Church Action on Temperance [pp. 595-632]

on Temperance.
the whole matter of total abstinence should be left where the
Scriptures leave it, to the prudence, philanthrophy, and good
sense of God's children, each man having liberty herein to do
as to him shall seem right, upon his accountability to God.
4. Abstinence from intoxicating drinks as a matter of Christian expediency, according to the words of the Apostle in
Romans xiv. 21, is to be unhesitatingly and cordially approved,
and every effort should be made to prevent the introduction of
any other principle as the ground of total abstinence, or of any
pledge thereto.
This injunction we shall do our best to follow.
We differ from the declaration of the last Assembly only in
so far as it. is at variance with the foregoing, in affirming, unconditionally, and irrespective of circumstances, " the manufacture, sale, and use of alcoholic stimulants as a beverage, to be
contrary to the spirit of God's Word, and wholly inconsistent
with the claims of Christian duty." We see not how, on any
fair interpretation of the Scriptures, this fails to array the
"spirit of God's Word" against its express teachings, and our
Saviour's example.
We could go, too, very far with the former deliverances of our
New School brethren in favor of stringent legal restraint, even
up to prohibition, if not always adopting their precise phraseology. This we avowed two years ago, in the following words:
"We will heartily join in efforts to promote abstinence on this
ground (expediency), even to the extent of supporting prohibitory legislation so far as the public will sustain it."-Princeton
Review, 1869, July No., pp. 412, 413.
The next great deliverance of the Assembly (O. S.) differed
from all others that we have met with in our own or other communions. Admitting that all obligation to total abstinence
from the making, vending, or using intoxicating drinks is found ed, not on their intrinsic immorality, but on expediency, and
basing its extended argument wholly on the Apostle's appeal to
Christians to abstain from certain things indifferent on this
ground, it concludes that the refusal thus to abstain is a disci plinable offence; thus taking the new, and, as we think, self contradictory ground, that the performance of acts from which
the Apostle dissuades us, on the ground of Christian expediency,
1871.]
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