Religious and educational aspects of temperance / by various authors.

Date:
[1874?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Religious and educational aspects of temperance / by various authors. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    58/172 (page 54)
    ciple which, we have seen laid down: that “ it is wrong to attempt the removal of evil hy any means which do not reach the source from whence that evil arisesand we ask those who are inclined to maintain this doctrine in the case of intemperance, to consider what the result would he if it were to he applied to the crimes of robbery, arson, murder, &c. If the principle above stated be good in the one case, it is good in all; and the conclusion to which it would reduce us is simply this—that all the merely moral and physical restraints upon which civilisation is so dependent, ought to be given up; that the authority of parents, and of magistrates, and all the wholesome checks which public opinion brings to bear on our various social evils, are not only useless but altogether wrong. The simple fact is, that intemperance, like many other crimes, partakes of the twofold character of a sin against God, and of a great social evil; and that whilst, in so far as it is a sin, the grace of God is the only remedy, it is never- theless our duty to seek, by all lawful means within our reach, to repress its development as a social evil. There are many sins which do not assume the form of social evils; there are also social evils, such as famine and pestilence, &c., which may not be the result of sin; and there are social evils which partake of a sinful character, and which we must seek to remove, although the means we employ may not “ reach the moral source from whence the evil arises.” Viewing intemperance as a social and physical evil, how- ever, Total Abstinence does reach its source : it being self- evident that it could have no existence but for the use of intoxicating liquors. Indeed the physical and social bear- ings of this question have been sadly too much overlooked. How different are the effects produced in different indi- viduals by the use of intoxicatin liquors : we see men as