Church Action on Temperance [pp. 595-632]

Church Action
and allowed as to its temperate use in Scripture, is intoxicating
if used in excess, a position which we think cannot be success fully imnpugned, then the doctrine that all making or drinking
of beverages, in whatever circumstances, that can intoxicate is
sinful, does, by necessary and immediate logical consequence,
impeach the morality of Christ and His word, whatever may be
intended. Judicious Christians dared not impale the temperance
cause on such an alternative as that. And they dared not in
conscience expose their faith and religion to be thus sapped at its
foundations.* They were and are conscience-bound in the matter. And unless some other basis for urging total abstinence
could be found, they felt bound to let it go-however deartheir Saviour and their religion were still dearer. But they
found such a basis in the law of Christian expediency and the
dictates of Christian love, which bid us forego the use and
enjoyment of things ill themselves innocent, when we perceive
that such self-denying abstinence will promote our own or
others' edification, in accordance with the exhortations of the
Apostle, Rom. xiv., 1 Cor. viii., x.-as already set forth in our
quotations from British and Continental Temperance Reformers, the true import of which Scriptures we propose carefully
to examine in a subsequent stage of this article. It is sufficient
for our present purpose to say that here was found a ground for
urging total abstinence which did not logically involve any impeachlment of the morality of Christ or His word, on the one
hand, nor necessitate any wresting of the Scriptures, by strained
rationalistic exegesis, into a non-natural meaning on the other.
On this ground the great majority of Christian total abstainers
in this and other countries rest. If it is undermined, the cause of
temperance, as dependent on abstinence, is also undermined. For,
in our opinion, not one in twenty who practise it, does so, or feels
any obligation to do so, on any other ground. Still there has been
a numerous body of abstinence men outside of, and more or
less within, the Church who have not been satisfied with this
view. They think it leaves some liberty in the matter to each
person's conscience and judgment as to abstaining or not abstaining, and that no adequate headway can be made against
* Dr. Hewit and other pioneers in the temperance cause held this ground to
the last.
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