength when used judiciously, especially by 
 those who have not robust health. They are tonic, anti- 
 scorbutic, and gently stimulating to the digestion. As Dr» 
 Parkes, who is a strong opposer of the use of distilled liquors, 
 says : "■ For the large class of people who live on the confines 
 of health, whose digestion is feeble, circulation languid, and 
 nervous system too excitable," mild wines and malt liquors 
 are beneficial. The fact is that (as another writer well says) 
 outside of the sick-room the distilled liquors are compara- 
 tively noxious, the fermented comparatively harmless. What 
 we desire to emphasize is that the two classes of drinks are 
 altogether different in their character and effect, and that a 
 theory which destroys that difference has therein a moral 
 stain. 
 
 4. A fourth moral error of the total-abstinence system is 
 its assertion that all drinks that contain alcohol are poison ; 
 that the presence of alcohol thus justifies the confounding of 
 different sorts of drinks just referred to. Dr. Anstie has 
 clearly shown that alcohol in small quantities is not a poison 
 but a true food, and that it is a stimulant to the system in 
 precisely the same sense as that in which food is a stimulant. 
 He has shown that there is an essential difference between the 
 effects of large and small quantities of alcohol — a difference 
 of liind and not of degree. The effect of the small quantity, 
 he says, is often beneficial ; the effect of the large or narcotic 
 quantity is injurious. Dr. Binz defines/oorZ as both building 
 up the tissues and supplying the warmth and vital force ne- 
 cessary for the body's functions, and he shows that, while 
 small quantities of alcohol have not the former quality, they 
 have the latter ; and he further shows that alcohol in mode- 
 rate quantities is entirely assimilated in the human system. 
 In the light wines and beers, where alcohol forms only from 
 three to ten per cent, of its liquid, we have the alcohol in the 
 form best adapted for this beneficial effect, while in brandies, 
 rums, gins, whiskeys, and all distilled liquors the alcohol is 
 
A Calm View of the Temperance Q^iestlon. 19 
 
 in dangerous proportions for a beverage. To say that every- 
 thing containing alcohol is a poison is, therefore, a false 
 assertion, as false as to say that fruit is poisonous because 
 prussic acid, which is a deadly poison, is found in it. Nature 
 has in her alembic turned a powerful and dangerous element 
 into a beneficial minister to human wants, and all nations 
 have recognized this vital difierence between a moderate 
 and an excessive use of stimulants, and have testified to the 
 wisdom of using nature's provision without abusing it. 
 
 THE PLEDGE AS A STRAIT-JACKET. 
 
 5. A fifth moral error of the total-abstinence system is its 
 dependence upon a contract rather than on a moral sense- 
 Instead of regulating a man from within, it would ap.'ly a 
 strait-jacket. Instead of allowing a free play of the man's 
 individuality, and then endeavoring to instruct and educate 
 the man's reason, it would in a moment of the man's emer- 
 gency tie up his conscience with a pledge, which, when the 
 emergency is past, he will bear irksomely and endeavor to 
 nullify or evade. This is a most pernicious instrument for 
 debauching the conscience. In the first place, it manufac- 
 tures a new sin, always a dangerous experiment, bringing 
 about a reaction which sweeps the soul into real sin from its 
 experience in committing the constructed sin ; and, secondly, 
 it gives a ready excuse to the conscience against any tnoral 
 argument for temperance by covering it with a suspicion of 
 conventionality. The pledge is always an injury and never 
 a help to a true morality. It is a substitute for principle.' 
 It is a sign, not of weakness (for we are all of us weak 
 enough), but of readiness to reform. The true reform 
 would demand a change of the underlying principles of life. 
 That the pledge-taker refuses to make. Instead of that he 
 reforms the surface. Instead of turning the stream into a 
 new channel, he contents himself with throwing up earthen 
 dikes to prevent an overflow. You can get thousands to 
 sign the pledge where you can get one to reform. Of course 
 the pledge is not kept, except in the cases where it was not 
 needed, where the reform took the place of the pledge, where 
 the man would have reformed without any pledge. Surely 
 
20 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence. 
 
 such a wholesale defiling of promises is a profane dealing 
 with sacred things, and marks a very corrupt system. Man's 
 moral nature is not to be curbed by pledges. His outward 
 conduct may be restrained by imposed law, but so far forth 
 as tbat conduct has amoral element in it, no action of the 
 man himself can affect it except a moral reformation. Gov- 
 €rument, by its threatened punishment, may stop a man's 
 drinking so long as he thinks himself in danger of punish- 
 ment, but a pledge that has no punishment for its breaking 
 will command no obedience while the moral convictions re- 
 main unchanged. It is only an invitation to further sin. 
 
 6. The sixth and last moral error of the total-abstinence 
 system to which I shall refer is one which I bring forward 
 not as a philosopher nor a moralist, but as a Christian who 
 believes in the divine authority of the Holy Scriptures. This 
 error I have already adverted to in my prudential argument, 
 and, therefore, need not enlarge upon here. It is impossible 
 to condemn all drinking of wine as either sinful or improper 
 without bringing reproach upon the Lord Jesus Christ and 
 his apostles. There has been an immense amount of wrig- 
 gling by Christian writers on this subject to get away fi'om 
 this alternative, but there it stands impregnable. Jesus did 
 use wine. I will not waste my time in proving this proposi- 
 tion, and answering those wild basM-bazouks of controversy 
 who assert, with childlike confidence and simplicity, that the 
 Bible wines were unfermented grape-juice. Their learned 
 ignorance is fairly splendid with boldness. They disarm 
 criticism by their overwhelming dash. Such little questions 
 as why the epithet ivine-bibber should have been opprobrious ? 
 why deacons should not be given to much wine ? why the 
 Corinthian communicants should become drunken f why 
 the apostles at Pentecost should have been accused of wine- 
 drinking as the cause of their strange utterances ? — ail such 
 trifling questions they utterly disdain to notice in the magni- 
 :ficent sweep of their assertion. It is a small thing, too, with 
 them that the apostles never hint at two kinds of wine, a 
 good, unfermented wine, and a bad, fermented one, when it 
 would have been so easy and natural for our Lord or for 
 Paul to say, " Drink only the unfermented wine." Instead of 
 
A Calm View of the Temperance Question. 21 
 
 that they lead us into great danger by their unguarded re- 
 marks about wine, as if there were but one sort; nay, worse 
 than that, Paul even tells the deacons not to drink too much 
 wine. Did Paul mean the fermented wine? Then he al- 
 lowed the deacons to use it as a beverage. Did he mean 
 unfermented wine ? Then why did he limit the amount ? 
 This dilemma and ail the other arguments from the Scrip- 
 tures are as mere cobwebs to the lances of these vahant 
 knights, who are too free and fiery to be checked by reason 
 or overcome by syllogism. To a foot-pilgrim like myself, 
 however, these Scriptures are convincing and end the con- 
 troversy, and, therefore, I have to charge the total-absti- 
 nence propaganda with wresting the Scriptures and de- 
 spising their authority. 
 
 THE BIBLICAL AKGUMENT ANALYZED. 
 
 I know that there is a wing of their army which acknow- 
 ledges all that I have said of Scripture record, and which 
 holds that times are so changed that the Scripture examples 
 and precepts are now obsolete, that they were made for an 
 Oriental people eighteen centuries ago, and are wholly inap- 
 plicable in the great Occident in this nineteenth century. 
 But this wing of the host is a very weak wing, and is often 
 very thoroughly snubbed by the loud leaders, who count 
 their p )sition a giving-up of the contest, as indeed it is. 
 For who will beheve that Christ and his apostles, on great 
 moral questions and matters of moral conduct, gave example 
 and precept that would not last ? The argument runs this 
 way : Christ and his apostles said that we may drink wine, 
 but that was a local and temporary matter; now, under new 
 circumstances, we must not. Christ and his apostles said 
 that Christians must not be mixed with the ungodly world, hut 
 that was local and temporary, when idolatry was rife; now, 
 under new circumstances. Christians and the ungodly world 
 may so intermingle that you can't tell one from the other. 
 The apostle of Christ said that women must keep silence in 
 the churches, but that was local and temporary, when wo- 
 men were not much more than slaves; now, under new cir- 
 cumstances, women may mount platform and pulpit as ex- 
 
22 3Ioderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 borters and preachers, for verily, uuder the Gospel, there 
 is no difference between male and female ! I said, who will 
 believe all this? Alas! there are many who do. And I 
 charge them with undermining the authority of the Word of 
 Ood. If moral questions that are not in the Scripture are to 
 Idc thus treated, who is to draw the line where you are to 
 stop ? Why may not the Christian merchant say of the New 
 Testament command, " Lienot one to another : This is local 
 and temporary, when trade was sluggish and men's minds 
 Tvere dull ? Now, under new circumstances, when emulation 
 needs every help and Wall Street sharpens men's wits, you 
 must lie or go under. This departure from the Bible senti- 
 ment and example on moral conduct in us who believe in the 
 Bible is a very dangerous thing. Of course, for the Bud- 
 dhists who have lately become fashionable in our country it 
 is of no consequence. And to them this division of my ar- 
 gument is not addressed. 
 
 I have now endeavored, in a very brief way, to point out 
 the reasons why the total-abstinence system as a cure for in- 
 temperance will not and ought not to be adopted. Of course 
 I am therefore bound to propose a system that ought to be 
 adopted. I do not dodge the issue. No man is more keenly 
 alive to the frightful ravages of drunkenness than I am, and 
 it is because the prevailing system of a total-abstinence cru- 
 sade is hindering the cure of the evil by keeping just methods 
 from the field and by disgusting men's minds with the very 
 name of temperance, so cruelly bemired, that I denounce it, 
 and ask good men to rally around a truer and purer stand- 
 ard. 
 
 EXCESS AXD MODEEATIOX. 
 
 The right system must be one that recognizes practically 
 the difference between excess and moderation, and the diffe- 
 rence between injurious and harmless drinks, and will thus 
 appeal to the common sense of reasonable and thinking 
 men. It must be a system that deals honestly with history, 
 science, and Scripture, and does not invent theories and then 
 support them by garbled quotations and imaginary facts. 
 It must be a manly system, that has no cant or foolery of 
 
A Calm View of the Tern iier mice Question. 23 
 
 orders and ribbon3 degrading a matter of high principle to 
 the hocus-pocus of a child's play. Such a system would be 
 found in the exclusion of distilled liquor from common use as 
 a beverage both by public opinion and by law, and the wise 
 regulation in society and in the state of the use of vinous 
 and malt liquors. Society should put away all the drinking 
 usages that lead to excess, such as furnishing many wines at 
 an entertainment, or *' treating" others, or putting brandied 
 wines upon the table ; and the state should limit the number 
 of licensed sellers to at most the proportion of one to a thou- 
 sand inhabitants of each town, and these sellers should be 
 under heavy bonds not to sell to minors or drunkards, an^l 
 not to allow disreputable characters to gather at their 
 places. The law should likewise make the collection of evi- 
 dence against a licensed seller easy, and the penalty of 
 breaking the law should be imprisonment as well as fine. 
 On a basis like this, that does not sweepingly condemn every 
 drink that has alcohol in it, the great majority of the people 
 could work accordantly, and therefore effectively. The 
 wild radicalism of the teetotalers is just what the rumsellers 
 and their advocates enjoy. They know that this absurd ex- 
 travagance disintegrates the army of order and renders it 
 powerless; that so long as temperance is made to mean 
 '' total abstinence from everything that can intoxicate," the 
 great multitude of order-loving men will shrink from joining 
 any temperance movement, and hence these wholesale de- 
 stroyers of the race can go on in their nefarious work with 
 impunity. Now, what is needed is the union of all good men 
 who desire to stop the fearful drunkenness of the laud with 
 its attendant crimes and misery. That union never can be 
 effected on the principles of the total-abstinence propaganda. 
 But it can be effected on the principles of truth and common 
 S3nse, and they who prevent this union by their tenacious 
 adherence to a false and fanatical system are responsible 
 before God and man for the spreading curse. 
 
 There is no more important question before the American 
 people to-day than this : '' How shall we stay this surging 
 tide of intemperance ? " and it is to be answered on one side 
 by the practical voice of society, and on the other by the 
 
24 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 edicts of our legislatures. We should act with an even mind 
 on so grave a subject, and see to it that every step we take 
 is solidly founded on right reason. We should urge before 
 our legislatures plans that are fi^ee from the taint of crude 
 prejudice, and instinct with practical wisdom ; and when we 
 do this we shall be surprised to see how many whom we took 
 to be enemies there are who are ready to join us in the work 
 arid establish foundations of order and peace in the land that 
 shall save us from a moral slough. 
 
 COXCLUSIOX. 
 
 Let me, in conclusion, distinctly say that I do not oppose the 
 principle of total abstinence from all that intoxicates /or the 
 individual. Every man is at liberty to abstain if he will, and 
 it is his duty to abstain if his own conscience command it. 
 That against which I contend, and which I hold up as the 
 hindrance to true reform and the promoter of the drunkard's 
 cause, is the total-abstinence crusade or propaganda— thQ 
 forcing total abstinence upon the community as the duty of 
 all ; the putting under the ban every one who does not fol- 
 low that standard ; the insisting upon total abstinence as the 
 only safety against drunkenness. It is this headlong move- 
 ment, which virtually cries '' The Koran or the sword !" and 
 tramples alike on reason and Scripture in its blind rush— it 
 is this and not private total abstinence against which I in- 
 veigh. And let me also repeat that I am attacking a sys- 
 tem and not persons. I have no war with men, but with er- 
 ror. I can honor the men who uphold a pernicious system, 
 for I can believe in their purity of motive and singleness of 
 aim. And for this reason I the more earnestly and hopefully 
 urge them to consider their ways and abandon a course 
 which is only confirming the dreadful curse we all abhor and 
 desire to remove. 
 
A REVIEW OF DR. CROSEY. 
 
 By rev. dr. mark HOPKINS, 
 
 Ex-Presideni Williams CoUege, Jla^s. 
 
 THE recent lecture by Dr. Crosby, entitled '' A Calm View 
 of the Temperance Question, '' is divided into four 
 parts: 1. Preliminary Propositions; 2. Tbe Prudential 
 Question ; 3. The Moral Question ; and 4. His own System. 
 Of these each requires attention. 
 
 His prehminary propositions are three, and of these we are 
 compelled to take exception to the very first. This is, that 
 "the object of temperance societies is to prevent drunken- 
 ness.'' That is one object, but is so far from being the only 
 one that the statement is inadequate and misleading. It 
 implies that the effect cf alcoholic drinks up to the point of 
 drunkenness is not injurious, and that unless moderate 
 drinking leads to drunkenness, which he denies, it does not 
 come within the scope of temperance societies. 
 
 We hold, on the other hand, that, in our climate and 
 under our present inherited conditions, the health of the 
 human system is better without alcoholic stimulation than 
 with it, and therefore that temperance, taking Dr. Crosby's 
 
 25 
 
26 Moderation vs. Total Ahsthience, 
 
 own definition of it as ^' a grand moral subjection of the 
 whole man to the sway of reason," would exclude such stimu- 
 lation. We hold with him that temperance permits only 
 such use of anything whatever as will best promote the well- 
 being of the whole man. On this point we remember the 
 statements of Bishop Potter, and men like him, at the be- 
 ginning of this reformation, of the eifect upon their health 
 of giving up wire; we recall the regimen of Samson, and 
 the uniform testimony of the trainers of athletes ; we note 
 the fact that in England a total-abstainer can have his life 
 insured at a less rate than a moderate drinker ; we have the 
 testimony of physicians* that what they call an ^'insane 
 diathesis" is produced by moderate drinking, and that this 
 may fail to reveal itself till the second or third generation ; 
 we take what is known of the stimulating quality of our 
 climate and of the adulteration of alcoholic drinks in this 
 country, and we conclude that the object of temperance so- 
 cieties is broader than the prevention of drunkenness. 
 
 The second proposition of Dr. Crosby is that '^ the cardi- 
 nal principle of these ^societies is total abstinence from all 
 that can intoxicate." Yes, as a beverage. We agree to the 
 use of alcohol as a medicine and in the arts. Here, how- 
 ever, it ought to be said that these societies were formed 
 and this principle was adopted to meet an emergency. 
 Fifty years ago it came upon the country almost with the 
 suddenness of a cry of fire that the whole fabric of our so- 
 ciety, moral, social, and civil, was in danger from the use of 
 intoxicating drinks. The alarm was not sounded too soon, 
 nor was the danger over-estimated. A mighty work was to 
 be done. The evil pervaded church and state alike. There 
 were vested rights and drinking customs ; wines for the rich, 
 whiskey and cider-brandy for the poor, and adulterated 
 liquors -, and the question was not about abstract principles, 
 or what might be right at all times and in all places, but 
 how to meet a present danger. The grand men of that day 
 —the Beechers and Notts -and Potters — felt their way, and 
 
 *See a recent pamphlet on "The Insane Diathesis," p. 15, by Henry P. 
 Stearns. M.D., of Hartford. 
 
A Review of Dr. Crosby, ^1 
 
 at length reached the principle of total ahstineDce as their 
 only sheet-anchor. We are fighting the same battle, with 
 much gained, but still under similar conditions. The house 
 is still on fire. How shall we put it out? We say with 
 water. Those who have labored longest and made most 
 sacrifices in this cause say that the danger can be best met 
 by total abstinence on the part of the individual and by 
 prohibition on the part of the State. To each of these Dr. 
 Crosby objects not only, but he strongly condemns them. 
 
 The third proposition of Dr. Crosby is that ^' total absti- 
 nence, if adopted by all, will prevent drunkenness." With 
 this we heartily agree. 
 
 In objecting to total abstinence under his "Prudential 
 Question " Dr. Crosby says many things with which we 
 agree. We agree that we ought to adopt a " practicable '' 
 plan — not, however, as he says, one "that will be received 
 by men in general," but one in which we can worli most 
 effectively. Wo agree that we ought to work with others 
 who differ from us so far as we conscientiously can. If any 
 have failed to work with Dr. Crosby up to this point it is to 
 be regretted; but since he does not object to ^' total absti- 
 nence for the individual," and agrees that that would be a 
 sure preventive for drunkenness, we invite him, if he has 
 not already done so, to join us in bringing over to that as 
 many individuals as he can. We agree with him in what 
 he says of conscience as too often '^mere obstinacy of opin- 
 ion," and about "fanaticisms" and false martyrdoms; ar.d 
 if in working with us, as he " conscientiously^'' must, he can- 
 not bring men quite over to total abstinence; we do conscien- 
 tiously wish him success in bringing them as far as he can. 
 We agree with him in what he says of the original 
 and proper meaning of the word "temperance,'' and 
 of the change in its use, but not in his apparent irrita- 
 tion about it; or in his charge of intentional deception. The 
 change has come by a law of language which makes a gene- 
 ral term specific when a particular use of it becomes pro- 
 minent. It was thus that certain writings came to be called 
 Scriptures^ as if there were no other writings; and also 
 
S§ Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence. 
 
 the Bihle^ which means the book, as if there were do 3ther 
 book. So when an Enghsh sportsman shoots a partridge he 
 says he has shot a bird, as if tbere were no other birds. 
 Changes of this kind constantly occur with no conscious 
 agency of any one, and there is no more reason for suppos- 
 ing that any advocate of total abstinence ever used the word 
 temperance in this secondary sense with an intention to de- 
 ceive than tbere is that Dr. Crosby so used it when he en- 
 titled his lecture " A Calm View of the Temperance Ques- 
 tion." Some deception may have been wrought in this way, 
 but Dr. Crosby's view of it seems to us greatly exaggerated. 
 We cannot believe that a word which has thus found a second- 
 ary meaning by a natural law will be regarded as ^' a false 
 flag," or that it *' will disgust and alienate true and en- 
 lightened souls." 
 
 We agree further with Dr. Crosby, and thank him for 
 stating it, that " the use of a false argument always reacts 
 against the user." We presume he is right in res])ect to 
 '' mw5f preserved from fermentation." We agree with him 
 that the Scriptures ought not to be '^ twisted," but fail to 
 see how it would be ''a fatal blow to tbe total-abstinence 
 system," or any blow at all, if it should be proved that they 
 speak of only one kind of wine. Many advocates of total 
 abstinence, perhaps the majority, agree with Dr. Crosby on 
 this point, but find in that no reason for abating their zeal 
 in the cause. 
 
 In treating of the prudential question up to this point 
 Dr Crosby finds '' three elements of deception entering into 
 ^ their cause ' : the use of the word temperance for a totally 
 different thing, the fable about unfermented wine, and the 
 violent twisting of the Scriptures." He then says : " Now I 
 unhesitatingly afiQrm that a cause having such falsehoods for 
 its main supports can never be accepted by the public." 
 
 Finding thus his tirst reason why tbe plan of <* total absti- 
 nence will not be adopted by the people " to be that it is sup- 
 ported by falsehoods, Dr. Crosby states as his second rea- 
 son ''its unmanUness." Under this head the main point 
 of his argument is against legal prohibition. Total prohibi- 
 
A Review of Dr. Croshy. 29 
 
 tion he calls 'Hhe cardinal doctrlue of the total -abstinence 
 people,'' whereas we are not aware that, as total-abstinence 
 people, it is their doctrine at all. The two are sought for 
 different ends, and by different means. Total abstinence 
 we seek through voluntary action, for the promotion of in- 
 dividual virtue and of the general good. Legal prohibition 
 we seek for as a means of guarding our rights. Let the law 
 cease to appeal to us by taxing us for the support of pauper- 
 ism and Clime caused by the selling of intoxicating drinks, 
 and we will cease to appeal to t!ie law. The question then 
 is not at all whether legal prohibition is opposed to manli- 
 ness and the cultivation of '* self-control," but whether a 
 voluntary position of total abstinence, prohibition or no pro- 
 hibition, IS so opposed. We have been accustomed to think, 
 and do now, that we have had few finer illustrations in mod- 
 ern times of heroic self-denial, and moral courage, and true 
 manhood than were seen in Governor Briggs and men like 
 him, who planted the standard of total abstinence in Wash- 
 ington, and stood faithfully by it for so many years. Does 
 Dr. Crosby charge unmanliness upon these men, or upon 
 the merchant princes of our day, who, with every facility for 
 the safest and most refined forms of indulgence, stand firmly 
 by the same banner because they think they can thus best 
 arrest the ravages of intemperance ? But while we find Dr. 
 Crosby thus arguing against legal prohibition because of the 
 unmanliness it fosters, strange to say, we find him farther on, 
 and with no change that we can see in its relation to manli- 
 ness, adopting legal prohibition as the very basis of his own 
 system ! 
 
 The third and only other reason mentioned by Dr. 
 Crosby under the prudential head why the plan of total ab- 
 stinence will not be adopted by the people is ^Mts spirit of 
 intimidation.^^ Here, again, we agree with Dr. Crosby— we 
 think with him that intimidation should not be used. Espe- 
 cially do we sympathize with him in what he says about the 
 use of violent language. That such language should ever 
 be used by the advocates of total abstinence we regret, and 
 have not a word of excuse to offer. We venture to enquire, 
 
30 Moderation vs. Total Abstmence. 
 
 however, whether he has not himself in the single instance 
 of applying the term bulldozing to means of influence 
 wholly moral erred slightly in the same direction. We 
 may not have caught the precise shade of the meaning of 
 that word, but suppose it to imply some reference to physi- 
 cal forco either threatened or actually used, whereas it is 
 well known that the use of physical force, when used at all, 
 has invariably been on the other side. 
 
 The three reasous above referred to are dwelt upon by Dr. 
 Crosby at length, but are touched thus slightly by us be- 
 cause their force as bearing on the point in question depends 
 almost wholly on the truth of the statement by him that 
 they are the " main supports of the cause of total absti- 
 nence." He says : " Now, I unhesitatingly affirm that a 
 cause having such falsehoods as its main supports can 
 never be accepted by the public." Again : '^ We have en- 
 deavored to show that the i)ublic mind will not receive a 
 system whose principal agencies have been falsehoods and 
 intimidation." That these have been the main supports of 
 the total -abstinence cause we wholly deny, and are aston- 
 ished that such assertions should be made. Has Dr. Crosby 
 never heard of the statistics of intemperance, so vast and so 
 laboriously gathered, as used for promoting this cause ? Has 
 he never heard of the six hundred millions of dollars an- 
 nually spent in this country for alcoholic liquors ? Has he 
 never heard of the sixty thousand drunkards who are esti- 
 mated to die annually, or '^ of the poorhouses, prisons, and 
 hospitals filled with inmates, and the land filled with widow- 
 hood and orphanage such as no war in modern times has 
 ever occasioned"? Has he never heard of entreaties to 
 men and of prayers to God with tears and agony that hus- 
 bands and sons and brothers might be brought to stand on 
 the firm ground of total abstinence ! We have before us, 
 and have just referred to it, an address to the people of 
 Massachusetts by the Massachusetts Total-Abstinence So- 
 ciety, and in that the topics dwelt on by Dr. Crosby, main 
 supports though he calls them, are not even referred to, and 
 there is not in it the slightest attempt at intimidation. 
 
A Review of Dr. Crosby, 31 
 
 But while we thus deny what Dr. Crosby says about the 
 " principal agencies " relied on by the friends of total absti- 
 nence, and, if we deny truly, vacate the whole force of what 
 he has said on the '' prudential question," we go one step 
 further and say that even if his assertions on that point were 
 true his argument would be, as he has said of another, a com- 
 plete nan sequitur. For what does he object to ? Not to 
 total abstinence, for he says in this connection : " The total- 
 abstinence scheme may be in strict accordance with theoreti- 
 cal virtue. It may be the grand end to which all reforming 
 processes should tend." Not to total abstinence, then, does 
 he object, but to '^falsehoods," and 'intimidations," and 
 attacks on manliness. These he regards, and justly, as 
 false methods, and he tells us that *'a cause having such 
 falsehoods as its main supports can never be accepted by 
 the pubUc." But does it follow because a scheme that either 
 is or '' may be in strict accordance with theoretical vutue " 
 would be rejected when supported only by falsehoods and 
 intimidation would not be received when supported by truth 
 presented in love ? Not at all. There is not the most distant 
 connection between the premises and the conclusion. But 
 this is Dr. Crosby's argument, and the whole of it. Accord- 
 ing to this, if we will but accept deserved criticism and keep 
 our forces in order, looking well after our Bible-twisters and 
 bulldozers and "wild BasM-Bazouks of controversy," we 
 may hope for success. 
 
 Whether, then, the assertion of Dr. Crosby that the main 
 supports of our scheme are falsehoods and intimidation be 
 false or whether it be true, his whole argument under the 
 prudential head amounts to absolutely nothing— perhaps 
 even less, for we think we have seen somewhere that '' a 
 false argument always reacts against the user." We have 
 no apprehension from the effect of such logic upon ''men 
 who have brains and use them." 
 
 In passing to what Dr. Crosby calls the moral question 
 we find it impossible to account for the language he uses re- 
 specting •' the total-abstinence system," except from the 
 want of discriUiination already referred to between that sys- 
 
32 Moderation vs. Total Abstine?ice. 
 
 tern and legal prohibition. Separated from the ignorance 
 and faults and follies of its friends, ^' the total-abstinence 
 system " is the endeavor to secure by individual and asso- 
 ciated action, and with their free consent, total abstinence 
 on the part of individuals from iutoxicating drinks as a 
 beverage. This is the system and the whole of it. If each 
 individual would assent to this no wrong or harm would be 
 done, and drunkenness with its attending evils would 
 cease. Now, that Dr. Crosby should charge upon this sys- 
 tem, so understood, that it is ''immoral," "false in its 
 philosophy, contrary to revealed religion, and harmful to 
 the interests of our country" — that he should charge 
 upon it '' the growth of drunkenness in our land and a 
 general demoralization among religious communities," seems 
 impossible. 
 
 The growth of drunkenness, we had supposed, was due in 
 part to the greed of gain, and in part to depraved appetite, 
 but it seems we were mistaken. It is due to the total-ab- 
 stinence system understood in some way ! If this be so, well 
 may Dr. Crosby say, and he should say it with the voice of 
 a trumpet, '' I call upon sound-minded, thinking men to 
 stop the enormities of this false* system." Precisely what 
 he had in mind we do not know. Probably the system of 
 legal prohibition, or, possibly, a confused mixture of the 
 two. But we do not ask legal prohibition for the promo- 
 tion of total-abstinence, or temperance, or morality in any 
 way. Let the law compel the traffic to provide for its own 
 results, and not to put unjustifiable temptation in the way 
 of the young, and we ask of it nothing more. We will then 
 go on working in harmony with Dr. Crosby on the voluntary 
 plan, seeking, if possible, to bring individuals up to total 
 abstinence, and if not, as near to it as we can. 
 
 When Dr. Crosby charges that the total-abstinence sys- 
 tem is immoral we know what he means by the moral ques- 
 tion; but when he passes to bis specifications we should be 
 glad to know what he means by a moral error. Error is 
 commonly supposed to belong to the intellect, but if there 
 pan be moral error at all, it must involve blame on the part 
 
A Eevietv of Dr. Crosby. 33 
 
 of him who holds it. If so, then a man is to blame for be- 
 lieving that moderate drinking leads to drunkenness. And 
 Dr, Crosby seems to think so, for he calls it an atrocious 
 dogma, but whether he intends thus to impute blame to all 
 who do not agree with him in his six specifications we are 
 at a loss to determine. 
 
 '< The first moral error of the total-abstinence system," he 
 says, 'Ms in turning a medicinal prescription into a bill of 
 fare for all mankind." We are not dealing with all man- 
 kind, but we do say that here and now most men, if not all, 
 would be healthier and exert a better influence if they would 
 abstain from intoxicating drinks as a beverage. That the 
 drunkard should wholly abstain Dr. Crosby afQrms, but he 
 recognizes no obligation on our part to help him by our ex- 
 ample in his mighty struggle to do this. He nowhere re- 
 cognizes, or alludes to, the great principle laid down by the 
 apostle Paul when he said he would eat no meat while the 
 world should stand if it would cause his brother to offend. 
 That principle we kcow tho president of the National 
 Temperance Society and those who act with him regard as 
 one of the great supports of the cause they advocate, and 
 one that is to be strongly urged. Is that a moral error ? It 
 seems implied in what Dr. Crosby says under this head, 
 though doubtless not so intended. 
 
 " A second moral error of the total- abstinence theory," as 
 statod by Dr. Crosby, "is its assumption that moderate 
 drinking leads to drunkenness." Taking the words " mode- 
 rate drinking " as they are commonly understood, we confess 
 to having been in this error, if so it be, and hope we are not to 
 blame for holding it still, though it is intimated by Dr. 
 Crosby that t? hold it is '* a mark of very deep depravity," 
 and though it is supported by logic like the following: 
 
 All drunkards were first moderate drinkers. *' Millions 
 upon millions of our race " have been moderate drinkers and 
 have not become drunkards. MiUions of our race have 
 been moderate drinkers and have become drunkards ; 
 therefore moderate drinking does not lead to drunkenness. 
 Or take a case wholly parallel ; a miUion people have lived 
 
34 Moderatmi vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 iu a malarial atmospLere and have not had typhoid fever ; 
 a hundred thousand have lived in the same atmosphere and 
 liave had it ; therefore a malarious atmosphere does not pro- 
 duce typhoid fever. Surely Dr. Crosby cannut be ignorant 
 of the delusive, and mocking principle there is in all narcotic 
 stimulation by which a larger amount of the stimulus is con- 
 stantly demanded for a given amount of stimulation, till, if 
 the stimulus be alcohol, the moderate drinker is led oti un- 
 consciously over the shaky ground of moderate drinking 
 into the " Serbouian bog," '^ a gulf profound," of drunken- 
 ness, and hears the mocking cry (oh ! how many have 
 heard it !) : '^ Now extricate yourself if you can." 
 
 A third moral error of the theory, we are told, ^' is its want 
 of discrimination between things that differ." This does 
 not, we suppose, apply to all things, but only to the different 
 kinds of alcohohc drinks, as brandy and hock wine and 
 other kinds mentioned by Dr. Crosby. We think it de- 
 sirable that discriminations should be made where there is a 
 difference, especially where there is so great a difference as 
 we suppose there is between brandy and hock wine, though, 
 as we do not know what hock wine is, we cannot be sure 
 about it, but we think it rather strong language to call such 
 want of discrimination and language indicating it '' a moral 
 outrage which the whole community should indignantly re- 
 pel." If these are those ^* whose digestion is feeble, circu- 
 lation languid, and nervous system too excitable," and cer- 
 tain alcoholic drinks will do them good, do let them have 
 them J we shall not object. 
 
 A fourth moral error of the total-abstinence system, says 
 Dr. Crosby, '' is its assertion that all drinks that contain al- 
 cohol are poison." This is much like the third. It involves, 
 however, the scientific question whether there is, or is not, 
 " a radical difference, a difference in degree not only but in 
 kind, between the effects of large and small quantities of 
 alcohol." 
 
 We now come to the pledge. The use of this Dr. Crosby 
 regards as the fifth moral error of the total-abstinence sys- 
 tem. He would have the appeal made directly and continu- 
 
A Review of Dr. Croshij. 35 
 
 ously to the moral nature ^ith no pledge. So far as we see, 
 what he says applies equally to all pledges. ^' Instead of 
 regulating a man from within," they are equally ''strait- 
 jackets." " The pledge/' he says, 'Ms always an injury, and 
 never a benefit to true morality." Again he says : " Man's 
 moral nature is not to be curbed by pledges.' Than this 
 nothing could be more sweeping and universal. Now, that, 
 in a country whose independence was estabhshed by men 
 y^ho pledged their lives and liberty and sacred honor for its 
 maintenance, whose marriages and churches and business 
 contracts are all sustained and guarded by pledges, for a 
 contract is simply a mutual pledge, this wholesale onslaught 
 upon them should be made seems extraordinary. We had 
 supposed that the Scripture precept, ''Vow, and pay unto 
 the Lord thy vows," was still in force. By the pledge the 
 influence of the social element is gained, and we do not see, 
 as Dr. Crosby thinks he does, why the moral nature may 
 not be appealed to for the keeping of the pledge as well as 
 in any other way. Not alone to their moral nature, but to 
 all that was noble within them, did that mother appeal when 
 she asked each of her four boys, as he left her at an early 
 age to make his own way in the world, to pledge himself 
 never to use intoxicating drinks, or profane language, or 
 tobacco before he should be twenty-one. The boys pledged 
 themselves and have kept their pledge, and now, at ages 
 ranging from sixty-five to seventy-five they are honored 
 men ; but one of them has ha-d a sick day, and no one of 
 them is worth less than a million of dollars. That there 
 have been great abuses in connection with the pledge in 
 the temperance movement we do not doubt, but that does 
 not show that either the original adoption of it or the use 
 of it on the whole has been or is a moral error. 
 
 The sixth and last moral error noticed by Dr. Crosby re- 
 spects the question already referred to about the kinds of wine 
 mentioned in the Scriptures. Is there only one, or are there 
 two ? On this we have two things to say. The first is, and 
 Dr. Crosby concedes it, that the Scriptures nowhere CDm- 
 mand us to drink wine of any kind as a beverage. We feel, 
 
36 Moderation vs. Total Ahstmence. 
 
 therefore, tliat we do not go against the Scriptures either in 
 abstaining from wine as a beverage ourselves or in e-idea- 
 voring to lead others to do so. The secoud thing we have 
 to say is implied in a story we remember to have heard. It 
 is that during the final battle before Vicksburg, when some 
 injudicious person rushed into the presence of General Grant 
 and in the most excited manner called his attention to an 
 incidental matter, the general merely said, with his charac- 
 teristic calmness : *' I am fighting tliis battle.^' 
 
 We now turn for a moment to the method proposed by 
 Dr. Crosby. It is one of blended prohibition and license- 
 prohibition of distilled liquors, and license for fermented 
 ones. In adopting this he gives np his argument about 
 manliness, and concedes the principle of prohibition. Of 
 the right of this there can be no doubt so far as it may be 
 necessary for the protection of rights, and we wish to apply 
 it only so far as may be necessary for that. If we could 
 avoid doing so, and still have our rights, we would in no 
 way interfere legally with what any person should eat or 
 drink. If iu manufacturing chemicals a man causes an 
 offensive and poisonous smoke to invade the houses of his 
 neighbors, the law compels him to raise his chimney till 
 the smoke shaU pass away, and then, if any one, or even 
 numbers, should be fond of the smoke, and be obliged to 
 climb to the top of the chimney to get a whiff of it, they 
 could not complain that it was the object of the law to 
 make them do so, or to interfere in any way with what 
 they should smell. Let the traffic be so regulated that 
 it shall be responsible for its own results and we are con- 
 tent. 
 
 The difficulty of framing laws by which this would be 
 reached we appreciate. We do not wish those that cannot 
 be executed. Prohibition may be wise in one place, or in 
 one degree, and not iu another place and to another de- 
 gree. If laws theoretically the best would not be executed 
 to a reasonable extent, we must get the best we can that 
 will be thus executed. If, which we do not at all beheve, 
 the mixed system proposed by Dr. Crosby would approxi- 
 
A Review of Dr. Crosby. 37 
 
 mate that result most nearly we would accept that. Mean- 
 tune, we must not fail to recognize the total-abstinence 
 scheme as having aims and methods different from those of 
 legislation, wholly above and beyond them, and if it be 
 really the best, as we think it is, for the peace of families 
 and for the purity and permanence of our institutions, we 
 must not be deterred by opposition or discouraged by ob- 
 stacles from doing what we can to promote it. 
 
 We have now followed the lecture step by step, and what 
 have we? We have, in connection with a claim to a calm 
 view of the temperance question, strong denunciation and a 
 proclamation of war to be carried into Africa. ^'Carthago 
 delenda esV^ We have the general statement that the main 
 supports of the total-abstinence scheme are falsehoods nnd 
 intimidations. The friends of the scheme are allowed to be 
 well-meaning people, some of them even "noble souls," 
 but too fanatical and headlong to be aware of the means 
 they are using. We have the failure of the system attribut- 
 ed, not to anything wrong in itself, but to wrong methods. 
 We have then the statement that this same system is the 
 cause of the growth of drunkenness in our land and of gene- 
 ral deraorahzation. We have mere opinion on certain points 
 branded as moral error, and we have the condemnation of 
 all pledges. All this we have, but we have no recogniza 
 tion of the overwhelming testimony of physicians that the 
 alcoholic element is not needed for our best health, or of 
 the tremendous statistics of intemperance, or of the force 
 of example, or of the great principle, as expounded by the 
 apostle Paul and illustrated by our Saviour himself, of self- 
 sacrifice for the good of others. 
 
 This lecture of Dr. Crosby has attracted wide attention. 
 From its subject, the place of its delivery, and the person de- 
 livering it, it could not be otherwise. If it had been given 
 by an ordinary man we should not have felt called upon to 
 notice it. But Dr. Crosby is not an ordinary man. From 
 his position as chancellor of the University of New York, 
 from his eminent scholarship, his high character, his evident 
 sincerity, and the noble efforts he has made and is now 
 
38 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 making for the suppression of crime and for moral reform, 
 his words fall with a weight which only makes it the more 
 imperative, if they be, as we think, erroneous and mislead- 
 ing, that we should do what we can that their influence may 
 be counteracted. 
 
A REPLT 
 
 TO 
 
 Dr. Crosby's ''Calm View of Temperance." 
 
 By WENDELL PHILLIPS. 
 
 Delivered VI Treviont Temple^ Boston^ January 24, 1881, 
 
 before the Association of the Mifiisters of the 
 
 Methodist Episcopal Church. 
 
 I AM to offer you some remarks on a lecture delivered 
 here a fortnight ago by Chancellor Crosby. He de- 
 nounced the temperance movement as now conducted. 
 The address was not very remarkable for novelty, or weight 
 of argument, or the correctness of its statements. Indeed, it 
 was rather noticeable for the lack of these qualities. And it 
 was so well handled and so fally answered in several of our 
 pulpits that I thought it needed no further notice. But you 
 thought otherwise, and perhaps it does deserve it, considering 
 the source from which it comes. And when the health of the 
 chancellor becomes the standing toast in the grog-shops of 
 our city, and when the journal which publishes these Mon- 
 day lectures is obliged to print a second and third edition, 
 day after day, to supply that class of customers, it is evi- 
 dent that temperance men have a text on which an effectual 
 temperance sermon can be preached — one that will proba- 
 bly arrest the attention of just those we seek to reach. 
 
 Dr. Crosby laments the divisions among temperance men, 
 and lays it down as a principle that we '' cannot conscien- 
 tiously object to the means employed by others, unless they 
 
 39 
 
40 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 contain an immorality." I beg leave to dissent from this. We 
 have had sixty years' experience in temperance methods, 
 and certainly may claim to have learned something. Now, 
 when these new converts, these nursling babies of grace, 
 mislead by their crude suggestions the temperance public, 
 obstruct its efforts and waste its means, are we bound to sit 
 silent and make no protest against such waste and reckless- 
 ness ? The treasury of reform is not rich enough to bear such 
 extravagance on the pretence of harmony ; much less are we 
 bound to silence when a neighbor's mistake seriously harms 
 and binders the movement. If Boston lived, as it did in 
 1806, with no steam fire-engine (only leather buckets hang- 
 ing in each man's front entry), cheerfully would I stand with 
 Dr. Crosby and a hundred more to pass buckets of water 
 up to the firemen on a burning building. But in 1881 I 
 should not ob:^truct the engine, and crowd it out of its place, 
 merely that I and Dr. Crosby might Lave a chance harmoni- 
 ously to unite in passing empty buckets toward the flames. 
 Life is too short for such false courtesies ; too short for us to 
 postpone working on our line until we have educated every 
 new convert up to our level. This might do very well be- 
 fore the Flood, as Sydney Smith suggests, when Methuselah 
 could consult his friends for a hundred and fifty years in re- 
 lation to an intended enterprise, and even then live to see 
 the working of his plan, and its success or failure, for six or 
 seven centuries afterward. 
 
 But life now is limited to an average of seventy years, and 
 practical men must put their hands to the plough in the best 
 way they know, and, if children stand in their w'ay, move 
 them gently but firmly out of the path. 
 
 I think before Dr. Crosby spoke he should have studied 
 the history of the temperance movement. If he were as 
 familiar with the literature of our enterprise as he is with 
 that of Greece, he never would have repeated criticisms and 
 suggestions that have been answered over and over again 
 during the last fifty years. As I turn over his essay, and 
 find how tediously familiar we all are with his objections, I 
 am reminded of Johnson's objection to Goldsmith's plan of 
 travelling over Asia in order to bring home valuable im- 
 
ReiJly of WencMl Phillips. 41 
 
 provements : ^^ Sir, Goldsmith is so ignorant of his own coun- 
 try that he would bring home a wheelbarrow as a new and 
 valuable invention." 
 
 The address turns back in its path frequently, and repeats 
 its chief criticisms again and again. If we analyze it I 
 think it may be fairly summed up thus : 
 
 1. Dr. Crosby objects to the total-abstinence theory and 
 movement that it insults the example of Jesus ; that its ad- 
 vocates undermine and despise the Bible, while they strain 
 and wrench it to serve their purpose ; and he asserts that the 
 ^' total -abstinence system is contrary to revealed religion " ; 
 and that the Bible, correctly interpreted, repudiates total 
 abstinence and such a temperance crusade as has existed 
 here for the last fifty years. 
 
 2. Dr. Crosby objects to this movement as immoral as well 
 as unchristian ; and as ^' doing unmeasured harm to the com- 
 munity." He considers it as the special and direct cause of 
 the '* growth of drunkenness in our land, and of a general 
 demoralization among religious communities "; asserts that 
 it is exactly the kind of movement that rumsellers enjoy, and 
 that it ought not to succeed, never will, and never can. 
 
 3. The pledge is unmanly and kills character and self- 
 respect. 
 
 4. The assertion that moderate drinking leads to drunk- 
 enness is untrue. 
 
 5. The total-abstainers bully and intimidate the communi- 
 ty and disgust all good, sensible men. 
 
 6. That what is needed to unite sensible men in a move- 
 ment sure to succeed is a license system recognizing the 
 distinction between moderation and excess, between harm- 
 less wines and beer and strong drink. Such a system, ''free 
 from taint of prejudice, and instinct with practical wisdom, 
 will establish order and peace and save us from a moral 
 slough." 
 
 The looseness of these statemeuts is noticeable. Dr. 
 Crosby says ^' the total-abstinence system is contrary to re- 
 vealed religion." 
 
 What is the '' total-abstinence system "? It is abstaining 
 from intoxicating drink ourselves^ and agreeing, with others 
 
42 Moderation vs. Total Ahstlnencc. 
 
 to do so. How is tliis contrary to revealed religion ? Can 
 any one cite a text in the Bible or a principle laid down there 
 which forbids it? Of course not; no one pretends that he 
 can. But Dr. Crosby's argument is that Jesus drank intoxi- 
 cating wioe and allowed it to others. There is no proof 
 that he ever did drink intoxicating wine. But let that pass, 
 and suppose, for the sake of the argument, that he did. 
 What then? To do what Jesus never did, or to refuse to 
 do what he did — are such acts necessarily *' contrary to re- 
 vealed religion " ? Let us see. 
 
 Jesus rode upon an '' ass and a colt, the foal of an ass." 
 We find it convenient to use railways. Are they " contrary 
 to revealed religion"? Jesus never married, neither did 
 most of his apostles. Is marriage, therefore, '^ contrary to 
 revealed religion " ? Jesus allowed a husband to put away 
 his wife if she had committed adultery, he himself being 
 judge and executioner. We forbid him to do it, and make 
 him submit to jury trial and a judge's decision. Are such 
 divorce laws, therefore, ^' contrary to revealed religion"? 
 Jesus said to the person guilty of adultery : '^ Go and sin 
 no more." We send such sinners to the State prison. Are 
 our laws punishing adultery, therefore, ''contrary to re- 
 vealed religion " ? There were no women at the Last Supper. 
 We admit them to it. Is this ''contrary to revealed reli- 
 gion " ? We see therefore that Christians may, in altered 
 circumstances, do some things Jesus never actually did, and 
 that their so doing does not necessarily contravene his ex- 
 ample; nor, unless it violates t\iQ uprinciples he taught, does 
 it tend to undermine Christianity. 
 
 But the learned lecturer will, perhaps, urge : " I did not 
 mean exactly what I said. I meant to point out that the 
 means you use — methods with which you urge and support 
 the total-abstinence theory— are contrary to revealed reli- 
 gion. You strain and pervert the Bible to get the example 
 of Jesus on your side, and so undermine the authority of the 
 Scriptures." 
 
 It would have been better if Dr. Crosby had originally 
 said exactly what he meant, and on so grave a subject we 
 had a right to claim that a trained and scholarly man should 
 
Ee2)lij of Wendell Phillips, 43 
 
 do so. But, waiving that, let us allow Mm, as the courts 
 do, to amend his declaration. 
 
 The total-abstinence system is ^' contrary to revealed re- 
 ligion," because we strain and distort the Scriptures and 
 wrest them to serve our purpose ; and the chief instance 
 upon which the doctor mainly dwells is our assertion that 
 wherever drinking wine is referred to in the Bible with 
 approbation unfermented wine is meant. Upon this claim 
 the doctor pours out his hottest indignation, indulging in a 
 wealth of abusive epithets, and returning to it again, and 
 again ringing changes on it, and turning it hke a specially 
 sweet morsel under his tongue. Indeed, this may be consid- 
 ered the chief thing he came to Boston to say. 
 
 Now, there is a class of Biblical scholars and interpreters 
 who do assert that wherever wine is referred to in the Bible 
 with approbation it is unfermented wine. Of this class of 
 men Dr. Crosby says ^' their learned ignorance is splendid " ; 
 they are '' inventors of a theory of magnificent daring"; 
 they ^' use false texts " and '^ deceptive arguments " ; " deal 
 dishonestly with the Scriptures"; '' beg the question and 
 build on air"; their theory is a ''fable," born of ''false- 
 hoods," supported by " Scripture-twisting and wriggling"; 
 their arguments are " cobwebs," and their zeal outstrips their 
 judgment, and they plan to " undermine the Bible." 
 
 This is a fearful indictment ! Who are these daring, ri- 
 diculous, and illogical sinners? As I call them up in my 
 memory, the first one who comes to me is Moses Stuart, of 
 Andover, whose lifelong study of the Bible and profound 
 critical knowledge of both its languages place him easily at 
 the head of all American commentators. His well-balanced 
 mind, conservative to a fault on many points, clears him 
 from any suspicion of being misled by enthusiasm or warp- 
 ing his opinions to suit novel theories. " Moses Stuart's 
 Scripture View of the Wine Question" was the ablest con- 
 tribution, thirty years ago, to this claim about unfermented 
 wine, and it still holds its place, unanswered and unanswer- 
 able. By his side stands Dr. Nott, the head of Union Col- 
 lege, with the snows of ninety winters on his brow. Around 
 ^hem gather scores of scholars and divines on both sides of 
 
44 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence. 
 
 the Atlantic. In our day Tayler Lewis gives to the Ameri- 
 can public, with his scholarly endorsement, the exhaustive 
 commentary by Dr. Lees on every text in the Bible which 
 speaks of wine — a work of sound learning, the widest re- 
 search, and fairest argument. 
 
 The ripe scholarship, long study of the Bible, and critical 
 ability of these men entitle them to be considered experts 
 on this question. In a matter of Scripture interpretation it 
 would be empty compliment to say that Dr. Crosby is wor- 
 thy to loose the latchet of their shoes. You would think me 
 using only sarcasm if I said so. 
 
 Now, imagine Moses Stuart, with his " learned ignorance," 
 ^' using false texts," '^ dealing dishonestly with the Scrip- 
 tures," "■ begging a question and using cobwebs for argu- 
 ments," " wriggling and twisting the Bible "; at the ripe age 
 of sixty years his boyish " zeal outstripping bis judgment" — 
 imagine him, with his infidel pickaxe, zealously digging away 
 up there on Andover Hill to ^'undermine the Bible" ! Of 
 course all Andover will at once recognize the fidelity of the 
 portrait, and cordially thank the New York Greek professor 
 for informing them of his discovery of this Stuart conspiracy 
 with Dr. Nott to bring the authority of the Scriptures into 
 contempt. 
 
 One thing Dr. Crosby wishes to be distinctly understood : 
 he does not charge such men as Stuart with meaning to lie. 
 *^ Their main arguments are falsehoods. They take up these 
 weapons without suflflciently examining them. They see 
 they can be made efieetive, but do not stop to enquire 
 whether they are legitimate." Now, this is very kind in our 
 New York professor. We had never discovered the super- 
 ficial character of Stuart's scholarship, which left him open 
 to such mistakes, or his mischievous haste and culpable 
 carelessness in logical methods, and it is very generous in 
 this new^ Daniel to assure us that, in spite of these faults, he 
 ^'can [with effort, of course, and some struggle] believe in 
 the purity of motive " of such men, even when they "■ trample 
 on reason and Scripture in blind rush." 
 
 Now, the truth is, the only ^^ castle built on air " in this 
 matter is the baseless idea that the teuiperance movement 
 
Mej^hj of Wendell Fhithps. 45 
 
 uses dishonest arguments or wrests the Scripture because it 
 maintains that where the drinking of wine as an article of 
 diet is mentioned in the Bible with approbation unfermented 
 wine is meant. The fact is, there are scholars of repute on 
 both sides of the question ; but we do not claim too much 
 when we say that the weight of scholarly authority is on our 
 side, and not on that of the doctor. 
 
 But suppose the weight on each side were equal, what 
 then ■? One theory makes the Bible contradict itself^ puts it 
 below the sacred books of many other nations in the strict- 
 ness of its morality, and sets it as an obstacle to the highest 
 civilization. 
 
 The other reconciles all its teachings one with another, 
 lifts it to the level of the highest moral idea, and makes it 
 the inspirer and the guide in all noble efforts to elevate the 
 race. Which theory ought the behever in the Bible to pre- 
 fer, if both were equally well supported? Are those who 
 degrade the Bible below other scriptures entitled to charge 
 us with '' undermining" it ? There are other claims besides 
 that of unfermented wine which are '^ magnificent in their 
 daring " and, let me add, in their insolence. 
 
 Some of the doctor's young hearers might have been sur- 
 prised to see a divine flinging the Bible in the way of the 
 temperance movement. But we older ones and Abolitionists 
 are used to such attempts. Forty -five years ago the 
 Princeton Bevietv, representing the Presbyterian Church, de- 
 nounced the anti-slavery movement— at a time when Garri- 
 son stood surrounded by divines and church-members with- 
 out number— as infidel and ^'contrary to revealed religion." 
 Its argument was the exact counterpart of Dr. Crosby's 
 against our temperance enterprise. In vain we showed that 
 the word '' slave" in the New Testament did not necessari- 
 ly or probably mean a chattel slave, and in vain did Weld's 
 " Bible Argument " — which was never answered — prove the 
 same to be true of the Old Testament. Still, we were de- 
 nounced as ^' twisting and wresting and straining the Scrip- 
 tures and undermining the Bible." This Crosby Bible was 
 flung in Garrison's face for thirty years. But since his great 
 hand wrote Mighteousness on the flag and sent it down to 
 
46 Moderaiwn vs. Total Alstmence, 
 
 the G-ulf, and since we boast that no slave treads our soil — 
 since then nine hundred and ninety-nine church-members 
 out of every thousand will call you a libelerand suspect you 
 of infidelity if you say the Bible anywhere or in any degree 
 upholds slavery; and I see your lecturer last week closed 
 his eloquent and able address by triumphantly claiming that 
 the Gospel abolished slavery — which is truC; only he should 
 have stated that it was the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and not 
 the gospel of the church of that day. 
 
 Hence I am not impatient nor distrustful. I rest quiet in 
 serene assurance that by and by, when our temperauce 
 cause is a little stronger, men will blush to think they ever 
 belittled and dishonored the Bible by such claims and argu- 
 ments as these. At that time ninety-nine out of every hun- 
 dred Christians will look askance upon you, and suspect 
 your orthodoxy, unless you believe Jesus never drank any 
 fermented wine, and that the Bible's precepts touching wine- 
 drinking can only be reconciled with each other or with its 
 claim as a revealed religion by recognizing the distinction 
 between fermented and unfermented wines. In my active 
 life of fifty years I have seen more men made infidels by 
 these attempts to prove the Bible an upholder of slavery 
 than I ever saw misled by the followers of Paine ; and I 
 think this sad exhibition of New York partisanship will 
 have the same result. The misled men to whom I refer 
 were not ignorant, careless-minded, or unprincipled, but 
 men of conscientious earnestness of purpose, good culture, 
 and blameless lives. 
 
 It is, indeed, mournful to look back and notice how uni- 
 formly narrow-minded men, hide-bound in the bark of tra- 
 dition, conventionalism, and prejudice, have thrown the 
 Bible in the way of every forward step the race has ever 
 made. When the Reformation claimed that every Christian 
 man was his own priest and entitled to read the Bible for 
 himself, the cry was: *' You are resisting and undermining 
 the Bible." Even before that the most advanced and liberal 
 churchmen denounced their own (unrecognized, but true) 
 spiritual brothers — the democracy of their day in Holland 
 and elsewhere— as infidels and contemners of the Scriptures. 
 
Reply of Wefidell PhilUps, 47 
 
 When the English Puritan saw dimly a republican equal- 
 ity of rights, Sir Robert Filmer and the High- Churchmen 
 tried to frighten him with the scarecrow of their Bible. 
 The chief apostle says, *' Honor the king ! " aud this fellow 
 leaves us no king to honor! But even Dr. Crosby would, 
 in spite of St. Peter, hardly acknowledge the Declaration of 
 Independence to be '' contrary to revealed rehgion." 
 
 One of the strongest proofs that the Bible is really a di- 
 vine book is that it has outlived even the foolish praises and 
 misrepresentations of its narrow and bigoted friends. 
 
 When anti-slavery lecturers first entered Ohio, some forty 
 years ago, they carried the Bible before them as their sanc- 
 tion for the movement. Certain doctors of divinity, horror- 
 struck at this profanation, proposed to form a society whose 
 object should be to prove that the Bible sanctioned slavery. 
 Ben Wade was then considered somewhat of an infidel; 
 but, on the principle of the forlorn sailor, who puts up with 
 any port in a storm, these divines sought out Wade, asking 
 him to be president of the proposed society. Wade received 
 them most courteously. ^' Certainly," said he, ^' gentlemen, 
 I will serve you gladly, and do my best to make this thing a 
 success. But, you know, when we've proved that the Bible 
 supports and demands slavery as an institution, folks will 
 ask you to show them what is the worth of such a Bible, 
 here and now. And in that matter I cannot be of any help 
 to you, gentlemen, at all." 
 
 But some adherent of Dr. Crosby may say : Still, the New 
 Testament does not anywhere specifically and in so many 
 words describe a system of moral observance like teetotal- 
 ism. Possibly not; and hence the doctor claims that this 
 suiting Christianity to the needs of the age is disguised 
 infidelity. 
 
 But look at it a moment. The New Testament is a small 
 book, and may be read in an hour. It is not a code of laws, 
 but the example of a life and a suggestion of principles. It 
 would be idle to suppose that it could describe in detail, 
 specifically meet every possible question, and solve every 
 difficulty that the changing and broadening life of two or 
 three thousand years might bring forth. The progressive 
 
48 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence. 
 
 spirit of each age bas found in it just the inspiration and 
 help it sought. But when timid, narrow, and short-sighted 
 men claimed such exclusive ownership in it that they refused 
 to their growing fellows the use of its broad, underlying 
 principles, and thus demanded to have new wine put into 
 old bottles, of course the bottles burst and their narrow- 
 surface Bible became discredited; but the real Bible soared 
 upward, and led the world onward still, as the soul rises to 
 broader and higher life when the burden of a narrow and 
 mortal body falls away. This is that kind of literal and 
 starved ignorance which lays its unworthy hand on the 
 Scriptures, and tells us that, because Solomon said, '-He 
 that spareth the rod spoileth the child," he meant every 
 child must be mercilessly whipped ; thus dragging down the 
 wisest of men to the level of their own narrow and brutal 
 nature, ignorant that the poet-king, ]3utting the concrete for 
 the principle involved, meant only to emphasize the truth 
 that the training of a child must include subjection — by 
 what method obtained each case and each child's nature 
 must decide. And thus many a brute and ignoramus has 
 complacently fathered his absurd blindness and passionate 
 temper on Solomon and the Bible. 
 
 Had not the lecturer of last week (Dr. Crooks) so ably and 
 eloquently pointed out this characteristic of Christianity, 
 its opening to the moral and spiritual need of each age, its 
 ready and complete adaptation of itself to the most unfore- 
 seen and immense changes in the moral life of succeeding 
 ages — one of the proofs of its divine origin — furnishing the 
 principles needed for each larger development of civiliza- 
 tion, and giving its sanction to the new methods which 
 keener temptations and more threatening dangers demanded, 
 I might have troubled you with something on this point. 
 You will allow me to quote what will show you that even the 
 old divines and those whose orthodoxy will not be suspected 
 have, again and again, affirmed that a moral agency's being 
 new was no evidence at all that Christianity did not include 
 and intend it. Eobinson, in '^Address to the Pilgrim 
 Fathers," says : 
 
 "If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of 
 
Rejjhj of Wendell FJnIJijjs. 49 
 
 his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth 
 
 by my ministry ; for I am verily persuaded — I am very confident 
 
 — the Lord hath more truth yet to break forth out of his Holy 
 
 Word." 
 
 The Hon. Robert Boyle (1680) says : 
 
 "As the Bible was not written for any one particular time or 
 people, ... so there are many passages very useful which 
 will not be found so these many ages ; being possibly reserved by 
 the Prophetic Spirit that indited them ... to quell some 
 foreseen heresy, ... or resolve some yet unformed doubts, or 
 confound some error that hath not yet a name." 
 
 Bishop Butler, in Ms ^' Analogy " (1737), says : 
 
 *' Nor is it at all incredible that a Book which has been so long 
 in the possession of mankind, should yet contain many truths as 
 yet undiscovered. For all the same phenomena and the same 
 faculties of investigation from which such great discoveries in 
 natural knowledge have been made in the present and last age 
 were equally in the possession of maniiind several thousand years 
 before. And possibly it might be intended that events, as they 
 come to pass, should open and ascertain the meaning of several 
 parts of Scripture." 
 
 The Interpreter (1862) says : 
 
 " A day is coming when Scripture, long darkened by traditional 
 teaching, too frequently treated as an exhaustive mine, will at 
 length be recognized in its true character, as a field rich in unex- 
 plored wealth, and consequently be searched afresh for its hidden 
 treasures." 
 
 Vinet, in his " Lectures," says : 
 
 " Even now, after eighteen centuries of Christianity, we may be 
 involved in some tremendous error of which the Christianity of 
 the future will make us ashamed." 
 
 Dean Stanley says : 
 
 **Each age of the church has, as it were, turned over a new 
 leaf in the Bible, and found a response to its own wants. We 
 have a leaf still to turn — a leaf not the less new because it is so 
 simple." 
 
 Dr. Crosby passes to the great weapon of the temperance 
 movement— the pledge. This he calls ''unmanly," ''a 
 
50 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 straisjacket " J says it kills self-respect and undermines 
 all character. 
 
 Hannali More said : ^' We cannot expect perfection in any- 
 one ; but we may demand consistency of every one.^' 
 
 It does not fend to show the sincerity of these critics of 
 our cause when we find them objecting in us to what they 
 themselves uniformly practise on all other occasions. If we 
 contiDue to believe in their sincerity, it can only be at the 
 expense of their intelligence. Dr. Crosby is, undoubtedly, a 
 member of a church. Does he mean to say that, when his 
 church demanded his signature to its creed and his pledge 
 to obey its discipline, it asked what it was ''unmanly" in 
 him to grant and what destroys an individual's character — 
 that his submission to this is '•' foregoing his reasoning," 
 ^' sinking back to his nonage," etc. *? Of course he assents 
 to none of these things. He only objects to a temperance 
 pledge, not to a church one. 
 
 The husband pledges himself to his wife, and she to him, 
 for life. Is the marriage ceremony, then, a curse, a hin- 
 drance to vu'tue and progress i 
 
 I have known men who, borrowing money, refused to sign 
 any promissory note. They thought it unmanly and evidence 
 that I distrusted them. Does Dr. Crosby think the world 
 should change its customs and immediately adopt that plan ? 
 
 Society rests in all its transactions on the idea that a 
 solemn promise, pledge, assertion strengthens and assures 
 the act. It recognizes this principle of human nature. The 
 witness on the stand gives solemn promise to tell the truth ; 
 the ofiacer about to assume place for one year or ten, or for 
 life, pledges his word and oath ; the grantor in a deed binds 
 himself for aU time by record ; churches, societies, universi- 
 ties accept funds on pledge to appropriate them to certain 
 purposes and to no other — these and a score more of instances 
 can be cited. In any final analysis all these rest on the same 
 principle as the temperance pledge. No man ever de- 
 nounced them as unmanly. I sent this month a legacy to a 
 hterary institution, on certain conditions, and received in 
 return its pledge that the money should ever be sacredly 
 used as directed. The doctor's principle would unsettle 
 
Reply of Wendell PJiilhps. 61 
 
 Society, and, if o.e proposed to apply it to any cause but 
 temperance, practical men would quietly put him aside as 
 out of his head. 
 
 These cobweb theories, born of isolated cloister life, do 
 not bear exposure to the midday sun or the rude winds of 
 practical life. This is not a matter of theory. It must be 
 tested and settled by experience and results. Thousands 
 and tens of thousands attest the value of the pledge. It 
 never degraded ; it only lifted them to a higher life. ' ' Un- 
 manly f" No. It made men of them. We who never lost 
 our clear eyesight or level balance over books, but who 
 stand mixed up and jostled in daily life, hardly deem any 
 man's sentimental and fastidious criticism of the pledge worth 
 ans<vering. Every active worker in the temperance cause 
 can recall hundreds of instances where it has been a mau's 
 salvation. 
 
 In a rail way-car once a man about sixty years old came 
 to sit beside me. He had heard me lecture the evening be- 
 fore on temperance. "■ I am master of a ship," said he, 
 "sailing out of New York, and have just returned from my 
 fiftieth voyage across the Atlantic. About thirty years ago 
 I was a sot; shipped^while dead-drunk, as one of a crew, 
 and was carried on board like a log. When I came to, the 
 captain sent for me. He asked me : 'Do you remember 
 your mother ? ' I told him she died before I could remem- 
 ber anything. 'Well/ said he, ^'I am a Vermont man. 
 When I was young I was crazy to go to sea. At last my 
 mother consented I should seek my fortune in New York.' 
 He told how she stood on one side the garden-gate and he 
 on the other, when, with his bundle on his arm, he was 
 ready to walk to the next town. She said to him : ' My 
 boy, I don't know anything about towns and I never saw 
 the sea ; but they tell me those great towns are sinks of 
 wickedness and make thousands of drunkards. Now pro- 
 mise me you'll never drink a drop of liquor.' He said : ' I 
 laid my hand in hers and promised, as I looked into her 
 eyes for the last time. She died soon after. Fve been on 
 every sea, seen the worst kinds of life and men. They 
 laughed at me as a milksop and wanted to know if I was a 
 
52 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence, 
 
 coward ; but when tboy offered me liquor I saw my mother 
 across the gate, and I never drank a drop. It has been my 
 sbeet-anchor. I owe all to that. Would you like to take 
 that pledge ? ^ said he." 
 
 My companion took it, and he added : "It has saved me. 
 I have a fine ship, wife and children at home, and I have 
 helped others." 
 
 How far that little candle threw its beams ! That anx- 
 ious mother, on a Vermont hillside, saved two men to virtue 
 and usefulness ; how many more He who sees all can alone 
 tell. But our agitation of the drink question is " bulldoz- 
 ing " and '^ intimidation." This is only an unmanly whine. 
 
 What is the pulpit? Does it not take admitted truths 
 and press them home on conscieuce ? Or does it not seek to 
 prove principles the listener does not admit, and then urge 
 him to their practice ? Does it not criticise, and affirm, and 
 denounce, seeking to waken the indifferent, convince the 
 doubting, and claim consistent action of all '^ Does It wait 
 until the sinner acknowledges its principles before it de- 
 nounces his action as a sinf By no means. Is church dis- 
 cipline visited only on those who see and confess their sins? 
 Is it not used to rouse them to a sense of the principle they 
 will not acknowledge, and hold them up to the rebuke and 
 take from them the respect of their fellows ? If our tempe- 
 rance agitation is "intimidation," then nine-tenths of the 
 land's pulpits are bulldozers and the other tenth is useless. 
 What does the Bible say of those who prophesy smooth 
 things, and whose order was Nathan obeying when he said, 
 "Thou art the man " ! 
 
 I have known even a Greek professor, when speaking in 
 downright earnest, fling about the keenest and roughest 
 words in the dictionary in the most reckless and biting 
 manner ;* yet I never dreamed of charging him with seeking 
 to intimidate his opponents. 
 
 * As illustrating Dr. Crosby's "calmness" the Chicago Advance says : "A 
 collection of the dynamic complimentary phrases applied by this ' calm ' lecturer 
 to the main body of temperance people of America would make a curious para- 
 graph. Here are some specimens : * Mere obstinacy of opinion and personal 
 pride ' ; ' what a fearful prostitution of a noble word is seen in the use of the 
 word " temperance " to-day ! ' ' a^false flag ' seized by ' radical and intemperate 
 
Replij of Weiidell PliilUps. 53 
 
 Dr. Crosby says it is false, our constant assertion that 
 moderate drinking makes drunkards. Will lie please tell us 
 where, then, the drunkards come from ? Certainly teetota- 
 lers do not recruit these sweUing ranks. Will he please ac- 
 count for the million -times-repeated story of the broken- 
 hearted and despairing sot, and of the reformed man, that 
 " moderate drinking lulled them to a false security until the 
 chain was too strong f(^r them to break " ? Will he please 
 explain that confession forced from old Sam Johnson, and 
 repeated hundreds of times since by men of seemingly strong 
 resolve : '' I can abstain ; I can't be moderate " ? 
 
 Do not the Bible, the writers of fiction, the master drama- 
 tists of ancient and modern times, the philosopher, the 
 moralist, the man of affairs — do not all these bear witness 
 how insidiously the habits of sensual indulgence creep on 
 their victim, until he wakes to -find himself in chains of iron, 
 his very will destroyed ? 
 
 When Milton says, '' I cannot praise a fugitive and clois- 
 tered virtue, unexercised and unbreathed, that never sallies 
 out and sees her adversary,'' Dr. Crosby, you suppose, inter- 
 prets it as meaning that boys should frequent gambling- 
 hells and such resorts, in order to prove their strength of 
 resistance. But no ; he does not mean any such thing. He 
 only thinks they should face the drink temptation ; none 
 other. When you hear that the New York Central Kailway 
 prohibits the sale of flash literature in its cars, perhaps you 
 expect to hear Dr. Crosby denounce that corporation as 
 emasculating the virtues of their travellers and making them 
 
 souls,' which ' will disgust and alienate true and enlightened souls ' ; ' these in- 
 fatuated defenders of the total-abstinence principle'; ' these great untruths that 
 are flaunted on its banners will disgust most men that have brains and use them *; 
 ' its spirit of intimidation ' and ' bulldozing,' the ' invariable accompaniment of 
 it during its forty years' curriculum ' ; 'overbearing and tyrannical,' 'using a 
 violence of language that can admit of no excuse ' ; whose ' principal agencies 
 have been falsehood and intimidation ' ; whose ' principles are at war with proper 
 manliness or self-respect'; 'upon the total abstinence system I charge the 
 growth of drunkenness in our land and a general demoralization among religious 
 communities'; 'moral jugglery,' 'a blunder that has the proportions of a 
 crime ' ; of the pledge, a ' most pernicious instniment for debauching the con- 
 science,' ' always an injury and never a help ' ; the wild ' bashi-bazouks of con- 
 troversy,' etc., etc," 
 
54 Moderation vs. Total Abstiiience. 
 
 unmanly. Not at all. He approves it. It is only drink 
 temptations that he considers good training for heroic men. 
 
 You might suppose that Dr. Crosby would recommend to 
 colleges to substitute, in their study of the hterature of fic- 
 tion, the works of Eugene Sue, Dumas, and Balzac, in the 
 place of George Eliot, Walter Scott, and Jane Austen, since 
 these last would afford no proof of a lad's ability to with- 
 stand the harm of pernicious novels. Oh ! no. I assure you 
 that is a mistake. Dr. Crosby confines the new discovery 
 of fortifying virtue by steeping it in temptation wholly and 
 exclusively to rum. Hannah More's demand of ^' consis- 
 tency " he thinks of no consequence whatever. 
 
 But our movement is the delight of rumsellers and the 
 great manufacturer of drunkards. How is it, then, that anx- 
 ious and terror-stricken rumsellers assemble in conven- 
 tions to denounce us and plan methods of resisting us ? No 
 such conventions were ever heard of or needed until the last 
 twenty years. How is it that they mob our lecturers and 
 break up our meetings ? Was Dr. Crosby or any of his class 
 ever mobbed by rumsellers ? How is it that, the moment 
 we get one of the prohibitory laws, ''which delight rum- 
 sellers," passed, these delighted men form parties to defeat 
 every man who voted for it, crowd the lobbies to repeal it, 
 and never rest until, by threat or bribes, they have repealed 
 it ? If rumsellers long and pray for the coming of the mil- 
 lennium of prohibition, why don't they all move down to 
 Maine, and get as near to the desired heaven as they can ? 
 If rumsellers dehght in our total-abstinence labors, how un- 
 grateful in them to allow their organs all over the world to . 
 misrepresent and deny what httle success even Dr. Crosby 
 allows we have had in Maine ! They ought to chuckle over 
 it and scatter thencTs far and wide. When Dr. Crosby 
 has answered half these questions, we*ave some more diffi- 
 culties to propound which trouble us, about the unaccount- 
 able freaks of these delighted rumsellers, who, delighted as 
 they are with our work, yet never can bear or praise the 
 very men who, Dr. Crosby says, are constantly employed 
 spending time and money in '* delighting " these unreason- 
 able fellows. 
 
Reply of Wendell Phillips. 55 
 
 We are the cause of all this drunkenness, the temper- 
 ance movement is a failure, and always must be a failure, 
 and ought to be so. 
 
 I will prove that Cliristianity is a failure in the same way. 
 The famous unbelievers, down from Voltaire, through Mill, 
 to the last infidel critic, prove Christianity, by the same 
 sort of argument, to be a failure and the cause of most 
 of the evils that burden us. Exaggerate all the evil that 
 exists, especially those vices that will never wholly die 
 while human nature remains what it is ; belittle and cast in- 
 to shade all the progress that has been made ; dwell with 
 zest on the new forms of sin that each age contributes to 
 the infamy of the race ; keep your eyes firmly in the back 
 of your head, and insist that there's nothing equal to what 
 we had in old times — not even the snow-storms or the St. 
 Michael pears — and the thing is done. 
 
 Before our movement began three-quarters of the farms 
 of Massachusetts were sold under the hammer for rum- 
 debts. You could not enter a public- house in country or 
 city, of the first-class or the smaller ones, except through a 
 grog-shop. Their guests felt mean if they did not at din- 
 ner order some kind of wine, and often ordered it when they 
 did not wish it. Now the grog -room is hidden from sight ; 
 men slink into it ; and not more than one man in ten at the 
 most fashionable hotels, and not one in fifty in common inns, 
 orders wine at dinner. Then the sideboard of every well- 
 to-do house was covered with liquors, and every guest was 
 urged to drink -, the omission to do which would have been 
 held a gross neglect, if not an insult. No man was buried 
 without a lavish use of hquor ; no stage stopped without 
 the traveller being thought mean if he did not help the 
 house by taking a drink. Now one may travel hundreds of 
 miles on rails which allow no liquor in their stations. Every 
 farmer furnished drink to his men; famous doctors went 
 drunk to their patients; the first lawyer in the Middle 
 States was not singular when he held on by the rail in or- 
 der to stand and argue, half-drunk, to the Supreme Court 
 of the United States ; rich men saw to it that every clergy- 
 toan who attended a convention was plied with wine ; and 
 
56 Moderation vs. Total AJjstinence. 
 
 the preacher of the Concio ad Clerum was fed on brandy- 
 punch to be on a more exhilarated level than his hearers. 
 If a man caught sight of a grog-shop, he was as sure he had 
 arrived in a Christian land as the shipwrecked sailor felt 
 when he got sight of a gibbet. Dr. Crosby then had every 
 maD, lay and clerical, on his side in construing the Bible j 
 whereas now we are in a healthy majority. Then a few 
 scattered temperance tracts, hke rockets In a night, only 
 betrayed how utterly the world was in the desert on this 
 subject; now a temperance literature, crowded with facts, 
 strong in argument, filled with testimonies from men of the 
 first eminence in every walk of hfe, in every department of 
 science and hterature, challenges and defies all comers. 
 Then the idea of total abstinence was not so much denied 
 as wholly unknown; now, if New England were polled to-day, 
 our majority would be overwhelming. Then all men held 
 liquors to be healthy and useful; now seventy men out of 
 a hundred, whatever their practice, deny that claim, and 
 the upper classes, well informed and careful of health, lead 
 the way in giving up the use. Then the medical profession 
 waded in the same slough of indulgence and ignorance as 
 their patients ; now the verdict of the profession is undoubt- 
 edly and immeasurably against the use of intoxicating drinks 
 at all in health, and but seldom in favor of it in disease. 
 
 We have driven the indulgence in drink into hiding places, 
 and for the first time the Legislature is obliged and wilhng 
 to prohibit the use of screens to hide rum-drinkers from the 
 public view they dread. Is not this skulking evidence of 
 weakening ^ 
 
 Sixty years ago the Legislature passed a few formal laws 
 perfunctorily, and dismissed the whole subject. But ten 
 years ago Liquor gathered at the State-House all the ex- 
 perts of social science, the lights of the medical profession, 
 all the famous science from Harvard College, and retained 
 an ex-governor, at vast expense, to marshal this host, in 
 order to resist Dr. Miner and a few Bible-twisters, whom 
 Liquor seemed somehow to dread, although they had dis- 
 gusted and repelled all the sensible men in the State. 
 
 Of course this was before Dr. Crosby had communicated 
 
Reply of Wendell Pliillips, 57 
 
 to the liquor-dealers the comforting fact that the temperance 
 movement was a failure, and that they ougbt to be delighted 
 with it and with Dr. Miner and his Bible-twisters, and that 
 they were delighted with it, whether they themselves knew 
 it or not ! 
 
 And far above all, set on a hill, a great State, Maine, 
 challenges the world to show her equal in an intelligent, 
 law-abiding, -economical, and self-restraining population; 
 while smaller examples cluster round her, here and across 
 the Atlantic ; and the haughty Episcopal Church, hardest 
 and last to be roused to any reform, has put on record in its 
 Convocations the most convincing and the most instructive 
 array of facts and evidence on total abstinence that any ec- 
 clesiastical body ever contributed to social science. It is 
 the ocean-wave kissing the Alps. You would weary if I 
 continued the summary. 
 
 Even if the statistics showed that the amount of liquor 
 consumed increased as fast as our population and wealth do 
 — which they do not show, but just the contrary — that would 
 not be sufficient evidence to prove that our movement has 
 failed. The proper comparison is between what we were in 
 1820 and what tve sliould have been noiv had not some be- 
 neficent agency arrested our downward progress. These 
 evils, left to themselves, increase by no simple addition, but 
 in cubic ratio. 
 
 Does Dr. Crosby fancy this active movement and vast 
 mass of fact, opinion, and testimony can exist without bene- 
 ficial influence in an age ruled by brains ? He does not, 
 then, underslar.d moral forces or his own times. When, 
 twenty-five years ago, Frederick Douglas was painting the 
 anti-slavery movement as a failure unless we would load 
 our guns, Sojourner Truth asked: ''Frederick, is God 
 dead ?" When I see the doctor's unbelief in the efficacy of 
 the moral power and the weight of this mass of conviction, 
 I am tempted to ask him : " Is your God dead "? " 
 
 Dr. Crosby closes by stating his plan and panacea. It is 
 a regulated license. I will not delay you by criticising his 
 or any other license plan. The statute-books in forty States 
 are filled with the abortions of thousands of license laws that 
 
58 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence. 
 
 were Dever executed, and most of them were never intended 
 to be. We have as good a license law in this State as was 
 ever devised, and yet it leaves such an amount of gross^ de- 
 fiant, unblushing grog-selling as discourages Dr. Crosby 
 and leads him to think nothing at all has been done. His 
 own city, with license laws, is yet so ruled and plundered by 
 rum that timid statesmen advise giving up republicanism 
 and borrowing a leaf from Bismarck to help us. 
 
 License has been tried, on the most favorable circumstances 
 and with the best backing, for centuries — ten or twelve, at 
 least; yet Dr. Crosby stands confounded before the result. 
 We have never been allowed to try prohibition, except in 
 one State and in some small circuits. Wherever it has 
 been tried it has succeeded. Friends who know claim this. 
 Enemies, who have been for a dozen years ruining their 
 teeth by biting files, confess it by their lack of argument 
 and lack of facts, except when they invent them. With such 
 a record may we not say that, even if we have no claim 
 to be considered Crosby Christians, we have a right to ask 
 one fair trial of what has, at least, never been, like license, 
 demonstrated a hundred times to be a failure ? 
 
A REPLY 
 
 TO 
 
 Dr. Crosby's ''Calm View of Temperance." 
 
 By MES. J. E. FOSTER, of Iotta. 
 
 Afi Address delivered in Tretnont Temple^ Boston^ 
 February 14, 1881. 
 
 WHEN Zenobia, the Queen of the East, rode upon her 
 white steed at the head of her armies to save Pal- 
 myra from the grasp of Roman avarice, she needed 
 no new anointing. Palmyra was in danger and she was 
 queen ; she looked from the glittering domes of her proud 
 capital to the hosts of Rome under its proud Aurelian, and, 
 urged by royal impulse, she went forth. The women of 
 America are queens, every one ; from early girlhood they 
 have been taught from pulpit, press, and platform that by 
 virtue of their motherhood they held undisputed sway over 
 the home. 
 
 This kingdom in the home is undisputed by the pure and 
 good. It is assailed by intemperance, it is threatened by 
 the drinking customs of society, and in defence of the home 
 woman has engaged in distinctive temperance work. 
 
 Five weeks ago to-day a cultured Christian gentleman, 
 the head of a great educational institution, a man called of 
 God to preach the Gospel of bis Son, and set apart by the 
 Christian Church to do that work, stood on this platform 
 and assailed the fundamental principles which underlie our 
 defence of ourselves in this work and our appeals to all good 
 people to aid us by their co-operation, or at least by their 
 
 59 
 
60 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 good wishes. Good and able men from this and other plat- 
 forms, from many Christian pulpits and through the press, 
 have answered what of argument the gentleman's address 
 contained ; they have mourned its arrogance and rebuked 
 its assaults. They have done so on broad and general 
 grounds, not in a spirit of partisanship or in defence of any 
 narrower interests than those involved in the weal of our 
 common humanity. I come to-day by invitation of the 
 Boston Woman's Christian Temperance Union, by the per- 
 mission of these honorable gentlemen, and by your suffer- 
 ance, to review the address from a woman's standpoint, and 
 to set forth the causes which have led the women of this 
 land to take up arms against the drinking customs of so- 
 ciety. 
 
 Honored as I am, kind friends, by your presence, and real- 
 izing in what city I am, 'tis not you alone I see, but the 
 faces of women in homes all over the land; some of these 
 are beautiful as yours j some are very bare ; some are among 
 the hills of the East and some on the prairies of the West ; 
 some of them are sitting by the cradles of little children, 
 some are bending over the washtub or before the sewing- 
 machine. There is despair in some of their faces, sorrow in 
 all, for they 
 
 WEEP FOR THEIR CHILDREN, 
 
 and will not be comforted because they are not, or, madden- 
 ed by long-continued abuse and neglect, they have at last 
 died to all joy or comfort, and only wait for the grave to 
 give the rest that rum has cheated them out of here. These 
 are not all I see, for close among the throng is the great 
 com]3any of husbands, fathers, sons, and brothers who are 
 not wholly lost, who only circle in the outer rim of this ter- 
 rible maelstrom of strong drink^but as the years go on will 
 be carried faster and faster, nearer and nearer, to the vortex 
 from which there is no escape; and near every one of these 
 some woman watches, some woman waits. I hear the plead- 
 ing voice, I see the tear-dimmed eye, I can almost feel the 
 feverish breath upon my cheek. And little children, too, 
 are in the foreground of this scene, not plump and rosy, not 
 
Reply of Mrs. J. E. Foster, 61 
 
 gay and merrj^ with the rush of childhood, but quiet and 
 pitiful, with pale faces, and thin lips, and frightened mien ; 
 old are they, though only a few summers have their little 
 barks been afloat on life's rough sea. These, kind friends, 
 are my constituents ; 'tis for them I speak to-day. 
 
 The remarkable address of the reverend gentleman con- 
 tains but a few salient points: 
 
 ^' The Bible does not teach total abstinence " ; 
 
 ^' The results of the investigations of science do not de- 
 mand it " ; 
 
 '' Human experience does not justify our plea for it" ; 
 
 Distilled liquors should be excluded from '• common use as 
 a beverage both by pubUc opinion and by law " ; 
 
 The use of vinous and malt liquors should be under '^ wise 
 regulation " ; 
 
 And that the great body of temperance advocates have 
 employed very questionable, and in many instances highly 
 objectionable, methods in the ^' total-abstinence crusade or 
 propaganda.''^ 
 
 These are the strategic points in this latest marshalling 
 of forces against the home. 
 
 TEEASON" AGAINST THE STATE 
 
 consists in levying war against it, in adhering to its ene- 
 mies or giving aid and comfort to them. The great chan- 
 cellor would not make war upon the home ; too often has he, 
 in the performance of the duties of his sacred ofiQce, and by 
 virtue of authority vested in him by the State, laid the 
 foundations of the home at the holy marriage altar ; too often 
 have his hands been laid upon the heads of httle babes 
 whom proud and thankful parents have early brought to the 
 altars of religion ; too often has he carried the comforts of our 
 holy Christianity to homes where the sable wing of the 
 death angel had left its dark shadow. Oh ! no ; he, a 
 minister of the Lord Jesus— he would not assail the 
 home, he would not levy war against it; but he has 
 given aid and comfort to its enemies, and that is treason to 
 the home. All over the land the hosts of sin rejoice ; in the 
 grog-shops they laugh and drmk to his health ; in the fashion- 
 
62 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence, 
 
 able club they smile and praise tbe wiue of which they taste 
 ^' in moderation " ; in the home the poor eld mother says to 
 her wayward boy : " Promise me, son, sign this pledge, that 
 I may be sure you'll never drink again," and he replies : 
 "'Tis unmanly, mother, a strait-jacket, and beneath my 
 self-respect." From breaking hearts there comes the cry : 
 '^ Noble sir, you have given aid and comfort to our enemies. 
 Had it been an enemy we could have borne it, had it been 
 he that hated us we would have hid ourselves ; but it was 
 thou, our guide and our acquaintance. We took sweet coun- 
 sel together, and walked to the house of God in company." 
 Surely we are wounded in the house of our friends. 
 
 Does the Bible teach total abstinence, directly or implied- 
 ly ? We answer, in both ways. For the critical exegesis of 
 the passages which in our King James's translation are ren- 
 dered wine we refer the honest enquirer to the publications 
 of the National Temperance Society, of which Hon. Wm. E. 
 Dodge, of New York, is president, and which are supported 
 by many eminent Christian ministers. This Society has col- 
 lected the testimony of Hebrew and Grreek scholars as to the 
 meaning of the terms used ; the weight of testimony is in 
 support of the position taken by the leading temperance ad- 
 vocates of this country and of Great Britain — namely, that 
 many words are used in the original tongues to express the 
 many kinds of wine used in Bible times; that the words 
 translated ^' wine," when it is spoken of as " good," and as 
 typical of God's grace, and a thing to be desired, refer to the 
 grape still hanging on the vine, or to its expressed juice pre- 
 served from contact with the air, and thus free from fermen- 
 tation; that the wine that is a '^ mocker," that ^' moveth itself 
 aright," the strong drink that '^ is raging," is given in other 
 words, as indeed it was quite another thing ; that in pas- 
 sages where no condemnation or commendation of the wine 
 is given, and where a generic term is used, which may, with 
 no violence to the rules of interpretation, be understood to 
 mean fermented or unfermented, then the harmony of Scrip- 
 tures, the spirit of their teachings, must be studied, that the 
 narrative may be rightly understood or the admonition re- 
 ceived. This *Hwo-wine theory" is not a trumped-up 
 
Reply of Mrs. J. E. Foster. 63 
 
 '^ Scripture-twisting" to suit the purposes of special pleaders, 
 or a '^ begging of the whole question," but is a calm view of 
 the real meaning of terms used by men writing as they were 
 moved by the Holy Ghost. 
 
 But to the common English reader, who h^s not facilities 
 of critical study at hand, there comes the argument of 
 
 THE GENERAL SPIRIT AJSJi TEACHING 
 
 of God's word. Drunkenness is everywhere denounced, even 
 the looking upon it (the wine) " when it is red, when it 
 giveth its color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright"; 
 the curses pronounced upon drunken nations and upon him 
 who giveth his neighbor drink j the fearful setting forth of 
 the desolations of that people when priest and prophet err 
 through strong drink, who*' err in vision and stumble in 
 judgment/' Surely Isaiah's prophetic soul must have seen 
 in vision this year of grace ! 
 
 Did our Saviour use fermented wine ? Let us walk softly 
 here ; let us not toss about opinions and arguments as 
 children at play toss the snow-balls their own hands have 
 made. He was our example. He came to fulfil the law. 
 He wrought his first miracle at Cana to show forth his glory. 
 He ate the Passover with his disciples, wherein nothing that 
 had ferment of any sort might be allowed ; 'twas thus he 
 instituted the sacrament of the Lord's Sup[)er, preserved in 
 the church '4n remembrance" of him through all the cen- 
 turies since he went away. The very essence of the religion 
 he taught is self-denial, self-renunciation for the good of 
 others. But the temperance that is at the top round of the 
 ladder of Christian graces enumerated by the apostle is not 
 such as Dr. Crosby would fain have us believe is the con- 
 summation of all manhness; true temperance is the moderate 
 use of good things and total abstinence from bad things. 
 Alcoholic drinks are *' bad things " — bad according to Scrip- 
 ture and science, and bad as shown by the testimony of hu- 
 man experience. How a man set apart to study God in his 
 word and in his works, and then to lead the people as he 
 himself shall be led, guided always by the great problems of 
 
64 Moderation vs. Total Abstine7ice. 
 
 human destiny — how lie can teach that the Bible looks with 
 any degree of allowance upon even.moderate drinking is ex- 
 plainable upon no other. theory than that the old Scripture 
 is again illustrated: ''Wine is a mocker, strong drink is 
 raging, and tojiosoever is deceived thereby is not iviseP 
 
 Again : Do the investigations of science demand total 
 abstinence ? We answer : '^ Yes." No erudition is needed 
 to show the sin and shame of drunkenness ; everybody ac- 
 cepts the truth. 
 
 THE EEAL NATTJEE OE ALCOHOLIC DEINXS 
 
 is not so well understood. Science, rightly interpreted, is 
 always the handmaid of religion and the servant of man ; 
 she has for half a century cried — not with the pleading 
 tones of the philanthropist, or the trumpet-blasts of the 
 watchman on Zion's walls, or the clear bugle-notes of the 
 reformer, but with the hard, unfeeling voice of cold intellec- 
 tuality — ^' It is a poison ! it is a poison !'' Others have an- 
 swered: '' 'Tis the abuse and not the use that makes such 
 sad havoc with our poor humanity; if people only would 
 stop when they have had enough there would be no need of 
 all this onslaught." Again science answers : '' One drop 
 is too much." It has been clearly shown that alcohol is not 
 changed by chemical action in the laboratory of the human 
 stomach ; it did not itself contain any of the elements found 
 in the fruit from whose decay it had its origin. 
 
 A great chemist says : 
 
 *' Fermentation is nothing else than putrefaction of a sub- 
 stance containing no nitrogen. It is excited by the contact 
 of all bodies the elements of which are in an active state of 
 decomposition. It continues till the original compounds are 
 wholly destroyed" (Turner's Chemistry). 
 
 Here I have another eminent witness : 
 
 '' It did not require college training," writes Dr. A. H. Mc- 
 Murty, ^'but merely my sense of smell to tell me, what 
 chemical analysis has so often demonstrated, that alcohol 
 comes out of the body as it goes into it, which is a pretty 
 suggestive hint that the body wants to have nothing to do 
 with it, but treats it as an intruder, as it treats every other 
 
y of Mrs. J. E. Foster. 65 
 
 foreign body, and gets rid of it as soon as possible " (Dr. 
 A. H. McMurty in Medical Teynperance Journal, January, 
 1871, p. 89). 
 
 IT DOES KOT KEPAIR WASTE 
 
 and supply tissue, for it contains none of the elements of 
 which the body is built up. I will quote another expert 
 witness : '^ It has been admitted by those who differ from 
 total-abstainers most largely that it cannot be proved 
 that alcohol is able to evolve force in the body under any 
 circumstances, or that it is capable of being changed or 
 transmuted In any way within the system into an element of 
 physical well-being" (''Stimulants and Strength," by Dr. H. 
 S. Patterson). 
 
 <' When alcohol is taken in small quantities repeated dai- 
 ly, the individual usually slowly increases in weight, not 
 from increased nutrition, but from retardiug the waste and 
 retaining the old atoms longer in the tissues" (" Verdict of 
 Science," by Dr. N. S. Davis, page 6). 
 
 Alcoholic drinks do not promote digestion. Dr. Cheyne 
 says that nothing more effectively hinders digestion than al- 
 cohol ; that many hours, and even a whole night, after a de- 
 bauch in wine it is common enough to reject a part orwhole 
 of the dinner undigested. I hold that those who abstain 
 from alcohol have the best digestion, and that more instan- 
 ces of indigestion, of flatulency, of acidity, and of depres- 
 sion of mind and body are produced by alcohol than by any 
 other single cause ( ''Results and Eesearches on Alcohol," 
 by Dr. B. W. Richardson, p. 13). 
 
 Alcoholic drinks do not protect the system from cold. 
 
 " Like ether and chloroform, its presence diminishes the 
 sensibility of the nervous system and brain, thereby render- 
 ing the individual less conscious of all outward and exterior 
 impressions. The alcohol does not relieve the individual 
 from cold by increasing his temperature, nor from heat by 
 cooling him, nor from weakness and exhaustion by nourish- 
 ing bis tissues, nor yet from affliction by increasing nerve- 
 power ; but simply by diminishing the sensibihty of his nerve- 
 structures, and thereby lessening his consciousness of im- 
 
66 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 presslons, whether from cold or heat or pain " (Dr. Davis 
 in "Verdict of Science," p. 5). 
 The use of alcoholic drinks is the 
 
 DIEECT CAUSE OE MUCH DISEASE, 
 
 and renders the system unable to resist the attacks of mala- 
 dies -which might otherwise be cured by the physician's skill. 
 
 " It is the nature of intoxicating liquors to produce the 
 disease just described [vinomania, or craving for drink]. 
 Hence all who drink them regularly to any extent, even 
 though it be within the so-called bounds of moderation, 
 must expect to suffer; indeed, there are very few moderate 
 drinkers who do not siiffer to a greater or less degree from 
 this disease " (" Bacchus Dethroned/' p. 21). 
 
 And yet another witness on that point : '^ I have no hesi- 
 tation in attributing a very large proportion of some of the 
 most painful and dangerous maladies which come under my 
 notice, as those which every medical man has to treat, to 
 the ordinary and daily use of fermented drink taken in 
 quantities which are conventionally deemed moderate " (Sir 
 Henry Thompson, Tract 113). 
 
 Kev. Sydney Smith, one of the founders of the Edinburgh 
 Bevieiv, says : ^^ Let me state some of the good arising from 
 abstaining from all fermented liquors. First, sweet sleep 
 (having never known what sweet sleep was). I sleep like a 
 baby or ploughboy. If I wake, no needless terrors, no black 
 visions of life, but pleasing hopes and pleasing recollec- 
 tions " (Bell's ^' Report,'^ p. 47). 
 
 ' ' It is well known to the physicians of Mobile and New Or- 
 leans that the victims of yellow-fever are chiefly those who 
 drink freely " (Dr. Drake, of Cincinnati, quoted in Reid's 
 '' Cyclopaedia," p. 522). 
 
 It— the use of alcohohc drinks— deteriorat es the quality of 
 the human race by the 
 
 OPEKATION OF THE LAWS OF HEREDITY, 
 
 which visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children 
 unto the third and fourth generation. 
 '^ No vice is more hereditary than intemperance. I be- 
 
BcpJy of Mrs. J. E. Foster. G7 
 
 lieve the mere habit of intemperaDce in the individual 
 rarely produces this condition [insanity], but that it is usu- 
 ally a result of the baneful heritage entailed on their de- 
 scendants by intemperate progenitors; the vice of one gen- 
 eration becoming the weakness of the next, liable to be 
 evoked at any time by [indulgence in] the parental vice, 
 and thus bringing a double curse" (''Dr. Yellowlees," p. 
 80). 
 
 '' Not one of the transmitted wrongs, physical or mental, is 
 more certainly passed on to those yet unborn than the 
 wrongs that are inflicted by alcohol " (' ' Cantor Lectures," 
 p. 178). 
 
 " Lord Shaftesbury, having acted as Chairman of the Com- 
 mission of Lunacy in England for sixteen years, says that 
 fully six-tenths of all the cases of insanity in that country 
 arise from their habits of intemperance " (Dr. Lees's Prize 
 Essay). 
 
 Dr. Crosby claims that alcohol is '' nature's provision." 
 Science says : 
 
 '' Alcohol is a purely artificial product, obtained only by 
 carefully carried (sut chemical methods. It exists nowhere 
 in nature" (Dr. Niel Carmichael, in Medical Temperance 
 Journal, April, 1880, p. 125). 
 
 Dear friends, does not scientific investigation teach total 
 abstinence ? 
 
 Again : Does human experience justify our plea for total 
 abstinence f 
 
 THE TESTIMONY OF HUMAN EXPEEIENCE 
 
 is that all drunkards come from the ranks of moderate drink- 
 ers. The testimony of science is that alcoholic drinks do not 
 supply any want of the body when in health. The mildest 
 tone, then, in which human experience speaks is, " Alcoholic 
 drinks as a beverage, even in moderation, do no good; they 
 are likely to do great harm." Thus total abstinence is the 
 only ground of absolute safety. I do not need at length to 
 review the learned doctor's talk about the pledge ; for years 
 it has been an honored instrument in the restraint of the 
 young who have never learned to drink, and a declaration 
 
68 Moderation vs. Total Ahstineiice, 
 
 of independence to tbe slaves of appetite. His objections 
 to it that ic is '^ unmanly ^''^ that it is a '^substitute for 
 principle," that it is " always an injury and never a help to 
 a true morality," need only to be stated to carry their own 
 refutation. 
 
 From the pledge-book of John B. Gough ; from the mul- 
 titudes who knelt before the cross, and from the lips of the 
 good priest. Father Mathew, took the pledge; from the 
 Bethel and the Cook mission in your own city ; from Jerry 
 McAuley's mission in New York; from Farwell Hall in Chi- 
 cago ; from prayer-rooms all over tlie land, where poor ap- 
 petite-bound souls are helped, by warm appeal, by earnest 
 expostulation, by loving sympathy, to make another asser- 
 tion of manliness and in honest effort to shake ofi" the demon 
 drink ; from multitudes of children in our Sunday-schools 
 and Bands of Hoijc, and round our firesides, who have pro- 
 mised they would never drink, and signed the pledge with the 
 unskilled hand of childhood; yes, from lonely rooms where 
 repentant sons and self accusing husbands, with honest 
 hearts and manly purpose, have before God, and to the soul 
 next them here below, taken a solemn promise never again 
 to touch, taste, or handle the accursed stuff — from these 
 comes this testimony : '' The pledge has been to us a help ; 
 it was the door to a new and better life." 
 
 In a little book which I have not here to-day, but which 
 I thought I had, are certain memoranda of temperance in- 
 formation which I carry for my own use. There is a 
 pledge; very few names are in it — not more than fifty. I 
 do not use it in public meetings, but merely for chance occa- 
 sions; but I could tell you many a history of haroic effort, 
 of terrible struggle that is recorded here. There are names 
 of men and women and of little children. One of them is 
 pi'inted by a little fellow who could n<>t write, a child in a 
 beautiful home whose hospitality was once offered me ; his 
 mother wanted him to promise me, as he promised her, that 
 he would never drink, and so his name is theie, printed be- 
 cause he could not write it. Was that mother putting that 
 boy in a '' strait-jacket " ? Oh ! no ; she was putting around 
 him a bulwark that might save him. Oh ! the joy the 
 
Reply of Mrs. J. E. Poster. r;0 
 
 pledges in this little book have brought to the hearts of 
 those whose names are here ; the joy they have brought to 
 those to whom they were so dear ! Kind friends, I know a 
 womaa, whose home is in the West, who is the mother of a 
 son dear to her as her very life. She has done the best she 
 could with him, but now he is away at an institution of 
 learning; he is near to the great city of Chicago, with its 
 three thousand grog-shops. She knows he is under almost 
 continual fire from these intrenchments of the armies of 
 Bacchus and Gambrinus. She consecrated him in infancy 
 to Grod, and he has for himself acknowledged the claims of 
 our holy Cliristianity and the duties of the church; but 
 years ago he signed the pledge, and the promise on that bit 
 of paper where, in his childish hand, the words are written, 
 is very precious to his mother, and has been a safeguard to 
 him. Oh ! no, Dr. Crosby ; human experience testifies that it 
 is a good thing to sign the x)ledge. 
 
 Not all will keep it? No, there are many repulses in the 
 great battle of human life. Terrible the conflict is, and 
 some shall fall and fall, and yet at last be victors. In the 
 State-House yonder are kept the flags carried by Massa- 
 chusetts regiments in the war. Some of them are bright 
 and clean, and could have seen little service ; others are 
 faded and torn ; others are little else than the bare stafi" 
 from which the beautiful colors once waved, but they are 
 there noiv, saved from the smoke and shot of battle. They 
 have been in the hands of the enemy, and they were some- 
 times trailed in the dust by traitors ; bat they were rescued, 
 and are now more precious to this commonwealth because 
 saved at such terrible cost. Some of those that sign the 
 pledge, and break it again and again, and try again and 
 again— these shall come up at last, '^ saved tJiough as hy 
 fire:' 
 
 Yes, human experience does justify our plea for the total- 
 abstinence pledge. 
 
 Again Dr. Crosby says: '' Distilled liquors should be ex- 
 cluded from common use as a beverage both by pubhc opi- 
 nion and by law." In this we heartily agree with the 
 learned gentleman ; but when he says '^ the use of vinous 
 
70 Moderation vfi. Total Abstinence. 
 
 and malt liquors should be under wise regulations " we de- 
 mur. 
 
 THESE MILDER LIQUOES 
 
 are intoxicating in proportion as they contain much or little 
 of the poison alcohol. They are not drunk for the grape, the 
 barley, the hops; these could be procured in other forms in 
 greater pmity, and at much less cost. 'Tis the stimulation 
 of the alcohol the drinker wants. And the exclusion of 
 these vinous and malt liquors by '^ public opinion and by 
 law " is justified not alone because they do themselves in- 
 toxicate, but because experience shows that their use leads 
 to the use of distilled liquors, which even Dr. Crosby admits 
 should be excluded because of their known deleterious 
 results. 
 
 What shall the State do in its relation to this traffic ? It 
 cannot enforce total abstinence by law — that would be 
 sumptuary legislation and contrary to the spirit of our civi- 
 lization. The law does not deal with individuals for the 
 individual's good ; it does not regulate private acts, unless 
 such acts directly interfere with the rights of others. It 
 does not enforce all the claims of the moral law, though it 
 must never operate in violation of any of its mandates. The 
 Bible says, '^ Thou shalt not lie." A man may knowingly 
 and willingly deceive; he may in his heart purpose and 
 plan, and his lips may speak the wicked lie, and yet the law 
 be unable to touch him. But if he lies on paper ; if he pro- 
 mises to pay or to do, and does not pay or does not do, the 
 law steps in and says: ''You must do what you said you 
 would " — not that the man may be made pure in heart and 
 right before God, but that civil society may be protected 
 from failure in its commercial or general interests. 
 
 Society does not say a man shall not drink liquor. He 
 may drink, and drink, and drink, and unless he staggers in 
 the street or lies in the gutter— unless, by his being in the 
 condition of dnmkenness, he becomes a pubhc nuisance — the 
 law does not interfere, and then not for his own sake but for 
 the sake of society, that is offended by the sight of his 
 drunkenness or endangered by his possible and probable 
 
Reply of Mrs. J. E. Foster, 71 
 
 acts caused by drunkenness. Political- economists tell us 
 that a large proportion of the pauperism, insanity, and crime 
 of the country is caused by intemperance, and it uses such 
 methods as it thinks proper to suppress intemperance. 'Tis 
 the right of self-protection that inheres in the body pohtic, 
 just as it is the first law in individual life. 
 
 THE EIGHT OF THE STATE 
 
 to regulate or prohibit the manufacture and sale of intoxi- 
 cating liquors has been again and again affirmed by the 
 Supreme Court of the United States. It is not denied by 
 any able jurist, though much talk is had as to the propriety 
 of the exercise of that right. 
 
 dear friends ! when you are considering this great 
 question of temperance legislation, make people state ex- 
 actly what they mean. Call for some specific statement, 
 and do not try to answer till you get it. I well remember a 
 learned gentleman, whose name is familiar to you, in whose 
 home I was and to whom I recited in algebra, and I some- 
 times was wonderfully puzzled, and would go to him and 
 say: "I wish you would help me; I don't understand it." 
 ' ' Well, what don't you understand ? " he would ask me. But 
 all I knew was, the whole thing was in a mist. ^' Well, my 
 dear," he would say, '' when I know just what it is you don't 
 understand, then I will try to help you." And when I had 
 found out exactly what I didn't know, I found I knew the 
 problem before me. So in this matter, when our opponents 
 stand and proclaim against prohibitory legislation, because 
 they are puzzled about this or that, make them stand and 
 state just what they mean; and when they have stated the 
 case they will be willing to leave the platform which they 
 themselves have laid down. 
 
 1 said the Supreme Court of the United States had over 
 and over again confirmed the right of the State to prohibit. 
 
 Justice McLean has said : " A license to sell an article, 
 foreign or domestic, as a merchant, or innkeeper, or vic- 
 tualler, is a matter of police and revenue, tvithin the power 
 of the State " (5 Howard, 589). And again : '^ It is the settled 
 construction of every regulation of commerce that, under 
 
'72 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 the sanction of its general laws, no person can introduce 
 into a community malignant diseases, or anything which 
 contaminates its morals or endangers its safety " (Ibid.) 
 
 There are lawa that keep malignant fevers out, and to 
 prevent boats with pestilence on board coming up from New 
 Orleans. There are laws against the circulation of obscene 
 books and pictures ; and, on the same general principles, 
 there are laws against the manufacture and sale of Intoxi- 
 cating liquors. What more do you ask in support of my 
 theory ? And notice, dear friends, I am not reading from 
 the enthusiastic appeal of some temperance orator; I am 
 not quoting to you the words of some special pleader ; I am 
 not using the words of the beloved lady who is our queen in 
 this temperance work, because they might be overdrawn, 
 but I am using 
 
 THE LANGUAGE OF THE SUPEEME COUET 
 
 of the United States. You cannot go behind those returns. 
 
 ''If the foreign articles be injurious to the health or 
 morals of the community, a State may, in the exercise of 
 that great and comprehensive police power which lies at 
 the foundation of its prosperity, prohibit the sale of it." 
 That you will find in the 5th Howard, on page 592. And 
 again : " No one can claim a license to retail spirits as a 
 matter of right " (5 Howard, page 592). 
 
 Saloon-keepers sometimes talk about their rights, and say 
 the State has no right to prohibit the manufacture and 
 sale of intoxicating liquors. But, as you see, the law says : 
 "No one can claim a license to retail spirits as a matter of 
 right." 
 
 And again I quote from the same authority : ''If any 
 State deems the retail and internal traffic in ardent spirits 
 injurious to its citizens, and calculated to produce idleness, 
 vice, or debauchery, I see nothing in the Constitution of the 
 United States to prevent it from regulating or restraining 
 the traffic, or from prohibiting it altogether, if it thinks 
 proper." 
 
 The clear brain of Massachusetts once said that it had the 
 right, and it did prohibit it, and the State of Iowa says it 
 
tte2oty of Mrs. J. E, Foster. 73 
 
 now. (Applause.) That cheer came in too soon. We pro- 
 hibit distilled liquors, but we let in wine and beer a la Crosby. 
 Justice McLean says any State may prohibit this traffic if 
 it deems it " calculated to produce idleness, vice, or de- 
 bauchery." 
 
 IS IT so? 
 
 Ask the gentlemen who preside in your courts and repre- 
 sent the judiciary of Massachusetts; ask the honorable 
 Mayor of Boston ; ask those gentlemen who know and are 
 competent witnesses, and may be brought here and sworn, 
 if it does not produce '' idleness, vice, or debauchery." 
 Yes, yes, yes! Close the saloons of Boston, and you may 
 about clear out its police courts. Close the saloons of 
 Boston, and a large number of men who walk about the 
 streets, dressed in blue coats and brass buttons, in a splendid 
 state of preservation, may be dispensed with. Last evening 
 I spoke in one of your suburban towns, and the minister 
 who presented me in his pulpit passed to me a report in 
 which it was stated that a day or two before a young man 
 of twenty-two— just ready, you see ; the law couldn't sell to 
 him until he was twenty-one, so he was just ready, a fresh 
 and beautiful victim— had been sold three glasses of brandy, 
 taken to the police-station, and there had died. Now, dear 
 friends, I suppose his mother, if he has one, is broken- 
 hearted to-day ; I suppose his sisters, if he has any, are 
 broken-hearted to-day ; and I suppose his young wife, if he 
 had one— why, the life has gone out of her heart to-day. 
 But never mind about that ; the State does not consider 
 women's hearts — not at all. What does the State consider ? 
 That it has lost a citizen ; that if that man had lived he 
 would have paid for his bringing-up. Do you say that is a 
 rough, cold way to look at it ? I know it; but we are talk- 
 ing coldly to-day ; we are taking calm views of things, we 
 are. The State regards every citizen as of so much value 
 to it. Why ? Because he is able to increase the State's 
 wealth, whether by labor of hand or brain; he is a pro- 
 ducer of wealth, and when he dies he is so much lost to the 
 State, so much value gone out of it ; and hence the State, 
 
74 Moderation vs. Total Ahstineyice, 
 
 to protect itself from this loss through 'idleness, debauch- 
 ery, or vice," may put away the liquor-trafiQc and suppress 
 it throughout her borders. 
 
 IN THE DOG ORDINANCES 
 
 of great cities is a familiar illustration of the exercise of this 
 police power. 
 
 I want to maintain my position as a member of the great 
 company of temperauce reformers going up and down the 
 land, and so I will tell you a story. Away out en the prairie 
 there was a woman who lived in a little town. She had two 
 boys, and during one hot summer — one awful summer, so 
 hot it was on the prairies that they came near burning up — 
 a dog in the town bit her boys and they died. And the 
 woman grieved, and her husband grieved ; and she went to 
 her neighbors, and they sympathized with her, and they had 
 it written up in the paper, so that everybody heard about it 
 and everybody was sorry. A woman in a town ten miles 
 away heard about it, and her s\mpathy with the woman 
 was increased by her solicitude for her own boys — for she 
 had two boys — and she thought : We have dogs in our town, 
 and my bojs might be bitten the same as those others, and 
 die the same way they died. Of course her sympathies 
 were more intense by her sohcitude for herself. She was so 
 alarmed and distressed that she talked with her husband 
 about it. Of course she did that. It is the first thing a 
 woman does, anyhow. Not because Paul told her to do it — 
 not that. She did it simply because it is woman's nature, 
 to do it, and if Paul had had a wife he never would have 
 written that ; he would have known she would do it anyhow. 
 
 So this woman went to her busband in great solici|||jde 
 and sorrow, and said : '^ My dear, did you hear about those 
 boys over there ? " and he replied, '' Yes, my dear, I did; 
 isn't it dreadful r' '' Well," said she, ''I should think it 
 was dreadful that two boys in one house should be bitten by 
 a little, miserable dog. Just think of it ! Are you not afraid, 
 John, that our boys may be bitten?" '' Well, Mary," said 
 he, ''I have thought about it, and it is a perfectly awful thing 
 
Reply of Mrs. J. E. Foster. ^5 
 
 to think of, too.'^ '' Well, I should think so, I should think 
 so," said she; and they talked and talked about it till she 
 became distracted, and said, "John, don't you think any- 
 thing can be done about it?" ''Well, I don't know,'' he 
 said. '-It is one of the first principles of good government 
 that a man's property must be protected, and if a man put 
 his property into a dog the G-overnment must take care of 
 him and protect his property." " But is a dog more precious 
 than a boy ?'' '' Well, no, of course not, Mary ; but I do 
 not know" — and he talks, and talks, and talks; you know 
 it, women, you have heard it all. Fiijally, getting no com- 
 fort by discussing it, and in her great solicitude, she goes 
 across the street to another woman. And this other woman 
 has two boys, and those women talked and talked, because 
 their interests were ommon. Gentlemen, we women have 
 so many common interests — more than you have ! A wo- 
 man's station in Ufe, her surroundings, do not influence her 
 motherhood as a man's surroundings influence him. 
 
 These two women talk on the ground of a common inte- 
 rest in their children, and get no satisfaction from each 
 other, because they can do nothing but talk. And the first 
 woman tells what her husband says, and the second tells 
 what her husband said to her. and the testimony of the two 
 husbands is brought up in that little committee of two. 
 
 I won't burden you by telling you more than that they 
 talked, and talked, and talked, and gained no satisfaction 
 anywhere ; and so they went down-town to the mayor of 
 that little town, and they talked to him about it, and he ex- 
 pressed greit concern and sympathy with the u'omen in their 
 solicitude for their children Be was a wonderful gentleman. 
 I am mistaken ; it was not the mayor, it was the chief of 
 police. 
 
 Let us remove the scene to the office of the chief of police. 
 He talked with them about their concern and alarm for their 
 boys, and said (what men always say when we go to them 
 with our troubles! : ^' Xow, dear ladies, we sympathize with 
 you; we know how you must feel ; of course you have great 
 solicitude — of couise you have; and it would be a fearful 
 thing if any dog in our town should go mad and bite your 
 
'% Moderation vs. Total Abstinence, 
 
 boys " And tbey Ihink tlicy k;io\v that just iibout as well as 
 the chief, how terrible that thing would be. 
 
 They talk and talk, aud ask for an ordinance requiring 
 the police of the city to shoot any dog not muzzled. He re- 
 plies just about as the husbands talked, saying that this 
 could not be allowed ; a proper and good thing, aud yet he 
 is not quite sure about it. And they, becoming weary, for 
 they have talked about it a good while this time, begin to 
 cry. 
 
 Women often do so, gentlemen, and you know you do not 
 like to have them. This man did not like to have women 
 cryiug around, and he said : '' Ladies, I have given you my 
 syni[)athy and expressed my solicitude, but, if you will ex- 
 cuse me, let me give you a little advice." 1 hey thought 
 that comfort was coming now. He says: ''Dear ladies, 
 your concern for your boys is justifiable; but have you 
 thought of this : you could do better service in your home 
 than here ? Have you thought of training your boys proper- 
 ly, and telling them about this disease of hydrophobia, how a 
 dog looks when he is going mad ? If you teach your chil- 
 dren at home there is no danger of hydrophobia." They 
 looked at one another, and said : " We have taught our boys 
 in the home ; we thought of that years ago ; we knew what 
 hydrophobia does, and so we have taught our boys always of 
 the terrible danger if bitten by a mad dog. We have told 
 our childi-en to run whenever they see a dog ; but, sir, the 
 dogs are everywhere : they are on the road to school, on the 
 road to the church ; and the only way to do, it seems to us, is 
 to put the dogs out of the way." And you know that those 
 women were right, were they not, gentlemen? 
 
 But how is it when women come to supervisors, common 
 councils, and legislatures, and ask for laws to prevent their 
 sons and brothers and husbands from being led down to 
 drunkards' graves ? 
 
 WHAT IS THE REPLY WE HEAR? 
 
 Not always, gentlemen, for some of you are always gene- 
 rous and noble, and the number is increasing every day, but 
 some men say to us women : " If you do your duty in your 
 
Reply of Mrs. J. E. Foster. 77 
 
 home and teach your boys what a terrible thing intempe- 
 rance is, if you throw around them the surroundings and 
 comforts of a beautiful home, they will never go astray." 
 
 gentlemen ! tell that to the women of this land who 
 are the mothers of the sixty thousand who went down last 
 year. Some of those mothers were as true and faithful as 
 your mother was to you; but they went down, slain by riMU, 
 tempted by the saloon and the open grog-shop, and it is the 
 very refinement of cruel y for men to say to women that if 
 they did their duty in their homes there would be no trouble 
 from intemperance. We have done the best we could, and 
 now we want you to help us. 
 
 But I must hasten. This pohce power of which I have 
 spoken can say to the rumseller : '< You shall not make, you 
 shall not sell." This power to which I have called your at- 
 tention is in the State, not in the general government ; and 
 for a moment let us consider the relations of the general 
 government to the liquor-traffic in the State. The Constitu- 
 tion of the United States gives to Congress certain powers. 
 It has no other. Among those powers the pohce power is 
 not to be found. That rests in the State, not in the general 
 government ; the relation of the general government to the 
 liquor-traffic is a purely commercial relation. It does not 
 deal with the traffic as the State governments do in sup- 
 pressing the evils of intemperance. Not at all. The gene- 
 ral government does not care about the evil of intemperance ; 
 it only deals with the traffic for the purposes of revenue. It 
 says money must be raised to run the machine, and it must 
 be gotten from the commercial interests of the land ; and so 
 it taxes certain articles of commerce. 
 
 It taxes whiskey and tobacco — and we are coming for your 
 tobacco presently, gentlemen; we haven't time now, but we 
 shall by and by. So the general government comes within 
 the commjmwealth of Massachusetts, and says to the Med- 
 ford men (I mean its rum makers) and to distillers every- 
 where : " If you make rum you must pay so much per gallon 
 as revenue to the government." It does not say : ''You can 
 distil, or you can brew." It could not say that. The police 
 power says that, and the police power is in the State, not in 
 
78 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 the geoeral government. But you say : '' What does the 
 man get! Isn't it a license!" It used to be called a li- 
 cense, but it is not now. It is a special tax raised by the 
 general government. When he pays his money he gets a 
 paper saying that he has paid it. It is no protection to him 
 against the State. 
 
 But you say: ''Does not the general government protect 
 the importer?" It protects him while the liquors are in his 
 possession in the origiaal package, or in the hands of ihe 
 person to whom he has sold them, as long as the packages 
 are unbroken ; but a package broken is never safe after the 
 duties are paid upon it which admit of its introduction. 
 Thus John Doe imported liquors to the value of $200,000, 
 and paid his duties, and said : '' I am going to get my money 
 back," and so opens his packages and draws off some liquors 
 from the casks, and begins to sell ; but then Massachusetts 
 comes in and says: "No, sir; you don't sell one glass of 
 that liquor." 
 
 "■ Not when I have imported it f " " No." '' Not when 1 
 have paid the tax f " Never mind about that," the police 
 power in the State says. He asks the question : *' Does not 
 the right to im[)ort imply a right to sell ?" And the law 
 answers: '' No, sir; it does not." " Cannot I sell the liquors 
 I imported?" '' No, you cannot." ♦'Why?" ''Because 
 the police power thinks you ought not to." It is a question 
 of police power entirely within the jurisdiction of the com- 
 monwealth. Let me give you authority. If I were before a 
 court or a jury I would never i:et a judgment or a verdict if 
 I did not give authorities, and as great interests are involved 
 in the cause I plead to-day as in any case in any court of 
 justice. Not one man is on trial for his life here to day, but 
 our children, all of them. 
 
 A little while ago, in the performance of my professional 
 duties, I sat by the side of a poor woman under sentence of 
 death, she having been accused and convicted of the crime 
 of murder. The Supreme Court granted her a new trial, 
 and I was trying to save her from capital punishment. 
 
 But as I sat there that day with that poor woman at my 
 side, there was the judge, there was the prosecutor for the 
 
Rephj of Mrs, J. E, Foster. 79 
 
 State, all the machinery of civil law, following up that wo- 
 man who was charged with having killed a man. And it 
 was right it should be so; but when I thought that in that 
 same State there were hundreds and thousands of men who 
 were licensed by the State to do worse things than that 
 woman did, I said : ^' This is not as it ought to be, not as it 
 should be — not at all." 
 
 In support of the position I have taken, that the general 
 government does not protect the liquor-trafBc after the 
 original packages are broken, or after it has passed from 
 the hands of the importer, 
 
 JUSTICE DAKEELS, 
 
 of the Supreme Court, said of imports that are cleared of 
 all control of the government which permits their introduc- 
 tion : 
 
 " They are like all other property of the citizen, and should be 
 equally the subjects of domestic regulation and taxation, whether 
 owned by an impoi'ter or his vender, or may have been purchased 
 by cargo, package, bale, piece, or yard, or by hogsheads, casks, or 
 bottles " (5 Howard, 614). 
 
 In answering the argument that the importer purchases 
 the right to sell when he pays duties to the government, 
 Justice Daniels continues to say : 
 
 "No such right as the one supposed is purchased by the im- 
 porter, and no injury in any accurate sense is inflicted on him by 
 denying to him the power demanded. He has not purchased and 
 cannot purchase from the government that which it could not 
 ensure to him — a sale independently of the laws and policy of the 
 States " (5 Howard, 616). 
 
 The reason that Massachusetts does not put away its im- 
 porters and wholesalers and retailers is because Massachu- 
 setts don't want to. Massachusetts can do it. It is in the 
 power of the State to do it, and that power is wholly legiti- 
 mate. Then, if prohibition is the right of the State, how 
 shall it prohibit ? What sort of a law shall take hold of it ? 
 I am here this afternoon, gentlemen, to ask fov constitutional 
 prohibition. That is the latest thought of our temperance 
 workers. It is the conclusion to which they have come 
 
80 Moderation vs. Total Aistiimice. 
 
 after long years of patient investigatioo. I ought to say, 
 perhaps, t is the coDclusion to which many of them have 
 come — to which the association which I represent has come. 
 
 REASONS FOR CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. 
 
 For as clear and concise a statement as I have been able 
 to make allow me to call your attention to a tract prepared 
 by myself and published by the National Temperance So- 
 ciety of New York, eutitled '' Reasons for a Constitutional 
 Amendment." 
 
 I. The province of free civil government is so to consoli- 
 date and arrange the general sentiment and principles of 
 the people, in a system of rules and regulations, as will se- 
 cure individual protection and conserve the greatest good to 
 the greatest number. 
 
 II. This system of rules and regulations is prescribed in 
 what is known as the civil law. Civil law is either consti- 
 tutional or statutory. 
 
 III. The constitution is the original statement of princi- 
 ples and agreement of mutual obligations, with such amend- 
 ments as the people from time to time may make. 
 
 IV. The statutes are ruJes and regulations in detail, set- 
 ting forth the rights, duties, and remedies of the citizen 
 under the constitution, and the mode of procedure by which 
 these may be enforced. 
 
 Y. The constitution is adopted by the direct vote of the 
 people, and can be amended or repealed by them alone. 
 Statutes are made and repealed by the people's representa- 
 tives — the Legislature. 
 
 VI. A universal sentiment prevails that intemperance is a 
 gigantic evil. This sentiment, embodied in rules and regu- 
 lations, has given diverse legislation concerning the liquor- 
 traffic. 
 
 VII. The right of the State to regulate or prohibit the 
 manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors has been many 
 times affirmed by the Supreme Court of the United States. 
 
 VIII. The history of this legislation demonstrates that 
 I)rohibition is the only legal remedy for the evils of intempe- 
 rance—that it alone protects the individual and the State, 
 
Reply of 3frs, J. E. Foster. 81 
 
 IX. Prohibiti m may be embodied in constitutions and 
 statutes. If in tlie constitutions, it is the direct voice of the 
 people, and can be repealed by them alone. If in a statute, 
 it is the creation of the Legislature, and subject to the 
 tricks of politicians, the devices of demagogues, and the 
 general fluctuations of partisan interests. 
 
 X. All that can be said in favor of prohibitory statutes 
 anplies with equal force to constitutional prohibition ; and, 
 furthermore, constitutional law possesses dignity and perma- 
 nence, and. being the voice of a majority of the voters of 
 the State, will secure to itself a better enforcement than 
 bare statutes can receive. All parties and factions are con- 
 fessedly bound by constitutional law. 
 
 In short : 1. The province of government is to protect the 
 individual and conserve the general good. 
 
 2. Government does this through tbe civil law, constitu- 
 tional and statutory. 
 
 3. Constitutional law is organic. 
 
 4. Statutory law is functional. 
 
 5. The constitutional is the voice of the people; the stat- 
 utes, of the Legishiture. 
 
 6. Intemperance is an evil demanding some sort of legis- 
 lation. 
 
 7. The State has the right to regulate or prohibit. 
 
 8. Prohibition onli/ lemedies the evil. 
 
 9. Prohibition may be constitutional or statutory. 
 
 10. Constitutional prohibition is permanent and maybe 
 enforced. Statutory prohibition is fluctuating and difficult 
 of enforcement. 
 
 Application of the foregoing truths : 
 
 It is the duty of every temperance man, woman, and 
 child to labor with head, hand, and heart for constitutional 
 prohibition. 
 
 HOW DOES CONSTITUTIONAL LAW GEOW ? 
 
 At first reformers are thought to be wild. Boston once 
 thought some of its reformers were wild. It would go on 
 its kfiees to them now and wipe the dust from their shoes. 
 By and by other men take up the cry, and many people 
 
82 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence^ 
 
 hear, and at last all have to listen, for there is such a din in 
 the air. Then on and on the sentiment grows, and the peo- 
 ple become educated on the subject, legislation is had upon 
 it, and by thinking and thinking there is evolved out of 
 thought the grand principle underlying it all, and then the 
 people get ready to pat it into constitutional law. It was so 
 in the matter of slavery, and I need only refer to it to recall 
 it all to you. Gentlemen, some of you here to-day whose 
 hairs are white remember how Boston mobbed you in the 
 street, and stid the idea grew on and on, and a great many 
 listened, thea eveiybody listCLcd, ai d then came legislation, 
 and then war and the legislation (.f the sword, and then 
 down into the Constitution went what ? The grand princi- 
 ple that the cidor of a man's face did not make any difie- 
 rence in his relation to the government. This matter of 
 intemperance has been talked about and talked a»bout, and 
 legislation has been tried in various forms, and the conclu- 
 sion has at last been reached that the true line of attack 
 upon the liquor-traffic is to educate the people until they 
 are ready to put it into the Constitution. A constitutional 
 law is permanent ; for the people make it and only the peo- 
 ple can repeal it. It is dignified because it is the will of the 
 people ; not the result of partisan influences, but an upris- 
 ing of the whole people. Gentlemen, I am not here to talk 
 about partisanship. I believe in party spirit. We must 
 have it in order to secure the necessary friction and agita- 
 tion that comes from contending party interests. The other 
 day as I looked through the glass in your State-house and 
 saw those old flags, tattered and torn with shot and shell, 
 and soiled and ragged as they are, some of them with only 
 the staff left, I said to myself: " I don't wonder that the 
 men of Massachusetts love the party that carried the flag." 
 I don't wonder at that, but I say when a great moral ques- 
 tion is to be settled it is a good thing to get it out of party 
 lines if you can. If it is submitted as constitutional law 
 every individual man votes upon it, not as a Eepublican or 
 a Democrat, but as a citizen. 
 
 But some objector says : " Well, you must get it through 
 the Legislature anyhow." Surely. '' Then if you have a 
 
Reply of Mrs, J. E. Foster. 83 
 
 Legislature that will submit it to the people, won't the same 
 Legislature give you a statute ? " No, uot at all ! The same 
 man that will vote to submit the question to you won't vote 
 on the bare question. Why f Well, they don't like to do it. 
 It is hard to bear responsibility, and the men whose heads 
 are clear enough always to know what is right, or to think 
 they know, which answers the same purpose, are very few. 
 
 I don't want to speak lightly of the average legislator; I 
 wouldn't in this honored presence, surely, but I may speak 
 of our Legislature away out West in Iowa. I find usually 
 about three classes of men in that Legislature ; a fine Legisla- 
 ture we have in Iowa. There were a few grand men, strong 
 men, men that had convictions and souls, men whom the 
 lusts of office could not kill, men whom the spoils of office 
 could not buy, men who could stand and face a dema- 
 gogue and damn his treacherous viUianies without winking; 
 strong men these, who lived above the mists, but they were 
 very few. They would vote right always, but they didn't 
 count enough ; there were not enough of them. There was 
 another class of men, clean men, well-shaved men, well-con- 
 ditioned men, who didn't drink liquors and didn't go to sa- 
 loons, and had no sympathy with the drinking customs of 
 society, but somehow they didn't always vote right; they 
 seemed to want to vote right, and when you talked to them 
 you thought they were going to, but when the vote came they 
 didn't. You couldn't seem to blame them. They swayed, 
 and swayed, and swayed. They illustrated that principle 
 in mechanics which is known as ^' the universal joint." Do 
 yotiknow about it? 
 
 THE UNIVERSAL JOINT, 
 
 as perhaps you ladies do not all know, is a ball in a kind of 
 socket, and it is set into places in machinery where the power 
 is needed to go all S( rts of ways, and this joint goes just 
 whichever way it is wanted. 
 
 It is a very useful thing in great machinery ; it prevents 
 friction, and it goes so or so, or thus and thus, or any way. 
 Touch it on one side and it goes right over on to the other 
 side. And it is just so with some of these men. They seem 
 
84 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 to have somewhere at the base of the spine a universal joint, 
 and whenever a httle pressure is brought to bear — remember 
 I am talking about the Iowa Legislature — on one side, they 
 go over to the other side. Now, it is not the fault of those 
 men j they cannot help it ; it is the way they are put up, 
 but it is very unfortunate if your cause is in the hands of 
 such men. You never know where they will be when the 
 vote comes around. What are you going to do with such 
 men ? Why, just prop them up, that is all. If you can set 
 around these men something against which they can lean, so 
 they will be solid long enough to vote, why, you are all right. 
 They won't resist; they will stand there if they are only set 
 You know, ladies, how it is with the toys we buy for our chil- 
 dren—those Noah's arks, full of all kinds of animals, sheep, 
 cows, and dogs- -they don't stand up well ; but if you ]3an 
 them against something they make very good sheep, and 
 cows, and dogs indeed. It is the same with these gentle- 
 men I have spoken of. What shall they lean against ? Con- 
 stitutional law, which is the will of the people. 
 
 What do they say when you ask them to vote upon a stat- 
 ute permitting the people to vote an amendment ? '^ Oh ! of 
 course, of course we are perfectly willing to let the people 
 vote." And if you have constitutional law and want statute 
 law to enforce it, then they say, ''Why, we must, we must, 
 because there is the constitution, and that is what the peo- 
 ple have said must be done. We are sworn to support the 
 constitution." So I say the objection is not well taken that 
 you can get a bill through the Legislature for prohibition just 
 as easily as you can get an enforcing statute after you have 
 got your constitutional provision. 
 
 Another great argument for constitutional prohibition is 
 this, that it remedies the evil of 
 
 THE GOVEEXMEXT OF GEEAT CITIES. 
 
 And now I approach a problem that has been so grandly 
 set forth upon the platform of Tremont Temple that I speak 
 with timidity. I remember, in my home in the West, read- 
 ing the utterances of that great man. Oh ! what shall I 
 say of him — of Joseph Cook ? I remember that here he has 
 
Rephj of Mrs. J. E. Foster . 85 
 
 stood and talked to Boston audiences, and we have got it 
 out there through those blessings, the newspapers; and I re- 
 call that he said on one occasion, ^' The tendency of our civi- 
 lization is to mass in great cities," and that whereas fifty 
 years ago, or thereabouts, one twenty-fifth of the population 
 of this land was in great cities, now one-fifth of it is in great 
 cities. Do you not see the tendency to mass in the cities? 
 What makes the vote of the cities? The criminal classes. 
 What makes the criminal classes? The grog-shop. And 
 thus to-day this land of ours is under the dominion of the 
 grog-shop. 
 
 IS THAT XOT TRUE ? 
 
 Is there a flaw in my line of argument ? Do I over- 
 state ? I wish I did. I wish it were not so, but so it is. 
 How shall legislation be brought to bear upon the city of 
 Boston and upon the city of New York ? Only by bringing 
 into it the cool, calm vote of the rural districts. If every 
 man at his shop and his farm can vote directly upon the ques- 
 tion of license or no-license, dram-shop or no dram-shop, 
 don't you see that we put into legislation a pure, clean 
 stream ? 
 
 Another thing — and I know before me are large numbers 
 of Christian ministers, and to you, gentlemen, I appeal to- 
 day — the foundations of all good government are in this 
 book, the Bible. You know it. It is acknowledged in the 
 commonwealth of Massachusetts more strongly than in our 
 wilder, newer West, and you men of God sit in your studies 
 and stand up in your pulpits before your congregations, and 
 your spirits groan within you because of the iniquities that 
 stalk abroad in this land ; but how can you touch these ini- 
 quities? You preach ; but when you ask, ^' Shall I go down 
 into the dirty poo's of political life?" you hesitate, and you 
 say, " Perhaps I had better, and perhaps I had better not," 
 and so the question weighs on your mind and you hardly 
 know what to do. I remember how the evil of slavery 
 burned into the soul of my grand old father. I can remem- 
 ber how, right here in Massachusetts, he used to walk back 
 and forth in his study and groan out, ''Oh! slavery! 
 slavery ! slavery ! " and always at family prayers when he 
 prayed for us he prayed for the slave. Yes, and I remem- 
 
86 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence, 
 
 ber, too, how, before the bar of the General Conference of 
 the church of which he was a member, he was reproved 
 because he dared to pray that the Lord might not descend 
 in wrath upon a slave-holding church. 
 
 Ministers of the cross of Jesus, you won't have to go into 
 partisan poUtics to secure constitutional prohibition, and 
 the influence of the church can be brought to bear upon 
 constitutional law as it cannot upon State statutes. Dear 
 friends, the prophet says : '^ The government shall be upon 
 his shoulders." It will never be upon his shoulders save as 
 the principles of Christ's Gospel are brought into Christian 
 legislation, and the church of Christ must carry it there. 
 Might I interpolate a question here and ask, '^ Who com- 
 pose the majority of the Christian Church?" When the 
 women of the Christian Church shall impress their thought 
 upon the law, then this traffic will go. And I say to you 
 Christian men, to you legislators, to you all, in the language 
 of yesterday's Sunday-school lesson, "Prepare ye the way 
 of the Lord, make his paths straight." Constitutional law 
 remedies the evils of great cities, and we ask, therefore, 
 as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, for constitu- 
 tional prohibition. 
 
 Dear friends, I had intended at this place and time to 
 make an appeal for the work of the Woman's Christian 
 Temperance Union, because the honorable gentleman, Dr. 
 Crosby, has said that the measures adopted by temperance 
 advocates are very objectionable. I did not thiok it was 
 necessary to defend the methods used by those grand old 
 men of the church, but I did intend to say a few things 
 for our woman's methods of work. But the honorable gen- 
 tleman who presided here has so beautifully set forth our 
 work and pleaded for it so grandly that why need I say a 
 word ? And the President of our National Association has 
 embodied it all in her own sweet self and in her eloquent 
 words, so that it is not necessary that I should say a word. 
 Dear friends, I pause here. The methods adopted by Christian 
 women have been the result of their best thought; they 
 stand for total abstinence, for prohibition, for constitutional 
 prohibition, and for organized Christian temperance efiforts 
 to set forth all this. 
 
Reply of Mrs. J. E. Foster. 87 
 
 IN THE SANDS OF EGYPT, 
 
 by the shores of the Nile, there stands the great pyramid ; 
 for twenty centuries it has stood and looked unwinliing at 
 the sun ; it covers thirteen acres of solid masonry ; it mounts 
 up and up as if it would pierce the skies; it has been the 
 wonder of the centuries, and in its proportions, its angles, 
 its measurements, are bid great truths of physical science — 
 geometrical, astronomical, mathematical, geodetical. Dis- 
 coverers and scholars walk about its base and look up at 
 itsnuge sides, and say, ''We wonder who built the pyra- 
 mid ? " For, though much surmise as to its origin and in- 
 t«>nded use has been indulged in, history does not tell us. 
 Of late certaiu Christian scholars, in their studies of this 
 great wonder of the world, have thought they discovered 
 not only physical truth set forth in base and capstone, in 
 measurement and line, but that Scripture truth is suggested 
 also ; that in its openings, its passages, its chambers, in the 
 finishing of the stones which pave the floors, and line the sides, 
 and are in the ceilings, in the number and size of these, in 
 their sotting here and position there, is written dimly some- 
 times, but still discernible to the careful student, the history 
 of God's past and present, and his future dealings with the 
 human race ; that it is to physical truth what the Bible is 
 to spiritual — a revelaticm ; is the ''altar unto the Lord in 
 the midst of Egypt." Wonderful is the suggestion and bold 
 the faith that grasps and holds its lessons. 
 
 Dear friends, there is being built on these Western shores 
 a great pyramid, an altar unto the Lord ; its foundations 
 were laid by the church of God ; its sockets were set by men 
 brave, and true, and strong; its base is the square of the 
 circle of all the influences that cluster about our homes, 
 about our national life. With great labor was the rubbish 
 cleared away to give it room, and carefully were the first 
 stones put in their places. Slowly has the pyramid arisen. 
 
 DO YOU SEE THE BUILDEKS ? 
 
 There comes the Wasbingtonian throng with pledge, and 
 song, and great huge stones, the Rechabites, the Sons of 
 Temperance, the Good Templars, the Temple of Honor, 
 and many men and women who carry no flag and walk 
 
88 Moderation vs. Total Abdmence. 
 
 under no bauner, but carry stone and mortar, square and 
 chisel, a d help to build. Then comes a band of little chil- 
 dren, with banners and rausic ; they sing, 
 " I'm glad I'm in the army, 
 I'm glad I'm in this army," 
 
 and they help to build. Then comes a band of reformed 
 men, with ribbons of red and of blue, clothed and in their 
 right minds. They march solidly up, and 
 
 " Plold the fort, for I am coming," 
 rings out full and strong, and they help to build. 
 
 And, last of those I see, then comes a band of praying 
 women. They walk very slow, for in their compai.y are 
 wounded ones, mothers bereft and wives heart-sick; but 
 calm and strong I hear the tones, 
 
 " My faith looks up to thee, 
 Thou Lamb of Calvary." 
 
 And thus they build! And the stones these multitudes 
 have brought have been kept in i)lace and squared into line 
 by righteous law. And so this pyramid is being built, and 
 by and by it shall be finished, and with singing a:^d shout- 
 ing the capstone shall be put in place, its crown and glory, 
 its bond of perfectness. What shall the capstone be ? 
 JSlatlonal constitutional prohihition ! And then the pyramid 
 shall stand, and, though the waves beat upon it, it shall rot 
 fall, for 'tis founded on the rock of God's eternal truth. And 
 in the far-off years, when all these builders shall have passed 
 away, a grander civilization shall surge about the base of 
 this great pyramid — grander because they shall be children 
 born of men and women that did not drink — abd, looking at 
 its rugged sides and gazing at its perfect crown, shall cry, 
 ^^ Who built the pyramid ? who built the pyramid ? " Then 
 you and I, perhaps, shall look over the battlements of hea- 
 ven and see the very stone we set in place, and the shouts 
 of glory will be louder, the halleluiahs longer, ay, the rest 
 sweeter, because we helped to build. 
 
 At the close of the lecture many of the audience crowded 
 on to the platform to shake Mrs. Foster by the hand and 
 congratulate her upon her brilhant effort. 
 
JOSEPH COOK'S 
 
 PULPIT AND TEMPERANCE. 
 
 By THEODOEE L. CUYLER, D.D. 
 
 [From the Independent :\ 
 
 JOSEPH COOK has built a Monday morning pulpit in 
 Boston, whicb is visible over the whole continent and 
 across the sea. In that pulpit he has struck some 
 sturdy and unanswerable blows in favor of prohibitory legis- 
 lation against tippliug-houses and in favor of the principles 
 and. practice of total abstinence from all intoxicants. Dur- 
 ing his absence in Europe his lecture committee have ad- 
 mitted to his pulpit my genial and eloquent friend, Chan- 
 cellor Crosby, who has opened his broadsides against nearly 
 every position whicb Mr. Cook has taken upon the subject 
 of temperance. If that pulpit is to become, like certain 
 clubs in Boston, the theatre of ''free discussion," then I 
 submit that they might as well invite Prof. Huxley to assail 
 Mr. Cook's positions on evolution, or Col. IngersoU to assail 
 his views on tbe inspiration of the Word and the doctrine of 
 atonement. 
 
 One of the most remarkable things about Dr. Crosby's 
 discourse is iis title. He calls it a '' Calm View of the Tem- 
 perance Question," and then dashes Into a heated tirade 
 against the '' wild radicalism of teetotalers," whom he de- 
 nounces as fanatics, as unmanly, as twisters of Scripture, as 
 radical agitators, and as infatuated defenders of a system 
 that is utterly impracticable and is '' increasing the drunk- 
 enness in the land" ! If my friend utters all this when he is 
 calm, what might we expect from him if he were excited ? 
 
90 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 When I reached the folio wing sentence in his discourse I 
 was inclined to name it a '' comical view of temperance," for 
 I could not refrain from the Christian liberty of a hearty 
 laugh. He asserts that the total- abstinence system is con- 
 trary to revealed rehgion and harmful to the interests of the 
 country, and exclaims : 
 
 " I charge upon this system the growth of drunkenness in our 
 land and the general demoralization among religious communi- 
 ties; and I call upon all sound-minded thinking men to stop the 
 enormities of this false system." 
 
 As soon as I could take breath after this phihppic, I 
 began to recall some of the names of the most conspicuous 
 advocates of the total-abstinence movement, and iu the 
 front rank I find Albert Barnes, Bishop Mcllvaine, Lyman 
 Beecher, Bishop Alonzo Potter, aud Theodore Frelinghuy- 
 sen, among the dead ; aud Joseph Cook, Charles H. Spur- 
 geon, Dr. Richardson, Canon Farrar, Bishop Lightfoot, and 
 Bishop Ellicott, among its living defenders. These great 
 and good men do not endorse all the weak and extravagant 
 utterances of certain zealots -, but they do maintain and 
 practise the '^system" which Dr. Crosby so bitterly de- 
 nounces. Weak enthusiasts often utter crude arguments in 
 favor of the Gospel system j but Dr. Crosby none the less 
 holds to and preaches faifh fully that very system. We total- 
 abstainers are ready to stand by the solid principle's which 
 such great and godly leaders as I have just named are de- 
 fending. They constitute our system of doctrine and prac- 
 tice; but we are not responsible for every foolish speech of 
 every foolish fellow who sets up for a ^^ temperance lec- 
 turer." 
 
 The chancellor's foremost argument against our total-ab- 
 stinence movement is that it has proved impracticable and is 
 a failure. If he will allow me to use his own frankness, I will 
 say that he is the very last man who ought to utter that taunt. 
 The whole nation knows that for several years he has intre- 
 pidly led a movement in the city of New York to enforce a 
 weak excise law which is hopelessly vitiated by a clause that 
 permits endless dram-selling under the name of hotel-keep- 
 
Joseph Cook's Pulpif and Temperance. 91 
 
 ing. So strong was Dr. Crosby's faith iu this rickety law that 
 he once rashly affirmed that under it he would clear New 
 York of grog-shops in six months ! We older workers in the 
 reform, while we honored his zeal and courage, felt assured 
 of his inevitable failure ; not from his fault, but the fault of 
 his '^ system." During the very time that his society were 
 doing their utmost I looked into the doorway of a full-rig- 
 ged dram-shop which was driving its accursed traffic within 
 a stone's throw of Dr. Crosby's residence. That death-deal- 
 ing establishment (the nursery of '' moderate drinkers") 
 and its six or seven thousand partners were no more af- 
 fected by Dr. Crosb}'s well-meant efiforts than the abut- 
 ments of the East River Bridge would be by the stroke of a 
 mallet. We teetotalers do know, from sohd statistics, that 
 hundreds of thousands have been reached, and benefited, 
 and protected, and blessed by the total- abstinence pledge. 
 I can testify to the immense service which it rendered to 
 me and to others when I was a student in college. An in- 
 calculable good has been wrought by our ''system " and our 
 ''propaganda" ; and, in view of his own honest efforts in 
 New York City, it would be well for Chancellor Crosby to 
 be modest in inviting comparison as to '• systems." 
 
 On the scientific question the chancellor takes sides very 
 positively with Dr. Anstie, who claims that alcohol is not a 
 poison, but a true food to the bodily man. He denounces 
 us total -abstainers as guilty of ''a moral error" because we 
 prefer to hold the opposite opinion, which is defended by 
 such eminent physicists as Lallemand, Dr. B. W. Richard- 
 son, and Sir Henry Thompson. In dealing with the drink- 
 ing usages of society we know that in their actual effects 
 alcohohc drinks poison millions by striking right to the 
 brain, and practically they feed nobody. This inevitable 
 and invariable tendency of alcoholic stimulants to strike to 
 the human brain is the most overwhelming argument in fa- 
 vor 01 the wisdom and safety of total abstinence. Dr. Cros- 
 by has very prudently fought shy of it. 
 
 He pronounces the total-abstinence pledge a " strait- 
 jacket" and a pernicious instrument for debauching the 
 conscience ; but in another part of his discourse he distinct- 
 
92 Moderation vs. Total Abdineiice, 
 
 ly says : '' I do not oppose the principle of total abstinence 
 for the individual. It is every man's duty to abstain if his 
 own conscience commaud it." Now, if my conscience com- 
 mands me to let intoxicants alone, then, in the name of 
 common sense, where is the harm of my recording my con- 
 scientious purpose on a pledge I And if we teetotalers, by 
 our '^ propaganda," can so enlighten^- the consciences of 
 young men that they shall agree to let alcoholics alone, 
 where is the harm of their banding together into a tempe- 
 rance society with its wholesome pledge ? Does Dr. Crosby 
 consider a pledge in wedlock to " love each other," or a 
 pledge of fidelity to Christ in church-membership, a 
 "strait-jacket"? Yet in both these cases conscience, as 
 well as judgment, leads to the employment of a binding in- 
 strument. The fact is that Dr. Crosby yields about all that 
 the most thoughtful and wise abstainers claim in this last- 
 quoted passage. He admits that total abstinence is a good 
 thing for the individual, and so well do I know him that I 
 am sure he would rejoice to see everybody avoiding intoxi- 
 cants. Now, all that we members of the temperance '' pro- 
 paganda" are aiming at is to persuade everybody to do just 
 this very good thing. 
 
 Probably we shall have harder work to persuade some 
 people to adopt this wise course after they have read some 
 of the extraordinary declarations in Dr. Crosby's Boston 
 discourse. One of these declarations is that it is ^-atro- 
 cious dogma to assume that moderate drinking leads to 
 drunkenness." I do not know of a more dangerous bait 
 that could be nailed up over the bar of a fashionable saloon 
 than this most ill-considered sentence. No sane man ever 
 asserted that every moderate drinker becomes a di'unkard; 
 but just as long as '^ wine is a mocker," and just as long as 
 moderate drinking is the door of entrance to all the drunk- 
 enness that has peopled hell, just so long will we teetotal- 
 ers stand outside ot that door, and, in the name of brother- 
 ly love, will warn every man, woman, and child against en- 
 tering it. 
 
 The space accorded to a brief article forbids even a refer- 
 ence to many of the remarkable declarations in this frank. 
 
 I 
 
Joscjjli Coolvs Pulpit and Temperance. 93 
 
 bold discourse. Some of tliem are remarkably pithy and 
 sensible, and we '^ fanatics " may profit by them. Some of 
 them will aff(U'd quite too ready and convenient pleas for 
 tampering with the bottle and for jeering at that reform 
 which God has so signally blessed. I leave Brother Crosby 
 to the owner of that lofty Boston pulpit. The eccentric 
 John Randolph was accustomed to ride on horseback to the 
 Capitol ; and, on reaching his desk in the House, he often 
 swept his rawhide riding- whip across the desk, and sent all 
 the bills which the page had laid there flying over the floor. 
 When Joseph Cook returns from Europe he may find some 
 singular documents lying on his pulpit ; and if he uses the 
 rawhide of bis logic on this '' View of the Temperance 
 Question," perhaps it will not continue to feel so '^ calm." 
 
RELATIONS 
 
 B 
 
 By EZRA M. HUNT, M.D. 
 
 [From the Independent.'] 
 
 THE remarkable temperance lecture of Rev. Dr. Crosby 
 at Boston has such an admixture of grand truths and 
 pernicious errors, and such protests against methods 
 which do and which do not deserve to be protested against^ 
 that it is not wonderful that the medical and sanitaiy vievv 
 of the question is also given ex-cathedra. Under the divi- 
 sion of moral questions the first four, at least, come withiu 
 the range of the physician and the sanitarian. The first 
 conceals a real issue under a form of pert statement : ^' The 
 first moral error of the total-abstinence system is in turning 
 a medicinal prescription (proscription f) into a bill of fare 
 for all mankind." This boldly assumes the only reason the 
 teetotaler has for avoiding the use of alcohol to be that it 
 causes drunkenness. This is a moral and social reason ; but 
 we know of no teetotaler who separates that view from an- 
 other. The teetotaler believes, on what seems to him, and 
 has seemed to multitudes of leaders in human knowledge 
 and in physical investigation, good and sufficient evidence, 
 that the use of alcohol in those quantities in which it is af- 
 forded even by wine and fermented liquors is injurious to 
 health. He leaves it out of the bill of fare of all mankind 
 for the same reason that he would leave opium out ; not 
 merely because the ojjium-eater may abuse it, but because 
 
 94 
 
I^elations of Distilled and Fermented Liquors. 95 
 
 it is Dot needed at all., except as a medical prescription. 
 The abstainer does not ask you to put a man on a sick- 
 regimen — i.e., abstinence according to Dr. C— to keep 
 bim from becoming sick, but to keep him from a sick-regi- 
 men when well. The comparison of the imprisonment of 
 the thief is, therefore, the thing which is '^ wholly uncon- 
 nected." The very thing which the lecturer himself does 
 is to turn a medical prescription into a bill of fare for gen- 
 eral use, only the alcohol must be put up by a beer formula. 
 
 " The second moral error found is the assumption that 
 moderate drinking leads to drunkenness." Strange that 
 this should be called an atrocious dogma ! Strange that be- 
 cause multitudes who drink moderately do not fall into 
 drunkenness it should be taken as axiomatic that moderate 
 drinking has no tendency to cause excessive drinking ! In 
 this respect alcohol has the law of all of its class of medi- 
 cines, and of many more decided narcotics. There are 
 thousands of wills strong enough to resist it ; but these are 
 not generally those wno "live on the confines of health, 
 whose digestion is feeble, circulation languid, and nervous 
 system too excitable." The fact that thousands of such and 
 of others from being moderate drinkers have come to over- 
 indulgence does show that moderate drinking has some ten- 
 dency to cause drunkenness. Thousands of people have 
 taken opium drops or pills, and not become opium ine- 
 briates ; but the fact still remains that the moderate daily 
 use of opium does tend to opium excess. Multitudes of 
 those who have not lost their self-control, and tens of thou- 
 sands of those who have, can testify that the tendency of 
 this article, alcohol, is to create a taste and desire. It is a 
 medical fact true of this and many other medicinal articles. 
 To deny it is not merely disputing total-abstinence testi- 
 mony, but denying a law of acquired taste and attachment 
 that prevails as to alcohol, opiam, chloral, tobacco, and 
 some other articles. 
 
 The third moral error specified also has to do with a 
 medical and sanitary question. The blunder of the total- 
 abstainer is said to be that he does not discriminate between 
 things that differ. The illustration is that distilled and fer- 
 
96 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 merited liquors dififer. The answer is tliat the total-ab- 
 stainer does discriminate between distilled and fermented 
 liquors as to degree ; but does not, because of the presence 
 of alcohol in both, make a discrimination which ignores the 
 leading and damaging similarity. He knows that six per 
 cent, is not thirty per cent. ; but it is the alcohol that gives 
 type to each and that allies them too closely to enable us to 
 call this want of discrimination '' a blunder that has the pro- 
 portions of a crime.'' The clincher given to prove the differ- 
 ence is from Dr. Parkes ; but Dr. Parkes is imperfectly 
 quoted. He first asks the question : "If distinctly hurtful 
 in large quantities, is it not so in these smaller amounts '! " 
 He then says : ''As a scientific question, I do not see how 
 an answer can be at present given." He then says : " Fail- 
 ing, as it appears to me, in accurate information on this 
 point, the usual arguments for and against the use of alco- 
 hol cannot be held to settle the point,'" which he says are 
 (a) {h) (c), etc. Under c he has the sentence quoted by Dr. 
 Crosby, which even in this form, as not his own, he guards 
 by adding: "It must be allowed, I tbink, there are some 
 persons of this class who are benefited by alcohol in small 
 quantities, and chiefly in the form of beer or light wine. 
 Unless these persons wilfully deceive themselves, they feel 
 better and are better with a little alcohol." Noie, also, 
 that Dr. Parkes is e\idently one of those guilty of the moral 
 outrage of indiscrimination. Had Dr. Parkes been read as 
 to other utterances, and in his reply to Anstie as to food 
 value, etc., he would never have been thus quoted. Sir 
 Henry Thompson recently, in his letter to the Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, as quoted by Judge Pitman <p. 38), says : 
 " The habitual use of fermented liquors to an extent far 
 short of what is necessary to produce that condition (drunk- 
 enness), and such as is quite common in all ranks of society, 
 injures the body and diminishes the mental power to an 
 extent which I think few people are aware of." He, too, in 
 the same paragraph, forgets to " discriminate," and calls 
 them alcoholic beverages. He, like Parkes, Is also not a 
 pledge man or a pleader for a total-abstinence general law. 
 The fourth moral error alleged by Dr. Crosby also touches 
 
Relations of Distilled and Fermented Liquors. 97 
 
 medical and sanitary questions. This error, he says, is in 
 classing alcohol as a poison, and not a food. Dr. Anstie is 
 quoted as having ^^ clearly shown" this ; but Dr. Parkes's 
 reply is not quoted. " Even if complete destruction within 
 certain limits were quite clear, this fact alone would not 
 guide us to the dietetic use of alcohol. We have first to 
 trace the effect of the destruction and learn whether it is for 
 good or evil. Few seem to think that the destruction must 
 give rise to useful force ; but I cannot see that this is neces- 
 sarily so." It will be noticed, too, that this reply meets the 
 experiments of Binz, which have been the chief physiologi- 
 cal staple of the food argument for alcohol for some time 
 past. Outside of experiment, Anstie sought to prove the 
 food value of tobacco and opium, just as he did that of alco- 
 hol. Dr. Crosby concludes that wines and beers have but 
 three to ten per cent, of alcohol in the form best adapted 
 for beneficial effect. So far as our chemistry tells us, the 
 form of the alcohol is just the same, only the flavoring and 
 the addition of actual food is different. We do not recog- 
 nize this as the '^ alembic in which nature has turned a 
 powerful and dangerous element into a beneficial minister." 
 It is because the use of fermented as well as distilled li- 
 quors is in the direction of injury to the public health that 
 we have felt constrained to enter a brief and humble excep- 
 tion to the physical part of this address. 
 
AN OPEN LETTER, 
 
 By Rev. Dr. A. J. GORDON. 
 
 EEV, DR. A. J. GORDON, pastor of the Clarendon Street 
 Baptist Church, as Chairman of the Boston Mon- 
 day Lecture Committee, wrote the following letter 
 to the Boston Traveller : 
 
 "As considerable comment has been passed on the recent 
 Monday lecture of Dr. Howard Crosby, it may not be improper 
 that, as chairman of the committee having charge of these lec- 
 tures, I should make the following statement : 
 
 " These lectures were designed to be religio-scientific. Emi- 
 nent men among college presidents and theological professors were 
 invited to participate in them. As Chancellor of the University 
 of New York, Dr. Crosby was engaged as one of the speakers. 
 So far as I am aware of, it was expected when he was asked to 
 lecture that he would appear in some subject of a scientific or 
 theological nature, in which his scholarship would enable him 
 to shine so conspicuously. That he chose to come before us in 
 the character of a belated reformer, advocating views that belong 
 to the dark ages of the temperance reform, was his own responsi- 
 bility. It is certainly to be regretted that so eminent a preacher 
 and teacher should be found giving utterance to opinions that were 
 calm only in their cold and dogmatic contempt of sentiments which 
 the great mass of temperance workers hold to be absolutely vital 
 to any real success in batthng against intemperance, and healthful 
 only through the violent revolt which they must awaken in the 
 minds of hundreds who will read them. Such sentiments will be 
 sure of enthusiastic applause from every bar and liquor-saloon in 
 the city. They who sell intoxicating drinks, from high to low, 
 disapprove of drunkenness as strongly as the eminent divine, 
 holding equally with him that moderation should be the rule. It is 
 
A'ii Open Letter. 99 
 
 grateful to be able to say, to the credit of the Christian and tem- 
 perance sentiment of our city, that the views evidently met with 
 almost no sympathy from the audience to which they were ad- 
 dressed, so that while the lecturer was pursuing his announced 
 purpose of ' carrying the war into Africa,' he stood among his 
 hearers as ' a solitary sentinel pacing around the deserted citadel 
 of his own opinions.' " 
 
THE "CALM VIEW." 
 
 Comments of the Press. 
 
 THE following extracts are from the editorial comments 
 of sundry leading and intluential religious and secular 
 journals upon Dr. Crosby's address, ''A Calm View of 
 Temperance." 
 Zion's Herald, of Boston, says : 
 
 " Much wonder is expressed that Chancellor Crosby should 
 have been invited to appear in the Monday Lectureship as the 
 opponent of the well-established views of the great majority of 
 New England Christian men and women upon the temperance 
 reform. The platform which he was to occupy, it was well 
 known, had already been dedicated by Joseph Cook to the most 
 advanced total-abstinence and prohibitory opinions. Certainly 
 there were men on the Lecture Committee whose publicly-an- 
 nounced sentiments are totally opposed to nearly every position 
 taken by Dr. Crosby. If arrangements had been made for a 
 frank discussion — for some able champion, like Wendell Phillips, 
 or Neal Dow, or Dr. Mark Hopkins, to follow on the same plat- 
 form upon a succeeding Monday — no exception could be taken. 
 As it is, just at this moment when a special effort has been made 
 to unite the temperance forces upon the lowest possible moral 
 ground of total abstinence, it takes on almost the appearance of a 
 direct insult to the sentiment of the community to put forward 
 upon such a platform such reactionary views. 
 
 " The lecture was misnamed. It was not a * calm view ' of the 
 subject. The lecturer, indeed, was perfectly self-possessed, as he 
 always is ; his language, except in a few instances, was not vio- 
 
 100 
 
I 
 
 Comments of the Press, 101 
 
 lent and never vituperative ; but he was not calm. His opinions 
 were presented as dogmatically, and positively, and earnestly as 
 the English language admits of its being done. He was evidently 
 very much aroused. The discourse was not at all a calm discus- 
 sion of the question, but a heated and special defence of positions 
 he has taken against the attacks of those differing from him on 
 the temperance question. One of his severest indictments against 
 the advocates of total abstinence was the bitterness and severity 
 of their invectives against those differing with them in opinion ; 
 but nothing could exceed the contempt which the doctor ex- 
 pressed for those who dare to hold a different interpretation from 
 himself of certain passages of Scripture — albeit some of them are 
 his peers in Biblical scholarship — and views at variance with his 
 own opinion of the nature and effects of wine and fermented li- 
 quors. This heat to which he refers, and which he exhibits, 
 arises from a partially sanctified liuman nature ; and Dr. Crosby 
 certainly is one of the legitimate descendants of Adam. 
 
 " This leads us to say that the lecturer was guilty of the same 
 offence which he charges upon radical temperance men, in that 
 he fails to show a ' discrimination between things that differ,' 
 He includes all the upholders of total abstinence in the same 
 category, as seeking to ' intimidate ' and ' bulldoze ' the commu- 
 nity — both ministers and laymen. This (course of bulldozing) he 
 declares to have been the ' curriculum ' of the radical school of 
 temperance reformers for the last forty years. Now, while in the 
 ranks of noble temperance workers have been many men of the 
 ancient prophetic type, who have used the Old Testament Scrip- 
 tures in the spirit of the former covenant, and have denounced 
 ' Meroz ' for not coming up to the help of the Lord in sublime 
 and terrible sentences, and often with little mercy, the great 
 body of leading reformers have been of another class. Among 
 them are the chief ministers of our churches ; some of our high- 
 est magistrates and legislators ; our most honored judges and in- 
 fluential business citizens ; men whose words have commanded 
 the respect of all who have listened to them, and whose tempers 
 have certainly been under as good control as that of their censor. 
 No, doctor, that was not a calm view of temperance or of tempe- 
 rance men. You were thinking of some violent newspaper cor- 
 respondent, or lively platform speaker, who has dared somewhat 
 audaciously to question the wisdom and eflBciency of the positions 
 you have, doubtless conscientiously, taken. A whole denomina- 
 tion of Christians, nearly two millions strong, from bishops down 
 
102 Moderation vs.- Total Abstuieuce. 
 
 to the humblest member, have for years taken this radical posi- 
 tion and upheld it in the pulpit and in church discipline ; but 
 "who ever dreamed of intimating that they had sought to establish, 
 these views by intimidation and bulldozing ? It was not a very 
 complimentary intimation which the doctor made, that hundreds of 
 ministers revolted from the extreme views of radical temperance 
 men, but failed to take a stand against them through fear of the 
 unhealthy public sentiment which demands their acceptance and 
 denounces their opponents. We believe this to be an unintended 
 but real slander upon the moral courage and convictions of our 
 ministers. 
 
 "The ridicule heaped upon those who hold that moderate drink- 
 ing is the fruitful fountain from whence the flood of intempe- 
 rance is fed, will not change the fact. It is the experience of the 
 whole temperance reform. No successful progress was made in 
 it until total abstinence took the place of a temperate use of li- 
 quors. It is the confession of tens of thousands that the appetite, 
 afterwards unquenchable, has been fostered at first by the occa- 
 sional use of wines, and the testimony is equally voluminous and 
 unanswerable in reference to the use of cider and other fermented 
 liquors. No assertion or dogmatism can alter the character of 
 these long-observed and verified facts. And, what is more serious, 
 the later study of heredity has shown us the impressive truth that 
 the moderate use of wines in parents often entails upon children 
 a maniacal appetite for stimulants, which predestines them almost 
 hopelessly to a drunkard's grave. 
 
 " Dr. Crosby was hardly ingenuous in his defence, by profes- 
 sional quotations, oi the wholesomeness and food-like character 
 of small amounts of stimulants, and light ales and beer. There 
 was nothing offered in his address to intimate the fact that the 
 weight of opinion, as has been made to appear in late articles in 
 the Contemporary Review, and in the testimony of the highest pro- 
 fessional authority, is against any such theory. The most authori- 
 tative utterances of physicians of the widest practice is just the 
 opposite. 
 
 ' ' Has the doctor ever stopped to think what it is that has 
 aroused such a public sentiment in favor of total abstinence ? 
 Why are men so earnest in their pleas for prohibition ? What in- 
 duces men to yield their own possible safe liberty of indulgence ? 
 What means this army of mothers and sisters with their appeal- 
 ing voices and ears ? Why is wine denounced and the weaker 
 drinks ? What makes men sometimes so frantic in their cries for 
 
Commenls of the Prcs>i. 103 
 
 rescue ? Why do they in their aroused anxiety pronounce curses 
 u[)on apathetic apologists ? Wliat is at the bottom of all this ? 
 There must be some terrible evil, and there is. All other schemes 
 to save our families have been tried for centuries. Human hearts 
 hive been wrung to their breaking, age after age. The unbroken 
 march of the awful army of drunkards to their fearful graves has 
 been too frightful for human endurance. Dr. Crosby himself 
 well s:iid, 'Total abstinence is the effectual cure of intempe- 
 rance'; and it is the only hope. The temperate use of liquors is 
 only the constant nourishment of an appetite that at its full 
 strength man, with all his moral power, is not adequate to struggle 
 with. Some men escape, but thousands fall. How can any 
 Christian man plead for himself a liberty that becomes a license 
 to rum his fellow-men ?" 
 
 The Preshifterian Journal, of Philadelphia, says : 
 
 " We do not know any Christian tol:al-abstainer who has used 
 towards opponents such uncharitable language as Dr. Crosby has 
 here employed. 
 
 " It is also true that he has exposed himself to ridicule. It pro- 
 vokes an almost irresistible smile to read his declaration that ' the 
 total-abstinence propaganda has been an overbearing and tyran- 
 nical power ' which has been ' bulldozing ' the church and the 
 country. Who are this propaganda ? . . . 
 
 "General Assembly after General Assembly of our beloved 
 church, to which the New York chancellor owes allegiance, has 
 taken the total-abstinence position which he assails. Have those 
 Assemblies been part of the infamous propaganda? . . . 
 
 '• Dr. Crosby's fundamental assumption is an error. He cannot 
 maintain it. His position will inevitably go down before this re- 
 form movement, which is the movement of God ; but in the mean- 
 time our New York brother has ministered rare comfort to drink- 
 eis and liquor-producers, and that is to be sorely regretted." 
 
 The Boston Congregationalist says : 
 
 •'Chancellor Crosby's recent Monday lecture upon the tempe- 
 rance question may be called on the whole a plea for moderate 
 drinking as opposed to total abstinence. . . . 
 
 " We lose nothing by giving up the use as a drink of any wines 
 that we can get, or of any of the lighter alcoholic liquors, while 
 the injury that may come to ourselves out of the habit of using 
 them, or the harm that our example may do to others, may be 
 
104 Moderation vs. Total Ahstinence. 
 
 very great. It is raost wise, therefore, and most Christian to let 
 them alone. 
 
 " It is not fair either, in reckoning the evil that comes from the 
 use of strong drink, to make account only, as Chancellor Crosby 
 appears to do, of cases of utter and downright drunkenness. 
 There is, indeed, always a certain danger that moderate drinking 
 may lead to such drunkenness, and this is well worth thinking 
 of; but there are other serious dangers short of that, even if 
 drunkenness is not reached. There is an impairment of clearness 
 and force of mind and body that affects many men who are not 
 drunkards. There is a wasting, too, of money, and often of time, 
 and an exposure to bad company, and a tendency in general to- 
 ward dissipation, which belong with the use of such drinks in 
 stages far short of drunkenness, and which throughout society as 
 a whole may probably make up the larger part of the mischief 
 wrought by intoxicating drinks. These thmgs, over and above 
 the liability to absolute drunkenness, are to be taken account 
 of. 
 
 " There is nothing of argument either in the saying that a man 
 may more suitably exercise self-control at some point along the 
 line of moderate drinking than at the point of total abstinence, 
 and when he has not entered on the line of drinking at all. It 
 may be easier, and it is easier, to stop before one has begun; and 
 there is no virtue in beginning for the sake of trying to stop at 
 some harder place. The ease of total, abstinence is part of what 
 makes it best. 
 
 "Try this thing apart from yourself, and in your thought of 
 your own son or daughtei', and see if you would not feel the most 
 of security as to their future if you knew they never would use 
 any of these drinks at all. If that be true it covers the whole 
 case, and it makes it wise and right for you, too, never to use them 
 yourself. " 
 
 The Herald and Presbyter, of Cincinnati, says: 
 
 "Dr. Crosby, several years ago, started out on a crusade against 
 the whiskey-shops, proposing to at least restrict and regulate 
 them. He was unwilling to adopt total abstinence, local option, 
 or prohibition. We advised all to let him go on and do all he 
 could, and we said, Let other temperance people hold their prin- 
 ciples and use their own methods without pursuing him with re- 
 proach. The doctor has turned his face and guns on the old 
 
Comments of the Press. 105 
 
 temperance workers, and now Lhey are obliged, in self-defence, to 
 fight him and all who are in league with him. There are some 
 wild temperance reformers, without doubt. Dr. Crosby takes the 
 responsibility of opposing all schemes, except his own, as meth- 
 ods of promoting temperance that are inexpedient, ineffectual, 
 immoral or unscriptural. Much that he says is erroneous and ir- 
 relevant, while in some respects his views are correct. His argu- 
 ment reminds us of the slavery discussion from 1830 to 1860. He 
 is like those who classed together and opposed alike the organi- 
 zation of anti-slavery societies; refusing to use anything produced 
 by slave labor; the doctrine that slaveholding is a sin per se ; 
 running off slaves ; keeping slavery out of free territory, and gra- 
 dual emancipation. They denounced free discussion and church 
 action as mixing politics and religion, and claimed that the Gos- 
 pel is the only remedy for all evils. In the meantime the irre- 
 pressible conflict grew in intensity and ended in war. Whiskey 
 is a hundredfold worse than slavery. It produces more suffering 
 and death. More lives are lost every year by drunkenness than 
 in any year of the war. Whiskey is the handmaid of lust, of di- 
 vorce, of murder, of political corruption, of Sabbath-breaking, of 
 profanity, and almost every vice, and it is increasing in power 
 and influence, and becoming more and more haughty and defi- 
 ant. Its opposers are of all sorts — wise and unwise, sound and 
 unsound, active and indolent but they are all opposed to its evils, 
 and when the crisis comes they will see eye to eye. In a free 
 country great revolutions often come very suddenly. The public 
 conscience may suddenly get into a rage. Every sane and intel- 
 ligent mind knows that the Government is in duty bound to pi-o- 
 tect her citizens from the *voes and ruin of the whiskey-shops. It 
 may not be long until the whiskey party overact, and stir up and 
 unite the friends of temperance to make short work of the evil. 
 Then regulating the abomination will not be thought of. Its de- 
 struction will be inevitable." 
 
 Tbe ^yestern Christian Advocate, of CinciDnati, says: 
 
 " Real temperance is wounded, if not slain, in the house of its 
 professed friends when religionists like Governor Andrew, How- 
 ard Crosby, and Dr. Todd take up arms in defence of social 
 drinking. In the best classes of the American people — the native 
 middle classes, the bone and sinew of the land — a large proportion 
 of the men and women are in favor of prohibiting the manufac- 
 
106 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 ture and sale of ardent spirits for use as a beverage. But since 
 the Atlantic Ocean became a steam ferry-way, the temperance 
 cause has suffered from the introduction of foreigners with their 
 ale, and beer, and wine drinking usages. The lower cla'^ses every- 
 where, particularly in cities, have become corrupted by saloons 
 and beer-gardens, and the Sabbath is the great day for carousal. 
 And this evil is aggravated by the example of a very large num- 
 ber of people belonging to the fashionable (we do not say upper) 
 classes, who have permitted their habits to be moulded in accord- 
 ance with those of the upper classes in foreign lands, and conse- 
 quently have brought home with them the social drinking cus- 
 toms of those countries. The temperance cause has to fight in 
 both these directions. 
 
 " Prohibitory laws will not suppress all drinking, any more than 
 laws against lotteries, gambling, and prostitution prevent and 
 suppress these vices. But they will place society on the right 
 side. Any form of license system only brings society and gov- 
 ernment into league with vice, acknowledges its legality, and 
 shares the profits of its villanies. In spite of the opposition of 
 the Todds and Crosbys, a better age than the present will place 
 intoxication and its accessories in the category of social crimes, 
 which the law will forbid, and which all good men will labor to 
 exterminate." 
 
 The Advance, of Chicago, says : 
 
 " If only it had been a calm view! 
 
 " If that is a calm view of what the Christian temperance peo- 
 ple are doing in this country toward counteracting what intem- 
 perance is doing, what would a perturbed view be? A discourse 
 so full of evidence of exasperated prejudice, and so ' rich in abu- 
 sive epithet,' we have not seen for a year at least. Such variety 
 and impassioned affluence of disparaging epithet and other char- 
 acterization must have severely taxed even Chancellor Crosby's 
 well-known genius for language. . . . 
 
 " On some points we agree with Chancellor Crosby. First of 
 all in this^ that ' there is no more important question before the 
 American people to-day than this : How shall we stay this surg- 
 ing tide of intemperance? ' We agree with him in this: * That it 
 is to be answered on one side by the practical voice of society and 
 on the other by the edicts of our legislatures.' In this, also: 
 That ' we should act with an even mind on so grave a subject, 
 
Comments of tlie Press. 107 
 
 aud see to it that every step we take is solidly founded on right 
 reason.' But as we look forth upon our country and other 
 countries, in city and in villages, and note how infinite the woe 
 and disaster, the degradations and sorrows, the blighting and the 
 curse, caused by the use of intoxicating drinks, fermented or dis- 
 tilled, we have no heart to turn back and fire off broadsides of 
 abuse and scorn into the faces of that now vast, and, thank God! 
 fast-growing array of Christian men and women, who, even if 
 with some mistakes and blunders to be lamented, are, neverthe- 
 less, the ones who are striving most earnestly to stay the surging 
 tide! At this point we are obliged, by our sense of Christian 
 manliness and self-respect, sharply to part company with the 
 lecturer. Perhaps as fair representatives of the grand total-ab- 
 stinence temperance movement of our generation might be taken 
 Hon William E. Dodge and Dr. Cuyler, not stopping to name 
 others; for ourselves, we do not care to fire off rhetorical bomb- 
 shells of abuse at their feet. 
 
 ' ' To-day, in all liquor-dealers' associations, in saloons and 
 other tippling places. Dr. Crosby is the most popular ' divine ' in 
 America. The Journals published in their interests are exultant 
 over his counterblast at the temperance people and his commenda- 
 tion of moderate drinking. " 
 
 The United Freshyterian, of Pittsburgh, says: 
 
 "Even when drunkenness is not reached, there is the impair- 
 ment of mental and moral power, the waste of money and time, 
 and the demoralizing effect of even moderate drinking habits to 
 be«taken into the account. From such effects, more widely than 
 from extreme drunkenness, the morals, usefulness, and happiness 
 of men, the peace and comfort of families, and the good order of 
 society are suffering. 
 
 *' Then, as a question of expendiency merely, where is it best 
 to stop? Can any one believe that it is safer or easier to stop 
 after a habit of drinking has been indulged, to however limited 
 an extent, than before it has been formed ? Or is there any one 
 who does not feel in regard to a friend more security as to his 
 future when assured that he practises total abstinence ? 
 
 * • All this Dr. Crosby appears to overlook, as also the impor- 
 tance of good example in this as in everything else. The indi- 
 vidual liberty for which he pleads, as recognized by Paul, is by 
 
108 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 the same authority put under tliis regulation : ' If meat make my 
 brother to ofiend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth.' " 
 
 The New York Weekly Witness says: 
 
 '• In sober sadness we give our opinion that the malignancy of 
 the Evil One himself could not devise a greater injury to society 
 in general-than to put the advocacy of moderate drinking and op- 
 position to total-abstinence societies in the mouth of an influen- 
 tial and generally-esteemed minister of the Gospel. The mis- 
 takes of every man's life have been many, but this is, in our view, 
 a master-mistake calculated to send thousands to the pit. 
 
 " The fact that Dr. Crosby occupies a prominent position in 
 the training of ministers, who are in turn to influence congrega- 
 tions and society in general all over the country, renders his mis- 
 take doubly fatal, and wecannot but hope that the Lord will open 
 the eyes of the good doctor lo see the evil he has been doing, and 
 induce him, as far as he can, to counteract it ere the opportunity 
 for his doing so passes away for ever." 
 
 The' Central Christian Advocate, of St. Louis, says : 
 
 " He cannot see that this present condition is the natural pro- 
 duct of the system that he advocates. The temperance cause 
 certainly has not produced the drunkenness which he condemns. 
 The doctor is at lea&t twenty years behind the times. Probably 
 he does not see the crowd of tipplers, and drunkards, and dram- 
 shop keepers who find comfort in his position." 
 
 The Michigan Lever says: 
 
 *' The reverend gentleman has the thanks of all the liquor-deal- 
 ers in the country. They endorse him to a man. Now let him 
 extend his logic by telling people to practise little sins and avoid 
 big ones. Sin, carried to excess, is a very bad thing, but if peo- 
 ple could so govern themselves as only to commit minor trans- 
 gressions the world would be better, this preacher could say. He 
 might go on and show that the Master made a mistake by urging 
 a warfare on all sin ; that He could have accomplished more by 
 moderation and toleration. Such men only serve the cause of 
 evil, for they encourage its abettors." 
 
 The Methodist, after quoliDg what Dr. Crosby says against 
 the pledge, says : 
 
Comments of the Press. 109 
 
 " To which a * free lover ' would add that, ' instead of regulating 
 marriage ' from within, the customs of the country ' debauch the 
 conscience ' by tying up married couples with a pledge to live to- 
 gether ' until death parts them.' It might be interesting to have 
 a definition of the point or line where pledges to do just and 
 comely things become immoral and debauch the conscience. 
 Every Christian has made a pledge to his church to do right ; is 
 that also ' a moral error ' ? " 
 
 The Western Christian Advocate says : 
 
 " The views set forth by the chancellor would strike at Gods 
 law in the Ten Commandments, and make against all human laws 
 for the prevention and suppression of crime. By the same course 
 of reasoning society should allow everybody to carry deadly 'wea- 
 pons and trust to the virtue of every individual not to make dead- 
 ly use of them. Society should make no laws against prostitution 
 and its agents, no laws against usurious interest, and no barriers 
 to monopolies, allow free marriage and free divorce, and a hun- 
 dred other things that are now regarded as needing restraints and 
 within the purview and province of legislation." 
 
 The Boston Transcript says : 
 
 ** Chancellor Crosby lias done more to discourage those who are 
 seeking to influence sons, husbands, and brothers to abstain ab- 
 solutely from the use of alcohol, to the end that they and theirs 
 may be saved from sorrow, disgrace, and ruin, than all the rum- 
 shops in Boston." 
 
 The National Baptist, of Philadelphia, says : 
 << A great opportunity was thrown away ; the division among 
 temperance people was made more bitter ; the enemies of tem- 
 perance were encouraged ; and apparently much more harm than 
 good was done." 
 
 The Lewiston (Me.) Journal says : 
 
 ** The trouble with men like Dr. Crosby is that they fail to take 
 notice of stern facts. Drunkenness is most prevalent where mod- 
 erate drinking is fashionable and no prohibitory laws vex the tip- 
 pler. Most men become drunkards by trying to drink mode- 
 rately, and failing." 
 
 The Christian Leader says : 
 
 *' Chancellor Crosby certainly has a view of temperance, but he 
 
110 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 is a queer man to call it a * calm ' one His definition of calm- 
 ness must indeed be a puzzle to lexicographers. We have sub- 
 mitted to the penance of a careful reading of the lecture, which, 
 when given in the Monday course, so amazed, we may say so 
 chagrined, his audience. His * calm view of temperance ' may be 
 condensed into something like this : ' You men and women who 
 advocate total abstinence are a set of liars, tricksters, hypocrites, 
 and infidels ; only you do not know that you are. You deal in 
 lies, and tricks, and perversions of Scripture, yet your motive? 
 are good ! ' Xow, it strikes us that while a man may deal in fal- 
 lacies and not know that he does, it is a contradiction in terms to 
 say that he deals in falsehoods and tricks, not knowing them to 
 be such. But the chancellor evidently has a new dictionary." 
 
 The Washingtonian, of Chicago, says : 
 
 " Dr. Howard Crosby occupies an unenviable position as a re- 
 tarder of true temperance work. He is now spending his time 
 and talents in trying to show that men should drink beer and 
 wine moderately. Dr. Crosby appears to be knowingly blind. He 
 denies that moderate drinking leads to drunkenness. He certain- 
 ly knows better. . . . The arguments of Chancellor Crosby are the 
 veriest humbug, and he should no longer insult temperance peo- 
 ple by professing to be in sympathy with the cause they advo- 
 cate." 
 
 The American Wesleyan says : 
 
 " On his own principles his position is untenable. His Biblical 
 argument for moderate drinking does not prove that we should so 
 drink now. It by no means follows, on Biblical principles, that a 
 practice once allowable is always to be allowed." 
 
 The Buffalo Christian Advocate says : 
 
 " Now, we should like to know what hope there is of securing 
 and maintaining a law that shall give license to only one seller 
 * to one thousand inhabitants in each town,' without first getting 
 a majority of the people to adopt total abstinence ? " 
 
 The UpiscojKilHecorcler says : 
 
 *' The attitude of so great and so good a man as the chancellor 
 of the University of New York towards the temperance question 
 must cause grief and surprise to many. The evils of moderate 
 drinking, as the inevitable precursor of intemperance, seem to us 
 
Comments of the Press. Ill 
 
 to be beyond contradiction. The drinking usages of society, from 
 the days of Noah down, have only brought distress and anguish 
 upon the world. Drunkenness has never existed unless intro- 
 duced by those usages . . . 
 
 " If there was any necessity for the use of alcohol as a beverage 
 we can understand that men should contend for the right to use 
 it in moderation ; but apart from its use in a medicinal point of 
 view it cannot be shown to have ever been of benefit. It there- 
 fore passes our comprehension that any man can be found to de- 
 fend its use in moderation even. To totally abstain from it as a 
 beverage is safe for ourselves ; it is of incalculable advantage by 
 way of exaoiple to others — our brethren for whom Christ died — 
 and it has yet to be shown that it has ever injured any one." 
 
 The Evangelical Messenger says : 
 
 "Dr. Crosby, chancellor of the University of New York, in a 
 recent ' Monday lecture ' in Boston, shocked the Bostonians, and the 
 friends of temperance reform generally, by his defence of ' mode- 
 rate drmking.' While we can admire the courage of a man who 
 dares enunciate opinions that will leave him without a following 
 — except that one of doubtful utility, the liquor interest — we cannot 
 refrain from expressing our regret that he should lend the power 
 of his great name and influence to justify a habit which the ex- 
 perience of years has proved to be as perilous as climbing along 
 the crevice of a glacier or the mouth of the bottomless pit. The 
 difference between a moderate and an immoderate drinker is often 
 more fanciful than real." 
 
 The Standard, Chicago, says : 
 
 " We believe that it is Dr. Crosby's plan to regulate the trade 
 in intoxicating drinks, so as to prevent the wholesale poisoning 
 now practised, and so as to afford opportunity for the testing of 
 his principle that restriction in the sale and moderation in the 
 use of such drinks are what the case needs. We should respect- 
 fully submit to him that all the facts of the present situation testify 
 to the utter abortiveness of all measures of this kind." 
 
 The Springfield (Mass.) Bepublican says : 
 
 " Dr. Crosby makes one great mistake upon the question of total 
 abstinence, in relying so confidently upon the fact that a man 
 may drink wine and beer and yet not become a drunkard. The 
 temperance question is most vitally a question of the working 
 
112 Moderation vs. Total Ahstmence, 
 
 classes. They are the most under temptation, the most easily de- 
 graded to pauperism and crime in case of excess of indulgence. 
 Eut for them moderate drinking means, not a glass of claret at a 
 dinner-table, but an occasional drink of whiskey at a saloon, then 
 semi-occasional drinks, then two at a time, and so on till every- 
 thing is lost. And when Dr. Crosby talks to such people about 
 the 'unmanliness,' the 'intimidation,' the 'deception' of total 
 abstinence, and attempts to save the wines of polite society by 
 saying that the State ought to suppress the sale of distilled spirits 
 and license the other, he is playing with fire without the ghost of 
 a chance of turning on his extinguisher." 
 
 The New York Herald says : 
 
 " Dr. Howard Crosby has raised a storm by his anti-prohibition 
 speech, and it is not unlikely that it will in the end contribute 
 largely to the cause for which he has such unbounded contempt." 
 
 In a letter to the Boston Traveller Hon. Neal Dow writes : 
 
 "Old temperance men like me are much puzzled to know how 
 it can be that educated and intelligent men, especially if Chris- 
 tian men, can differ in opinion as to the causes and the cure of 
 intemperance, unless influenced by interest, appetite, or passion, 
 as intelligent men should not, as Christian men cannot, be. 
 
 " Dr. Crosby affirms that drunkenness does not come from drink- 
 ing. I was astonished at that, as every abstainer may well be ; 
 but it is not worth while to do more than notice that amazing 
 statement, which no drunkard even will deny to be entirely un- 
 true. I assume that all the world except Dr. Crosby will admit 
 that drunkenness comes from the drink, and the habit of drinking 
 more and more from the first glass, it maybe at the father's table, 
 to the last glass preceding a robbery or a murder. 
 
 " All the doctor's talk about Bible wines and Christ's drinking 
 habits contains not one word, or thought, or fact that is new; it 
 has all been answered, and well answered, many times by many 
 scholars as ripe as he can claim to be, knowing the Bible and Bible 
 history, and the language of the Bible, and the Greek as well as 
 lie, whose conclusions were directly the reverse of his. . . . 
 
 "I assume that eveiybody knows, except Dr. Crosby, that drunk- 
 enness comes from the drink. Where does that come from ? 
 Through the open door of moderate drinking. There comes in its 
 train upon the world a horrible procession of poverty, pauperism, 
 
Comments of the Press. 113 
 
 wretchedness, and crime. Sufferings without number, that can 
 be measured by no scale of woe ; mumbling idiocy, wild insanity, 
 secret plundering, bloody robbery, midnight incendiarism, and 
 fearful murder ; women in want, wretchedness and rags ; help 
 less children, knowing nothing but gaunt hunger, dreadful abuse, 
 sin and shame— all these and more come in upon the world only 
 through the open door of moderate drinking. We teetotalers 
 are striving with all our might to shut that door to keep these 
 horrors out. Dr. Crosby and others like him are struggling to 
 keep it open. 
 
 "On both sides we are actuated by a purpose. We say if that 
 door can be shut the morrow's sun would rise upon a sober world; 
 there would be, there could be, no more drunkenness, and no 
 more of the sin, shame, and misery coming from it. That and 
 that only is our motive. We make great and many sacrifices of 
 time, labor, money, and anxious care to accomplish it. Dr. Crosby 
 and those with him resist with all their power. Why ? They have 
 and must have some motive, as we have. What is it ? ' If that 
 door be shut where and how can we obtain our drink ? Don't talk 
 to us about the general good, the interests of the church ; we will 
 not consent to be shut out from our ' wine and mild beer.'" 
 
THE VOICE OF SCIENCE. 
 
 I'^HE following are some of the later declarations of 
 eminent physicians and scientists concerning alco- 
 " hoi : 
 Dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson says : 
 
 '"Alcohol produces many diseases ; and it constantly happens 
 that persons die of diseases which have their origin solely in the 
 drinking ol alcohol, while the cause itself is never for a moment 
 suspected. A man may be considered by his friends and neigh- 
 bors, as well as by himself, to be a sober and a temperate man; 
 He may say quite truthfully that he was never tipsy in the whole 
 course of his life ; and yet it is quite possible that such a man 
 may die of disease caused by the alcohol he has taken, and by no 
 other cause whatever. This is one of the most dreadful evils of 
 alcohol, that it kills insidiously, as if it were doing no harm, or 
 as if it were doing good, while it is destroj-ing life." 
 
 Of his research concerning alcohol, as a scientific en- 
 quirer, Dr. Richardson says : 
 
 "To the research 1 devoted three years, from 1863 to 1866, 
 modifying experiments in every conceivable way, taking advan- 
 tage of seasons and varying temperatures of season, extending ob- 
 servation from one class of animals to another* and making com- 
 parative researches with other bodies of the alcohol series than the 
 ethylic or common alcohol. 
 
 " The results, I confess, were as surprising to me as any one else, 
 They were surprising from their definitiveness and their uni- 
 formity. They were most surprising from the complete contra- 
 diction they gave to the popular idea that alcohol is a supporter 
 and sustainer of the animal temperature. 
 
 " I. That it is an entire fallacy to suppose that alcohol, m any 
 of its forms as intoxicating drink, is the gift of God to man. 
 
 "II. That if the habit of drinking intoxicating beverages is 
 never indulged, it is never felt as a want. 
 
 114 
 
The Voice of Science. 115 
 
 "III. If this habit be indulged, the difficulties of throwing it 
 off are tenfold increased. 
 
 " IV. You may further teach by history and example — but al- 
 ways better by example— that the hardest work, mental and bodily, 
 is best carried out without the stimulating effects of this agent 
 which so many look to for support in all their labors. 
 
 "V. That alcohol has no claim, in a scientific sense, to be con- 
 sidered as a sustainer either of bodily or mental life or work. 
 
 ''VI. That in alcohol there is nothing that can build up any 
 tissue or supply any force. 
 
 " VII. That in approaching the subject of temperance, and in 
 showing the uselessness of the most mischievous of all agents 
 within the reach of men, you are promoting a good which extends 
 beyond your own time." 
 
 The followino- is from a declaration sent to the Interna- 
 tional Temperance Congress at Brussels, Belgium, August, 
 1880, by the council of the '^ British Medical Temperance 
 Association," embracing in its membership upwards of two 
 hundred leading physicians and surgeons of Great Britain, 
 with Dr. B. W. Richardson as president, and J. J. Ridge, 
 M.D., B.S., B A., honorary secretary : 
 
 ** Passing from the particular art of prescribing alcohol to our 
 observation of the action of alcohol on persons generally — ^that is 
 to say, to its employment as a beverage — we are led to the follow- 
 ing conclusions: 
 
 " That alcohol cannot in any sense be considered as a necessity 
 for the maintenance of healthy life. 
 
 " That it is not a food in any tnie and practical sense of that 
 term. 
 
 " That labor of the severest kind, mental and bodily, can be 
 carried on without it, and that the steadiest and best work is best 
 done without it. " 
 
 The International Medical Congress, Section on Medicine, 
 held in Philadelphia, 1876, adopted the following conclu- 
 sions concerning the use of alcohol : 
 
 "1. Alcohol is not shown to have a definite food value by any 
 of the usual methods of chemical analysis or physiological inves- 
 tigation. 
 
116 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 " 2. Its use as a medicine is chiefly that of a. cardiac stimulant 
 and often admits of substitution. 
 
 "3. As a medicine it is not well fitted for self-prescription by 
 the laity, and the medical profession is not accountable for such 
 administration or for the enormous evils arising therefrom. 
 
 "4. The purity of alcoholic liquors is in general not as well as- 
 sured as that of articles used for medicine should be. The various 
 mixtures when used as medicine should have definite and known 
 composition and should not be interchanged promiscuously." 
 
 About two hundred physicians, surgeons, etc., of New 
 York, Brooklyn, and vicinity, recently signed the following 
 medical declaration : 
 
 "1. In view of the alarming prevalence and ill effects of intem- 
 perance, with which none are so familiar as members of the medi- 
 cal profession, and which have called forth from eminent English 
 physicians the voice of warning to the people of Great Britain 
 concerning the use of alcoholic beverages, we, the undersigned, 
 members of the medical profession of New York and vicinity, 
 unite in the declaration that we believe alcohol should be classed 
 with other powerful drugs ; that, when prescribed medicinally, it 
 should be with conscientious caution, and a sense of grave re- 
 sponsibility. 
 
 " 3. We are of opinion that the use of alcoholic liquor as a 
 beverage is productive of a large amount of physical disease ; 
 that it entails diseased appetites upon offspring ; and that it is the 
 cause of a large percentage of the crime and pauperism of our 
 cities and country. 
 
 '•3. We would welcome any judicious and effective legislation 
 — State and national — which should seek to confine the traffic in 
 alcohol to the legitimate purposes of medical and other sciences, 
 art, and mechanism." 
 
 The American Medical Association also adopted substan- 
 tially the above declaration. 
 
 Dr. James Edmimds, of London, says: 
 
 " It is admitted by every one that alcohol is the cause of more 
 than half the insanity we have. I am not so familiar with the 
 facts on this subject here as I should naturally be at the other 
 side of the Atlantic. . . . It is a fact which cannot be disputed, 
 that disease of the liver, disease of the lungs, disease of the tis- 
 
' Tlie Voice of Science. 117 
 
 •sues of the body, are induced directly by the use of alcohol, and 
 that, as a general rule, you may say that where you have alcohol 
 used most largely and most frequently there these diseases and 
 degenerations in the tissues of the body become most marked." 
 
 Dr. Willard Parker, of New York, says : 
 
 ' ^ Alcohol has no place in the healthy system, but is an irritant 
 poison, producing a diseased condition of body and mind. It has 
 been demonstrated that the use of alcohol when employed moder- 
 ately, as many young men often use it, as they think with im- 
 punity, makes the average of life thirty-five and a half, while that 
 of non-users reached an average of sixty-four and one-sixth years, 
 a difference of about twenty-nine years to each individual ; a 
 thousand individuals, 39,900." 
 
 Sir Henry Thompson says : 
 
 " I have long had the conviction that there is no greater cause 
 of evil, moral and physical, in this country than the use of alco- 
 holic beverages I do not mean by this that extreme indulgence 
 which produces drunkenness. The habitual use of fermented li- 
 quors to an extent far short of what is necessary to produce that 
 condition, and such as is quite common in all ranks of society, 
 injures the body and diminishes the mental power to an extent 
 which 1 think few people are aware of. Such, at all events, is 
 the result of observation during more than twenty years of pro- 
 fessional life devoted to hospital practice, and to private prac- 
 tice in every rank above it. Thus I have no hesitation in attri- 
 buting a very large proportion of some of the most painful and 
 dangerous maladies which come under my notice, as well as those 
 which every medical man has to treat, to the ordinary and daily 
 use of fermented drink taken in the quantity which is convention- 
 ally deemed moderate.'' 
 
 Dr. N. S. Davis, of Chicago, says : 
 
 " The use of alcoholic drinks diminishes man's capacity to en- 
 dure both mental and physical labor, increases his predisposition 
 to disease, and shortens the average duration of life." 
 
 W. B. Carpenter, M.D., says: 
 
 'Alcohol cannot supply anything which is essential to the 
 due nutrition of the tissues." 
 
118 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 Albert Day, M.D., Superintendent of the Washingtonian 
 Home, says : 
 
 '^ have treated nearly 7,000 cases of inebriety, and ei?hr- 
 tenths of that number originated from wine and malt liquors." 
 
THE VOICE OF SCRIPTURE. 
 
 FROM a vast number of authorities a few names are 
 chosen of men no less able in scholarship than devout 
 in life. Tbey have this advantage over some others, 
 that they wrote after having made a personal and patient 
 examination of tbe whole Bible. 
 
 Rev. Dr. Adam Clark, on Gen. xl. 11, says : 
 
 " From this we find that wine anciently was the mere expressed 
 j^ice of the grape without fermentation. The saky, or cup-bearer, 
 took the bunch, pressed the juice into the cup, and instantly de- 
 livered it into the hands of his master. This was anciently the 
 yayin [wine] of the Hebrews, the oinos [wine] of the Greeks, and 
 the mustum [new fresh wine] of the ancient Latins." 
 
 Bagster's ^' Comprehensive Bible " quotes Dr. Clark with 
 approbation. 
 
 Parkinson, in his " Theatrum Botanicum/' says : 
 
 " The juice or liquor pressed out of the ripe grapes is called 
 vinum [wine]. Of it is made both sapa and defriitum, in English 
 cute — that is to say boiled wine, the latter boiled down to the half, 
 the former to the third part" ("Bible Commentary," xxxvi ) 
 
 This testimony was written about a d. 1640, centuries be- 
 fore there was any temperance organization. 
 
 Dr. Thomas Scott says : 
 
 *' Heavenly blessings are represented by a cup of wholesome, ex- 
 hilarating wine ; but the wrath of God by a cup of wine mingled 
 with ingredients of that kind which tend to produce fear, distress, 
 and despondency ; from this cup (not the other) the Lord dis- 
 penses to sinners." 
 
 119 
 
120 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 Dr. Ralph TVardlaw, of Prov. xxxi. 4-7, says : 
 
 " I pity the state of that man's mind who can . . . allow him- 
 self to suppose that this passage contains an inspired toleration of 
 excess — a permission and encouragement to seek relief in the in- 
 sensibility of intoxication — to make wine the refuge from melan- 
 choly. Would it be fair to set this one passage against the whole 
 Bible ?— one text against its entire scope, and unnumbered posi- 
 tive, and pointed, and damnatory prohibitions ? . . . But when 
 men do take hold of a passage like this, and quote it with a leer 
 while they are putting the bottle to each other's mouths, and 
 drinking themselves drunk, they only discover the bent of their 
 minds." 
 
 Dr. F. R. Lees says : 
 
 " In the Hebrew and Greek Bible a dozen words, with their 
 special meanings, are all hidden under the English terms 'wine' 
 and ' strong drink ' ; and some of these words clearly and undeni- 
 ably denote wn/erme'/i^e^ and w/i/;'/(>j'2C<'<?*/'^ wine. About sixty 
 texts of the authorized version refer to wine (or what is sup- 
 posed to be wine) with approbation, where the context shows or 
 implies it to be a natural and unfermented product. Not more 
 than fifty-two texts can he 'proved, by the context, to refer to in- 
 toxicating wine, and not one of these is connected with the Divine 
 blessing. On the contrary, one-half of them describe it as evil, as 
 a mocker, and a stupefier, or else prohibit it, either in general, or 
 in special cases." 
 
 Again : 
 
 '* The Bible teaches clearly and fully by a series of con- 
 tinuous and consistent testimonies that intoxicating drink is an 
 evil article, poisonous to the body, seductive to the soul, and cor- 
 rupting to the circumstances of man; or to put the idea in another 
 shape, we hold that the Bible vindicates its claim to inspiration 
 by having anticipated on this point the fullest witness of science 
 and having exhausted the teachings of human history." 
 
 Rev. James Smith, M.A., says : 
 
 '•We submit upon the whole question that Scripture teaching 
 cannot be held as sanctioning or commending any kind of intoxi- 
 cating liquor, that all its statements, examined in the light of 
 
Tile Voice of Scripture, 121 
 
 science, experience, and history, are capable of a more satisfactory 
 explanation without the necessity of, that any such sanction is 
 given, and that even if it were given to such fermented wine as 
 was in common use in those days, no argument can warrantably 
 be based on that in favor of our own drinking usages. ... A 
 thorough examination of the subject shows that the Bible is slan- 
 dered when it is represented as sanctionmg such drinking usages 
 as ours, which are the giant curse of our country and the great 
 enemy of religion ; and that Scripture teaching, when rightly 
 read and impartially interpreted, is in perfect harmony with the 
 teaching of science and the testimony of ex-perience. 
 
 "We find, then, that the temperance reformation is in perfect 
 harmony with Scripture principles bearing on personal religion, 
 our duty to our neighbor, and to the cause of God. In view of 
 the relation which drink, and the fashions and customs associated 
 with it, bear to the true character and work of the Christian 
 church as a witness for Christ, does he not say to all his pro- 
 fessed followers through the temperance reformation: 'Lovest 
 thou me more than these 9 ' " 
 
 Rev. Dr. George DuflOield says : 
 
 *' Never has there been a book more abused by wine-bibbers 
 and drunkards, for their justification or excuse, than our English 
 version of the Bible. . . . The contrast given in the sacred Scrip- 
 tures between the wine that intoxicates and that which contains 
 not alcoholic poison is too strong and clear to admit of appeal to 
 them, with any hope of success, by the advocates of moderate 
 drinking. . . . Let all the passages in which wine, according to 
 our English translation, is spoken of be examined in the original, 
 and due respect be paid to the import of their terms, and there 
 will not be found any approval, direct or indirect, of drink that 
 intoxicates." 
 
 Dr. Dawson Burns, in '^ Christendom and the Drink Cfurse,*' 
 says: 
 
 "From all that has been advanced it appears a reasonable con- 
 clusion that the regard to personal well-being which Christianity 
 enjoins, not only for the sake of the individual himself ^ a unit, 
 but also for the sake of the society of which he is a living factor, 
 is better complied with by abstinence from alcoholic beverages 
 than by most-carefuUy regulated use. " 
 
122 Moderation vs. Toted Ahstinence. 
 
 Tayler Lewis, LL.D., says : 
 
 ''Anti -temperance critics are fond of charging the zealous tem- 
 perance advocates with perversions of Scripture and strained in- 
 terpretations. This is doubtless true in some cases, but the fault 
 is far more apt to be on the other side. The whole scope and 
 spirit of a precept is often overlooked by the wine advocate, and 
 some mere contrast or illustration (belonging not to the inspired 
 heart of the passage, but to the necessarily imperfect human lan- 
 guage in which it is conveyed, and to the imperfect human 
 knowledge which is ap inseparable accompaniment of such lan- 
 guage) is elevated into all the dignity and authority of a precept, 
 commanding us directly to drink wine, as though it were good 
 per se — a duty, in fact, the neglect of which would be the slight- 
 ing of the Divine beneficence. The much-talked of sin per se of 
 the other side, however strained and harsh it may sometimes ap- 
 pear, is far more sound and rational. Thus, for example, Proverbs 
 xxxi. 6, 7 is taken by some as not only a perfect justification of 
 wine-drinking as a common practice but even as a command to 
 do so in certain cases. When we look, however, at the whole 
 passage, and study its spirit, we find it to be one of the strongest 
 abstinence texts in the whole Bible." 
 
 Eev. Dr. Albert Barnes, in his commentary on John ii. 10, 
 
 "The wine of Judea was the pure juice of the grape, without 
 any mixture of alcohol, and commonly weak and harmless. It 
 was the common drink of the people, and did not tend to produce 
 intoxication." 
 
 Dr. Patton says : 
 
 " All acquainted with Mr. Barnes know that he would not 
 make «uch a statement until he had given the subject a patient 
 and thorough examination. Having scrutinized all the authori- 
 ties, he has thus recorded upon the printed page his clear and 
 honest convictions." 
 
 The Eev. Dr. Jacobus, commenting on the wine made by 
 Christ, tays : 
 
 " This wine was not that fermented liquor which passes now 
 under that name. All who know of the wines then used will 
 
The Voice of Scrijdiore. 123 
 
 understand rather the nnferraented juice of the grape. The pre- 
 sent wines of Jerusalem and Lebanon, as we tasted them, were 
 commonly boiled and sweet, without intoxicating qualities such 
 as we here get in liquors called wines. The boiling prevents the 
 fermentation. Those were esteemed the best wines which were 
 least strong." 
 
 Dr. John J. Owcd, in his '' Commentary," says : 
 "As wine was a common beverage in that land of vineyards 
 in its unfermented state, our Lord most likely drank it." 
 
 Dr. Patton adds : 
 
 " The Saviour did not turn aside from his work to clear him- 
 self from the charges which malignity and falsehood brought 
 against him. He simply said : ' Wisdom is justified of her chil- 
 dren ' — that is, ' My work and my character will ultimately shield 
 me from the power of all false accusations. Those who know me 
 will not be affected by them, and those who hate me will not 
 cease from their calumny.' " 
 
 Dr. Eliphalet Nott, president of Union College, says: 
 
 " That unfermented grape-juice was called wine is as apparent 
 as it is that it was used as a beverage. It was not only called 
 wine, but it was also accounted to be 'good wine.' . . . The 
 juice of the grape in its natiu-al state is either wine before fer- 
 mentation or it is not. Be it, then, that before fermentation, 
 though often called wine, it is not so, but merely something else 
 out of which wine is made. This admitted, then all the com- 
 mendations of the fruit of the vine previous to fermentation, with 
 which the Bible abounds, are not commendations of loineatall, hut 
 merely commendations of that out of which wine is made; and 
 all the condemnations of wine with which the Bible also abounds 
 are condemnations of the fruit of the vine, not before but after 
 fermentation, and are therefore condemnations not of that out of 
 which wine is made, but condemnations of the veritable article 
 made — wixe itself." 
 
 Again asks Dr. Nott : 
 
 "Can the same thing in the same state be good and bad, a 
 symbol of wrath and a symbol of mercy, a thing to be sought 
 after and a thmg to be avoided ? Certainly not. And is the 
 Bible, then, inconsistent with itself ? No, certainly." 
 
124 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence, 
 
 Rev. Dr. William Patton says : 
 
 *' More than thirty-fire years since, when revising the study of 
 Hebrew with Professor Seixas, an eminent Hebrew teacher, I 
 submitted to him the collation of texts which I had made with the 
 request that he would give me his deliberate opinion. He took the 
 manuscript, and a few days after returned it with the statement: 
 * Your discriminations are just ; they denote that there were two 
 kinds of wine, and the Hebrew Scriptures justify this view.* 
 Thus fortified, I hesitated no longer, but, by sermons and ad- 
 dresses, made known my convictions." 
 
 Commenting on Gal. v., 19-24, Dr. Patton says : 
 
 •* Temperance, which is self-restraint /?'owi, and not iiiy the use 
 of whatever is injurious, is here placed in opposition to drunken- 
 ness. To be safe, abstain." 
 
 Again, closing his work " Bible Wines," he says : 
 
 *' Besides these testimonies, a goodly number of men, well read 
 in ancient lore and learned in the original languages of the Word 
 of God, have, by patient study, been led to the same conclusion. 
 The company of such is rapidly increasing both in Great Britain 
 and America. We do not despair, but confidently believe that the 
 time is not far distant when no drinker, nor vender, nor defender 
 of alcoholic wines will find a shelter and a house of refuge in the 
 Scriptures of God. Let there be light I" 
 
 Dr. G. W. Samson says : 
 
 ** The Egyptians and Hebrews had an unfermented wine, as a 
 chain of authorities from Moses, the historian and lawgiver, to 
 Fuerst, the latest Hebrew lexicographer, attest. . . . Modem 
 investigations lead to the conclusion that tirosh was must, or un- 
 fermented wine. This will appear — for the testimonies to this 
 effect are numerous, and their study most effective — by the tracing 
 of its Hebrew origin, of the cognate Arabic, of the Greek trans- 
 lation made about B.C. 300, of the Talmud comments, of the 
 Latin version of Jerome, prepared about a.d. 400, and of several 
 later versions. . . . ' Wine is a mocker ' ; ' At the last it blteth like 
 a serpent ' ; ' It is not for princes to drink wine ' ; these are unquali- 
 fied in their declaration, and hence all qualified utterances that 
 seem to modify their manifest assertion should not override but 
 be made to harmonize with these declarations." 
 
The Voice of Scrii^tiire, 125 
 
 Prof. Moses Stuart says : 
 
 " ' Facts show that the ancients not only preserved their wines 
 unfermented, but regarded it as of a higher flavor and finer quah- 
 ty than fermented wine.' There is no ancient custom with a bet- 
 ter amount and character of proof than this. ... My final con- 
 clusion is this— viz., that whenever the Scriptures speak of wine 
 as a comfort, a blessing, or a libation to God, and rank it with 
 such articles as corn and oil, they mean— they can mean— on/^ 
 such icine as contained no alcohol that could have a mischievous 
 tendency ; that wherein they denounce it, prohibit it, and con- 
 nect it with drunkenness and revelling, they can mean only alco- 
 holic or intoxicating ivine. 
 
 "If I take the position that God's Word Siudicorks entirely har- 
 monize, I must take the position that the case before us is as I 
 have represented it to be. 
 
 " What, then, is the difficulty in taking the position that the good 
 and innocent wine is meant in all cases where it is commended 
 and allowed ; or that the alcoholic or intoxicating wine is meant 
 in all cases of prohibition and denunciation ? 
 
 "I cannot refuse to take this position, without virtually im- 
 peaching the Scriptures of contradiction or ineonsisteiicy. I can- 
 not admit that God has give liberty to persons in health to drink 
 alcoholic wine without admitting that his Word and his works are 
 at variance. The law against such drinking which he has en- 
 stamped on our nature stands out prominently — read and as- 
 sented to by all sober and thinking men ; is his Word now at 
 variance with this ? Without reserve, I am prepared to answer in 
 the negative." 
 
 Re7. Canon Farrar, D.D., F.R.S., says: 
 
 *' When a youth I was mainly a water-drinker. When I was 
 an undergraduate, although I had heard little or nothing of the 
 temperance movement, I never had once a bottle of wine or spi- 
 rits of any kind in my rooms. When I became a man, my thoughts 
 and energies were greatly turned in other directions, and if I 
 thought of total abstinence at all (which I scarcely ever did), I re- 
 garded it as a somewhat harmless but perfectly amiable eccen- 
 tricity. It was only two years ago that my attention was first seri- 
 ously called to the enormous evil of drink, and to the immense 
 misery it is causing not only throughout the length and breadth 
 of this land, but almost even the entire world. And when I came 
 
126 Moderation vs. Total Abstinence. 
 
 to London, from the first moment when my attention was called 
 to it I almost entirely ceased to touch any fermented liquor; and 
 seeing what I did see — for I suppose none but a London clergy- 
 man in such a parish as mine really knows the extent of the evil 
 — I saw it would become inevitable for me veiy soon to sign the 
 pledge. But I did not wish to act hastily in the matter, or to 
 plunge into it in a sudden fit of enthusiasm. There were certain 
 facts about which I wished to speak from my own knowledge, and 
 certain truths which I wished to resolve from my own experience, 
 and therefore, though I continued to drink water, I did not al- 
 ways refuse wine, for reasons which were well known to my friends, 
 until about a year and a quarter ago, when I signed the pledge at 
 the oflBces of the Church of England Temperance Society." 
 
NATIONAL TEMPERANCE SOCIETI 
 
 Hon. 'Wm. E. Dodge, 
 
 President. 
 
 H. B. Spelman, 
 
 Treasurer. 
 
 J. N. Stearns, 
 
 Cor. Sec. and Pub. Agent. 
 
 THE NATIONAL TEMPERANCE SOCIETY, organized in 1865 for the purpose of sup- 
 pling a sound and able temperance literature, have already stereotyped and publiPhed 
 over eight hundred publications of all sorts and sizes, from the one-page tract up to the 
 bound volume of 500 pages. This list comprises books, tracts, and pamphlets, cont^ning 
 essays, stories, sermons, argument, statistics, history, etc., upon every phase of tl3 ques- 
 tion. Special attention has been given to the department 
 
 FOR SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 
 
 One hundred and eight volumes have already been issued, written by some of the best 
 aathors in the land. These have been carefully examined and approved by the Publication 
 Committee of the Society, representing the various religious denominations and temperance 
 r^rganizations of the country, which consists of the following members : 
 
 PETER CARTER, 
 Rev. W. T. SABINE, 
 A. A. ROBBINS, 
 Rkv. HALSEY MOORE, 
 
 T. a. BROUWER, 
 Rev. R. S. MACARTHUR, 
 J. B. DUNN, D.D., 
 Rev. a. G. LAWSON, 
 J. P. NEWMAN, D.D. 
 
 Rev. ALFRED TAYLOR- 
 R. R. SLNCLAIR. 
 JAMES BLACK, 
 J. N. STEARNS. 
 
 The volumes have been cordially recommended by leading clergymen of all denomina- 
 tions, and by numer-ous Ecclesiastical bodies and Temperance Organizations all over the 
 tand. They should be in every Sunday-school Library. The following is a list of some of 
 the latest and the best issued : 
 
 Our Homes. By Mart Dwinell Chellis. 12mo, 426 pages $150 
 
 Rose Clifton. By Mrs. E. J. Richmond. 12mo, 400 pages | 50 
 
 Over the Way. By Mrs. H. J. Moore. 12mo, 213 pages i QO 
 
 White Hands and White Hearts. By Ernest Gilmore. i2mo, 
 
 278 pages j 00 
 
 Amid the Shadows. By Mrs. M. F. Martin. 12mo, 412 pages. . . 1 25 
 
 Sought and Saved. By Miss M. a. Paull. 12ino, 396 pages 1 25 
 
 True to his Colours. By Rev. T. p. Wilson, M.A. 12mo, 349 pages. 1 25 
 
 step by step. By Mrs. J. McNair Wright. 18mo, 92 pages . 40 
 
 Firebrands. By Mrs. J. McNair Wright. 12mo, 357 pages 1 25 
 
 The Brewer's Fortune. By Mary Dwinell Chellis. 425 pages. 1 50 
 
 Ripley Parsonage. By Faye Huntington. 12mo, 351 pages 1 25 
 
 Mr. Mackenzie's Answer. By Faye Huntington. 352 pages... 1 25 
 
 The Curse of Mill Valley. By Mrs. s. m. hartough. 331 pages, i 25 
 
 His Honor the Mayor. By Helen E. chapman. 395 pages 1 25 
 
 From Father to Son. By Mary Dwinell Chellis. 420 pages... 1 25 
 
 The Pledge and the Cross. By Mrs. s. m. i. henry. 256 pages, i oo 
 The Wife's Engagement Ring. By T. s. Arthur. 278 pages... i 25 
 A More Excellent Way. By Miss m. e. Winslow. 217 pages... i qo 
 
 Alice Grant. By Mrs. E. J. Richmond. 12mo, 352 pages 1 25 
 
 The Queer Home in Rugby Court. By Miss Annette l. noble. 
 
 12mo, 450 pages i 59 
 
 Barford MiHs. By Miss M. E. Winslow. 12mo, 246 pages 1 QO 
 
 Norman Brill's Life- Work. By abbey Eldridge. 218 pages. . . 1 00 
 
 A Day with a Demon. By Mrs. J. McNair Wright. 18mo, 96 pp. 40 
 
 No Danger. By Mary J. hedges. 12mo, 360 pages 1 25 
 
 Coals of Fire. By M. Alice Sweet. 12mo, 252 pages 1 QO 
 
 Caught and Fettered. By Mrs. J. ?. Ballard. i2mo, 252 pages.. 1 00 
 Address J N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent, 
 
 58 Reade Street, New York City, 
 
Text-Book 0F""TEMPERAr^cL 
 
 By Dr. F. JR. LEES, F.8.A., of England. 
 
 Price Reduced. -Price $1 25 in cloth, 50 cents paper cover. 
 This highly important and much needed work is a complete compend <A 
 the theory and doctrine of total abstinence, and of the historical, Biblical 
 physiological, statistical, and philosophical arguments for Teetotalism, con 
 laining all that is necessary to give a thorough and intelligent comprehen. 
 iion of temperance principles and of the duty of individual abstinence. Th« 
 work will be divided into nine parts, in which its subjects will be embraced 
 according to the following summary of contents . 
 
 Part I. — Temperance as a Virtue. Showing how it begins with S«lf- 
 Denial, is opposed to Sensual Gratification, and expresses 
 Obedience to Divine Law. 
 Part II.- -The Chemical History of Alcohol. Embracing the Chemi- 
 
 cal History, Nature, and Properties of Alcohol. 
 Part III.- -The Dietetics of Temperance. Food, Physic, or Poison? 
 Showing that neither Health nor Strength is given by Liquors. 
 Part IV. — The Pathology of Intemperance. Embracing the Question 
 of the Action of Alcohol upon the System, giving Experi- 
 ments, Statistics, and Illustrations. 
 Part V. — The Medical Question. Showing the Nature of Disease and 
 its Remedy ; demonstrating that Alcohol is not a Curative 
 Agent, and presenting a variety of convincing Arguments, 
 Statistics, and Quotations against the Use of Stimulants 
 under the Pretence of Healing Physical Disoiders. 
 Part VI. — Temperance in Relation to the Bible. Embracing Ancient 
 Teetotalism and the Bible Argument for Total Abstinence, 
 popular and critical. 
 Part VII. — Historical. Embracing the History of Drinking Usages, of 
 Attempts in Ancient Times to stop the Evil, and of the Rise 
 and Progress of the Modern Temperance Reformation. 
 Part VIII. — The National Question and the Remedy. Embracing the 
 Results of Intemperance, as exhibited in its Effects upon the 
 Moral, Social, Industrial, and Pecuniary Interests of Men, witb 
 Reliable Statistics, and the History of Prohibition in America 
 Part IX. — The Philosophy of Intemperance. Setting forth the Remedy 
 
 for the Evil — Personal, Social, and National. 
 Part X. — Summary of the Argument. 
 
 Questions upon the text are given at the bottom of the page, so that 
 lessons may be given out to children and youth in schools. Bands of Hope, 
 and families, and in this respect will supply a demand for a permanent, ac- 
 curate, and standard Text-book upon the subject to be introduced into the 
 common schools of the country. 
 
 As to the qualifications of Dr. Lees for the authorship of such a woik, 
 ■othing need be said to those who are acquainted with his published writ 
 Ings ; and to those who are not, it need only be remarked, that his abilities 
 RS a tsmperance writer, his previous studies and labors in every department 
 »f the subject, and his thorough familiarity with the historical, Biblicai, and 
 physiological aspects of the question, point to him as possessing the best 
 qualifications of any man in England or America for such a task. 
 
 No better text-book ever was published for the purpose of educating th« 
 public sentiment of the nation upon the great fundamental doctrines of tb* 
 rarse and the true remedy for the evils of intemperance. 
 The book will be sent bv mail on receipt of price. 
 
 Address J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent, 
 
 US lieade Street^ New York 
 
TEMPERANCE FUBUGATIONS. 
 
 ■♦ « » 
 
 The National Temperance Society have recently published 
 the following pamphlets in cheap form, that they may have a wide cir- 
 culation among temperance workers : 
 
 The Church and Temperance. By Hon. wniiam E.Dodge. 
 
 A valuable paper presented to the Pan-Pre.sbyterian Couticil in Philadel- 
 phia. 12mo, 36pp $0 10 
 
 The Alcoholic Liquor Traffic. By Hon. Charles H. Joyce, 
 M.C. An address delivered before the House of Representatives. 12mo, 
 24 pages 10 
 
 Alcohol and the Church. By Hon. Robert C. Pitman. 12mo, 
 24 pages 10 
 
 Alcohol and the Human Brain. By Rev. Joseph Cook. 
 
 12mo, 24 pages. An able scientific Address 10 
 
 Ten Lectures on Alcohol. By B. W. Richardson, M.D. 
 12mo, 338 pages. Comprising " Cantor Lectures," "Alcohol on the Body 
 and the Mind," "Moderate Drinking," and " The Liberty of the Abject." 
 Cloth, §1.00. Paper edition 50 
 
 Ten Talks on Temperance. By Canon Farrar, D.D. 12mo, 
 200 pages. Cloth, 60 cents ; paper 25 
 
 Temperance Sketches and Stories. By Edward Cars- 
 
 well, 8vo, 80 pages, 60 illustrations. Boards, 50 cts.; Paper covers, 25 
 
 Readings and Recitations. No. 3. By Miss l. Penney. 
 
 Just published. 12mo, 96 pages. Cloth, 60 cts,; paper cover 25 
 
 The favor with which Noa. 1 and 2 were received and the repeated calls for another 
 has resulted in the preparation of No, 3, with many original articles from first-class au- 
 thors. Suitable forreadinojg, recitations, declamation's, etc., in all temperance meetings. 
 
 Juvenile Temperance Reciterii The National Temperance 
 Society have just published a new and valuable collection of 66 Recitations 
 and Declamations in Prose and Verse, for u^e in Sunday-schools, Bands of 
 Hope, and other children's organizations ; written by some of the best 
 writers in the land. 64 pages 10 
 
 Package of Temperance Dialogues. 37 Dialogues, 148 
 
 pages. Adapted for Sunday-schools, Concerts, Bands of Hope, and other 
 juvenile organizations ^ 25 
 
 National Temperance Almanac lo 
 
 This admirable handbook for 1881 is now ready, and full of interesting facts, fissures, 
 and statistics. 72 pages, on tinted paper. 
 
 Christianity Against the Liquor Crime. i3mo, 24 
 
 pages. By G. T. Stewart 05 
 
 Liberty and Union, and The Conflict of Liberty. 
 
 12mo, 24 pages. By G. T. Stewabt 05 
 
 Moral Suasion with Moral Action. By g. t. Stewart. 
 
 12mo, 24 pages 05 
 
 Any of the above sent by mail, on receipt of price. 
 
 Addresa J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent, 
 
 58 Reade Street, New York. 
 
ALCOHOL AND HYGIENE. 
 
 An Eletnentary TeocUBook for Schools, 
 
 laclior of "Catechism on Alcohol," "Juvenile Temperance Manual," and "The Temperanca 
 
 School." 
 
 i2mo, 231 pages. Price 60 cents. 
 
 THE NATIONAL TEMPERANCE SOCIETY has just published a new and valuable 
 text-book on alcohol, with the above title, prepared with great care and skill, by Miss 
 Julia Colmau. It is designed especially to meet the wants of a younger grade of 
 pupils than the '' Temperance Lesson-Book" by Dr, Richardson ; is free from difficult and 
 technical scientific terms, but based upon the latest teachings of enlightened science con- 
 cerning alcohol and its effects upon the human system. 
 
 The great question of temperance, the relations of alcohol to health, are here set forth 
 simply, concisely, and comprehensively. What is alcohol ? how is it made ? and what effect 
 does it have upon those who take much or little under various circumstances ? are the 
 main questions treated as fully as could be expected in a book of this size. The questions 
 at the bottom of every page are so planned as to draw out, in the answers of the scholars, the 
 most important facts. The leading statements also have references to an Appendix, where 
 quotations from well-kno^vn authorities are given in proof, " with chapter and verse " care- 
 fully recorded. It covers in the successive chapters a wide range of topics, which are treated 
 in a familiar, pleasant style, and accompanied by marginal numbered questions for recitu. 
 tion and review. It meets admirably an urgent need of primary, public, and private schools, 
 and \\ ill be a most welcome help in giving temperance instruction in connection with all 
 juvenDe temperance organizations. It should be speedily brought into general use. 
 The following is the table of contents : 
 
 Lesson. 
 
 \,— What is Alcohol? 
 II,— The Origin of Alcohol. 
 HI. — Alcohol from Grapes. 
 IV ,— Alcohol from Grain. 
 \,—The Brewer and the 
 JUaTver, 
 VI. — Distillation of Alcohol. 
 VII.— ^ Bit of Chemistry. 
 TIU^— Alcohol is Greedy of 
 
 Lesson. 
 JLXIL,— Alcohol and Severe Cold. 
 
 XX.— ^ Brain Poison. 
 XXI. — One Cause of Insanity. 
 XXII.— T/ie Great Deceiver. 
 XXIII. — Some Deceits of Alcohol. 
 ILXW.— Would You Like a Clear 
 Head ? 
 XXV.— I>o Ton Want a Steady 
 Sand? 
 Water. ~ 1 XXVI.— ^ Chapter of Accidents. 
 
 Ul..— Alcohol and the Xerves. XXVII,— CWwies Caused lyy Alco- 
 
 X. — Alcohol as a Poisoi%. hoi, 
 
 li.1 —Alcohol in the Stomach. \ JLX.VI11,— Alcohol Wastes JPro- 
 yilt .—Alcohol an Intruder, perty. 
 
 ""''"' "' ' XXIX. — Disease from, Alcohol. 
 
 J\L\.yL.— Death from Alcohol. 
 XXXI.— -J.»t Artificial Apjietite. 
 XXXII.— TF/taJ Shall I Do About 
 It? 
 XXXIII.— TFiue, Cider, and Beer. 
 JLILX-YV ,— Achievements of ub^ 
 stainers. 
 
 'X.m.—The Danger Signal. 
 XIV.— Js Alcohol Food ? 
 XV, — Does Alcohol give 
 Strength? 
 XVI,— T/*c ITat Made by Alco- 
 hol. 
 XVII,— JTow Alcohol Treats the 
 lAver. 
 XAFIW.—Alcohol in Hot Climates. 
 
 Address J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent, 
 
 58 Reade Street, New York. 
 
Talks on Temperance 
 
 BY 
 
 Rey. Ganon Fakrar, D.D, F.E.S. 
 12mo, 198 pages; cloth, 60 cents; paper cover, 25 cents. 
 
 The National Temperance Society has recently piiblislied 
 the 12 Sermons and Talks by this eminent divine. They are 
 iilled with sound convincing arguments against the lawfulness, 
 morality, and necessity of the Liquor Traffic, as well as stirring 
 appeals to all Christian men and women, to take a firm, decided, 
 outspoken stand in favor of Total Abstinence from all intoxica- 
 ! ting liquors. 
 
 i He gives the trumpet no uncertain sound, when he proclaims 
 I war against Alchohol, but urges every motive, and brings to bear 
 \ every incentive, to enlist recruits from every class. 
 
 OVER 40,000 COPIES 
 
 > jave already been sold in England, and we trust that, with the 
 ^ery low price at which they are sold, they will secure a wide cir^ 
 culation in every community. The following is the Table of 
 
 OOIVTEIVTS: 
 
 1. Betiireen the Living and the Dead. 
 
 2. Reasons for Being an Abstainer. 
 
 3. Total Abstinence for the Sake of Ourselves and others. 
 
 4. The Vow of the Nazarite. 
 
 5. The Vow of the Rechabites. 
 
 6. The Serpent and the Tiger. 
 
 7. Our Duty as a Nation. 
 
 8. Abstinence from Evil. 
 
 9. Address to Teachers. 
 
 10. Experience of a Total Abstainer. 
 
 11. Duty of the Cliwrcli. 
 
 12. Fallacies about Total Ab^tlaience. 
 
 It will be sent by mail on receipt of price. 
 
 Address J. N. STEA.RNS, Publishing Ageut, 
 
 58 Reade Street , New York 
 
TEN LECTURES ON ALCOHOL 
 
 By BENJAMIN W. RICHARDSON, M.A., M.D., F.R.S. 
 
 Fellow of the Royal College of Physiciant^ London, etc. 
 
 i2mo, 340 pages, cloth, $1.00. Paper covers, 50 cents 
 
 The National Temperance Society have just published in one 
 volume all the Lectures by Dr. Richardson on Alcohol, which n:iakes one 
 of the most valuable and cheapest books ever published. It comprises 
 the following : 
 
 On Alcohol. With an Introduction by Dr. Willard Parker, of 
 
 NewYork 100 
 
 This book contains the " Cantor Lecturee " delivered before the Society of 
 Arts. These justly celebrated lectures, six in number, embrace a historical sketch 
 O* alcoholic distillation, and the results of an exhaustive scientific inquiry con- 
 ;ming the nature of alcohol and its eflFects upon the human body and mind, 
 /hey have attracted much attention throughout Great Britain, both among phy- 
 •icians and general readers, and are the latest and best scientific expositions of 
 Jcohol and its effects extant. 
 
 The Action of Alcohol on the Body and on the ]^ind. st 
 
 Two able and important lectures, the result of careful and extended research- 
 M as to the results of alcohol from a scientific stand-point, and are among the 
 rWest contributions to this branch of the subject. 
 
 'Moderate Drinking^; For and Against, from Scientific Points 
 
 of View 47 
 
 It is a thoroughly scientific and impartial discussion of the subject of the 
 moderate use of alcoholic beverages, by one who stands in the front rank of 
 }he most distinguished scientists in Great Britain, and .is such possesses a rare 
 value for circulation among the young, and all who may not yet have arrived at 
 mature convictions as to total abstinence. It is one of the moat valuable con- 
 Iributions its gilted author has yet made to temperance literature. It ought to be 
 In the hands of all college students, and of young men, ministers, teachers, 
 and intelligent people eveiywhere. 
 
 The Hedical Profession and Alcohol. An Address 
 
 before the British Medical Association 33 
 
 It is a scientific plea for total abstinence, of great power. It embodies 
 »1bo a very earnest appeal to members of the medical profession to join in the 
 pending vitally important warfare against alcoholic beverages. It is a most valu- 
 able puolication to place in the hands of the physicians of this country, among 
 whom it should have the widest possible circulation. 
 
 The Liberty of the Abject, and Kl^hy I became 
 
 an Abstainer 13 
 
 S4Q 
 
 Addrew J. N STEARNS, Publishing Agent, 
 68 Beade Street, New York, 
 
University of 
 Connecticut 
 
 Libraries 
 
 39153027290461