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V 
 
 Papers on Prohibition 
 
 BY 
 
 GEO. J. LOW, 
 
 RECTOR OF ST. PAUL'S CHURCH, 
 
 ALMONTE, ONTARIO, CANADA. 
 
 REPUBLISHED FROM THE BR0CK7ILLE (ONTARIO) TIMEa WITH THE 
 PERMISSION OP THE AUTHOR. 
 
 > « ♦!< 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 The United States Brewers' Associatiom. 
 
 1887. 
 
 11 
 
■ilipll 
 
 J 
 
Papers on Prohibition 
 
 BY 
 
 GEO. J. LOW, 
 
 RECTOR OF ST. 1 .UL'S CHURCH, 
 
 ALMONTE, Ontario. Canada. 
 
 REPUBLISHED PROM THE BROUKVILLE (ONTARIO) TIMES WITH THE 
 PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR. 
 
 I I ♦ »"•- 
 
 NEW YORK 
 The United States Brewers' Association. 
 
 1887. 
 
 t' 
 
IN DEX. 
 
 PAGES. 
 
 Letter to G. Thomanu, Esq ,_- 
 
 Papers on Proiiujition : 
 
 No. I — Introductory , g.j^ 
 
 No. II— Prohibition vs. Temperance — Prohibition anti-Chris- 
 tian—Proofs thereof in Prohibition Literature 13-16 
 
 No. Ill—" Different Hebrew Words " i6-ig 
 
 No IV— W. C. T. U. and Communion Wine 20-24 
 
 No. V— New Test— Bible and Science — War Notes 24-27 
 
 No. VI— Consumption— Heart Disease— Bronchitis 27-31 
 
 No. VII—" Science," a hi Prohibition 31-36 
 
 No. VIII— Prohibition Arguments— Slavery— Beer— Egg in Al- 
 cohol — Liebig — 2,000 M.D.'s 36-40 
 
 No. IX— Prohibition Arguments (continued)— "Uuke men 
 
 sneaks" ^0-43 
 
 No. X— r rohibitionists' Exaggerations 44-49 
 
 No. XI— Does Prohibition prohibit ?— Substitutes for Alcohol, 
 
 Opium, etc 49-52 
 
 No. XII — Alcohol as a Brain Invigorator 52-58 
 
 No. XIII — Alcohol as a Brain Invigorator {continued) 5S-62 
 
 No. XIV— Queries addressed to Men of Science 62-65 
 
 No. XV— Summing uji — Conclusion 06-72 
 
 Appendix- The First Miracle of Christ and Prohibition : a Sermon 
 preached in St. Peter's Church, Brockville, on the 
 
 second Sunday after Epiphanj (17th January), 1886, 73-79 
 
\ 
 
G. THOMANN, Esq., Manager Literary Bureau, 
 
 U. S. Brewers' Association. 
 
 My dear Sir : 
 
 It is with very great pleasure I accord you the permis- 
 sion you ask to republish my Papers on Prohibition in pamphlet 
 form ; and I accord it the more readily, because I am indebted 
 to your valuable publications, with which you kindly furnished 
 me, for so much of the matter contained in these papers of mine. 
 
 Besides yourself, allow me here to express my obligations to 
 Rev. J. R. Sikes, of Perrysville, Ohio ; to Rev. Dr. Carry, of 
 Port Perry, Ont., and to Rev. Dr. Jewett, from all of whose pub- 
 lications I have quoted ; and also to Geo. Bousfield, Esq., of 
 Glencoe, Ont., for the loan of most valuable litemture — compila- 
 tions of statistics on the subject of the working of prohibition in 
 Maine, Kansas and elsewhere, etc., etc. I have not quoted Mr. 
 Bousfield's figures, but have boldly stated his deductions. I have 
 endeavored to write ad populumj and I know that, to reach the 
 minds of the majority, intricate and elaborate arguments and 
 long arrays of dry figures are useless. I have therefore given 
 certain conclusions which, if necessary, can be substantiated by 
 an appeal to your works and the figures of Mr. Bousfield, 
 
 It is to me most painful that so many men — educated men, 
 clergymen, physicians, men high in social position — should say to 
 me, as they have said over and over again : " What you have 
 written is quite true ; we endorse every word of it ; but then it is 
 injudicious to write so." Can it be "injudicious," in the right 
 sense of the word, to speak the truth ? Of course, it was "injudi- 
 cious " in the prophets and confessors of old to speak as they 
 did : it brought no end of trouble upon themselves ; but we have 
 to thank their " injudiciousness " for the freedom and light which 
 we enjoy to-day. 
 
 Others, again — even of my clerical brethren — have urged upon 
 me : " We quite agree with you ; prohibition is a mistake and a 
 
\ 
 
 1 
 
 great evil ; but there, hush ! let it alone, it is an evil that will cure 
 itself." Are the ministers of the Gospel to let all evil alone on 
 this plea ? If we are bound, as we are, by our Ordination Vows 
 to "b:.nish and drive away all false doctrine," must the minister 
 of the Gospel who honestly believes the doctrine of prohibition 
 to be false, — subversive of the Christian faith, subversive of true 
 morality, and productive of far greater evils than those which it 
 strives to abolish — must he be hounded and persecuted, while all 
 applause for holy zeal is accorded to the minister who (with equal 
 honesty, of course,) goes stumping the country in favor of pro- 
 hibitory enactments ? 
 
 Those of the clergy of Canada who still use, from conviction, 
 fermented wine at the Holy Communion, and withal keep dumb 
 on this question of prohibition, may yet, perhaps be subject to the 
 indignities that were offered to the Lutheran congregation in 
 Decorah, Iowa, when a policeman walked into the church, for- 
 bade the use of wine, and threatened to arrest the communicants. 
 This event, which occurred (14th May, 1887,) since the writing 
 of my papers, is a striking commentary on the forebodings of 
 paper No. 4. 
 
 There is another class, for »vhom one feels more than pity, 
 one feels contempt. I refer to that large class of those who are 
 habitual consumers of mare or less alcohol, and who always 
 intend to be so, whatever the law may be. These people, never- 
 theless, think it is not a clergyman's business to interfere in this 
 matter. They conceive that a clergyman should not run against 
 the popular prejudice. However, for their part, they mean to get 
 their alcohol all the same — surreptitiously or somehow, prohi- 
 bition or no prohib'tion — and if it does cost them a little more, 
 .why, their pockets can stand it. "Oh, generation of vipers!" 
 one is tempted to exclaim, in the words of holy scorn which our 
 Blessed Lord used against the hypocrites of His day. If prohi- 
 bition is right then go in for it — honestly, manfully, whole-heart- 
 edly ; give up your wines and beer and spirits altogether, as you 
 want the poor man to do. If you don't intend to do this, and yet 
 advocate prohibition — or what is as bad, by your cowardly silence 
 and apparent acquiescence, let judgment go by default — then you 
 are simply acting the hypocrite. The man who votes or works 
 for prohibition and yet slyly takes his alcohol — in whatever 
 shape — beer, wine or whiskey — is just as much a hypocrite and 
 
' 
 
 vil 
 
 criminal as the illicit dealer or peddler who votes for prohibition 
 because it puts money in his pocket. 
 
 "Party Government," it is alleged, is the bane of all true 
 statesmanship. We would suggest that " Party Government " 
 must always be. But the trouble is that political parties cling 
 too much to historical reminiscences and dead issues. The dan- 
 ger ever lies in the formation of a Third party on some living 
 quesMon of the day. Such party, finding itself in the minority 
 and yet independent of both political parties, is tempted to sell 
 itself to the highest bidder : and though insignificant in itself, is 
 yet able to throw its weight into the scale of either of the oppos- 
 ing historical parties and so kick the beam. 
 
 This is the danger before us. Let then the prohibition ques- 
 tion be made a direct " party " question. Let us for the nonce 
 throw aside our old party names of Democrat and Republican in 
 the U. S. and of Tory ai.d Grit in Canada, and let the question 
 be put fairly and squarely before the people : Prohibition or 
 Christian Freedom ; and I have no doubt as to what the honest 
 verdict of the people will be. 
 
 Yours, very truly, 
 
 if 
 
 G. J. LOW. 
 
 St. Paul's Church Rectory, 
 
 Almonte, Ontario, Canada, 
 4th August, 1887. 
 
 

'■ 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 No. I. 
 
 INTRODUCTOKY. 
 
 BY the kindness of the editor I am allowed space in the col- 
 umns of the Times to express my views on the most moment- 
 ous question of prohibition. I shall write very plainly and 
 frankly; and I wish it to be understood that whatever appears in 
 these papers is simply the expression of my own convictions, for 
 which I alone am responsible : and I am ready to bear that re- 
 sponsibility before God and man. The Times simply accords me 
 space to assert wl ..t I think sadly needs asserting, in no timid 
 tones, in this critical state of affairs in Canada. For this reason — 
 because I wish to avow my own individual responsibility — I shall 
 use, oftener than would be otherwise seemly, the " first person 
 singular." 
 
 That I am an anti-prohibitionist, my sermon published a year 
 ago proclaimed. I have not yet seen a confutation of that 
 sermon, but all such arguments as its critics have advanced shall 
 be dealt with in the course of these papers.* 
 
 I might claim some indulgence, as the advocate of the un- 
 popular side, but I do not ask it. Any reader of prohibitionist 
 literature knows that indulgence to those of adverse views is not 
 to be looked fur from thence. But I beg my readers to bear in 
 mind that it calls for moral courage now-a-days to proclaim one- 
 self an anti-prohibitior.ist. Time was —and that scarcely a genera- 
 tion ago — when it required great moral courage for a man to say 
 "I am a total abstainer." Now the tide has altogether set the 
 other way, and a man who has any regard for public opinion 
 requires some courage to say, " I am not a total abstainer." 
 
 I know, lOO, and am prepared for, the showers of invective and 
 ill names that will be hurled on me for the stand I mean to take. 
 One has only to read the speeches of prohibitionists, such as 
 
 • The sermon here referred to will be found at the end of this pamphlet 
 
10 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION, 
 
 I 
 
 those of the Hon. J. B. Finch, to see what they can do in that 
 line. But I cannot help that. The Master we serve told us to 
 expect abuse ; and He Himself, though holy, harmless and un- 
 defiled, did not escape obloquy. His enemies could find no fault 
 in Him save one; they called Him a "drunkard." "Behold a 
 gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, a friend o^ publicans and 
 sinners " — and He says, " If they have called the Master of the 
 house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his 
 household." 
 
 I know, too — and this I do feel most keenly, it is the most 
 painful part of all to me — that I shall incur the reproaches of 
 many who have had tenible experiences of the evils of intemper- 
 ance. I know that many wives, many mothers, many daughters 
 are to-day rendered miserable, plunged in despair through the 
 wreckage in life of their husbands, or sons, or brothers from the 
 excess of drink ; and who, naturally enough, see the only cure 
 for all this frightful state of things, the panacea for all these dis- 
 astrous evils, in the prohibitionist cry : " Ftop the traffic." I know 
 there are men, too, who suffer in the same way ; for, alas ! there 
 are drunken mothers and wives and daughters, as well as sott'sh 
 men. I know there are Christian temperance women who will be 
 ready to cry : " You are thwarting and undoing our work ! You 
 are placing temptation before our boys, whom we are trying by 
 our new legislation to shield from danger ! " I grant that this is 
 the most painful consideration of all in approaching this subject ; 
 this it is which has shut the mouths of many, who yet cannot en- 
 dorse this new policy of prohibition. But it is high time that in 
 this matter, which is rapidly becoming a national and political 
 one, we should learn to speak the truth, the whole truth, and 
 nothing but tne truth ; and putting mere sentiment and feeling to 
 one side, follow th t truth wherever it leads ; for out of truth 
 only can ultimate good come. 
 
 Yes, Christian mothers, what I am going to say will bring 
 danger before yorr boys. But danger is the lot of man ; your 
 boys will be surrounded with danger whatever their sphere in life. 
 There is danger in alcohol, I freely admit, just as there is danger 
 in everything. 
 
 How many mothers are there that are ready to curse the noble 
 river that flows at our doors ? And no wonder ; for its waters 
 have engulfed many a precious and promising young life. I 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 II 
 
 deeply sympathize with their feelings. But still I say to you, 
 young men : — Go upon that St. Lawrence ; go and paddle, and 
 row, and sail, and swim. How many mothers are there that 
 dread the very sight and name of a railroad, because their boys 
 have been crippled for life, or crushed to death ! I feel for them 
 keenly ; and yet I say to you, young men : Go and work on the 
 railroad ; go and couple cars, and ride on the death-dealing loco- 
 motive ; fulfil your duties, no matter what the danger. How many 
 mothers are there who weep and refuse to be comforted because 
 their loys lie buried in the battlefield ! It is a sad and awful 
 thought. Still I say to. you, young men: Go and learn your 
 drill, and fight for your country when she calls. How many 
 a mother curses the day when gunpowder was invented, as she 
 thinks of the ghastly accident that happened to her boy ! It is 
 quite natural. I appreciate her sentiments. Still I say to you, 
 young men : Go and hunt and shoot. Only in all these cases — 
 whether on the water, or among railroad cars, or handling 
 weapons of destruction — take care ; exercise your vigilance, your 
 self-control, your manliness. And so I tell you, young men, re- 
 garding aicohol. The danger is before you to-day in spite of all 
 the Scott Acts. If ever the system of prohibition is perfected, it 
 will rot be till long after you are in your graves. You can get 
 alcohol to-day, and to-morrow, and all the time, surreptitiously, 
 sneakingly, if you cannot openly. Alcohol is a most tremendous 
 force — there is danger in it as in all forces. But I call upon you 
 not to shirk danger, but to face it, battle with it, master it. My 
 experience recalls hundreds of men, now living upright, noble, 
 godly lives, who, from their earliest years, have been iccustomed 
 to see wine and beer on their fathers' tables, and have partaken 
 of the same from their very childhood ; and again my experience 
 can point to many miserable sots, who were brought up in strict 
 " temperance " homes. 
 
 No, fleeing from danger is not the right course ; true man- 
 liness belongs to those who " out of the nettle danger " can pluck 
 the flower of benefit and use. That is the kind of education that 
 I feel the youth of Canada needs. 
 
 Only the other day I read in the Canada Citizen, that the 
 church which used fermented wine in the Holy Communion in- 
 troduced the communicant to "the first step in the downward 
 path — the first step of the drunkard." 
 
 m 
 
■ 
 
 12 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION 
 
 \'. 
 
 Well, be it so. I wish to tell you, young men, that at the 
 altars of the Church of England you will never taste anything c oC 
 than fermented wine. Yet, in the name of God, we invite you 
 to that Holy Table. "As the ministers of Christ and stewards of 
 the mysteries of God," and speaking by His authority, we invite 
 you to — the first step of the drunkard ! 
 
 Now, what do you think of that .'' I will tell you what I think 
 of it. There is a struggle impending between prohibition 
 and Christianity, and the question will ultiruately have to be 
 raised in our politics : — Who is on the Lord's side ? I would 
 never think of taking up this question of prohibition, except that 
 I feel that it is a question in which tho truth of God and of His 
 word is involved. It is an insult to our Lord and Master ; it is a 
 device of Satan to undo the work of the Church of Christ, for we 
 know he has often "transformed himself into an angel of light." 
 The Mail newspaper, which has lately made such a fuss about 
 "The Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible,"* is 
 at the same time advocating measures which are in direct opposi- 
 tion to the whole genius and spirit of the Bible. If the Af ail's 
 prohibition principles prevail it will have to get up a new volume 
 of " Scripture Selections " compared with which the far famed 
 Ross Bible f will be a trifle. 
 
 If prohibition were a mere political party scheme, I should be 
 the last to touch it ; but when men encroach upon the doctrines 
 and truths of the Word and Church of God, under cover, however 
 Pharisaic, of a regard for morals, it is lime for ministers of His 
 Word and Church to speak out. My object will be to prove that 
 Almighty God did not make a mistake in not enjoining prohibi- 
 tion ; for I shall set myseif to show that the principles of prohi- 
 bition are opposed to the Word of God ; opposed to liberty and 
 progress ; opposed to science ; opposed to the experience and 
 history of the world ; and degrading and demoralizing to the 
 
 * I wish I could believe in its sincerity ; but only last May it had some leading articles 
 of such a violently agnostic type, and speaking so seornfiUly of the Scriptures, that I felt it 
 my duty to reply to them in my sermons. 
 
 t The "Ross Bible" was a volume of selections from Scripture, which, after being 
 approved of i)y the ministers of the various denominations, including the Roman Catholics, 
 was authorized by the Ontario Government to be used in the schools instead of the whole 
 Bible. The Hon. Mr. Ross, the Minister of Education, was thereupon violently assailed by 
 the Mail, the organ of the Opposition, as trucliling to the Roman Catholics. About the 
 *a.ne time the Mail censed from becoming a " party " organ, and it now poses as Protestant 
 and prohibitionist. 
 
 H 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 13 
 
 community. I shall essay to answer every argument I ever heard 
 of in its defence — and I have read a good deal of prohibitionist 
 literature — and to show that Canada is just now suffering from a 
 blizzard of prohibition violence that is doing vast harm. In en- 
 deavoring to cast out the unclean spirit of drunkenness by such 
 unrighteous means, we are letting in seven devils more wicked than 
 itself, so the last state of this fair land of ours will be worse 
 than the first. 
 
 No. II. 
 
 PROHIBITION m. TEMPEEANCE — PROHIBITION ANTI-CHRISTIAN — PROOFS 
 THEREOF IN PROHIBITION LITERATURE. 
 
 Throughout these papers I intend to use the terms " Prohibi- 
 tion " and " Alcohol." I shall not use more than is necessary the 
 word " Temperance," for it has been sadly prostituted and made 
 to do duty in all sorts of dubious ways. And I shall talk of 
 alcohol — because, though I fully concur with the Liberal Tem- 
 perance Union in desiring to see fermented liquors preferred to 
 distilled, yet I freely concede to the prohibitionist that the active 
 principle of them all is one and the same. Alcohol is alcohol 
 whether in cider or in brandy ; and if its consumption is wrong 
 in principle, then the rich man sipping his champagne is just as 
 guilty as the poor man taking his glass of whiskey and water. It 
 is alcohol, under whatever guise, which is brought before the bar, 
 and it is alcohol for which I plead. 
 
 Again, I would not for a moment cast the slightest aspersion 
 upon any of the temperance societies. When acting within 
 legitimate limits, they are doing, and have done, good work. 
 I would not and I do not cast any reflection on those who feel 
 it to be their duty or their interest to abstain. I, at least, will 
 strive to keep my part of St. Paul's injunction (Romans xiv, 3), 
 " Let not him which eateth despise him that eateth not." I 
 would that prohibitionists observed their share of that text : '' Let 
 not him that eateth not judge him that eateth." And here let 
 me pay my tribute of admiration in this particular (for I have the 
 misfortune of not being a disciple of his in other respects) to the 
 manly Christian utterances of Hon. Edward Blake, in his speech 
 
 m 
 
14 
 
 PAPERS OA' PROHIBITION. 
 
 on " Prohibition," reported in the Globe of loth January, He, at 
 all events, carries out St. Paul's injunction : total abstainer as he 
 is, he can say : " I have no sympathy whatever with the abuse 
 poured on those honest men who .... are not yet convinced of 
 the duty of total abstinence. There are among these many better 
 men than some of those who abuse them." For such utterances 
 he has had, as a matter of course, abuse heaped on himself. 
 
 Now, apart from all other considerations, I object to these 
 good people trying to monopolize the word "temperance." 
 This, by the way, does not apply to the " Church of England 
 Temperance Society," for this society differs from all others in 
 that it admits non-abstainers to its membership. By this course 
 it declares that one need not be a total abstainer to be a tem- 
 perate man, and so implicitly condemns prohibition. But all other 
 '* temperance " societies would confine the term to the total 
 abstainer. Now, as I have said, I find no fault with a man for 
 abstaining ; it may be his duty to do so : I find no fault with him 
 for taking a vow to that effect : I find no fault with him for 
 joining in a brotherhood with others like-minded, any more than 
 I find fault with those who elect to take the vow of celibacy. 
 There is a great deal more said in the New Testament about the 
 advantages of celibacy {e. g. I. Cor. vii) than there is about the 
 advantages of total abstinence from alcohol : in fact there is 
 nothing at all said about the latter. There is a good deal said in 
 the New Testament about the spiritual advantages of renouncing 
 all right to property [e. g. S. Matt, xix. Acts ii, iv) "for the 
 Gospel's sake." These doctrines are well understood in Catholic 
 Theology as "Counsels of Perfection" (Matt, xix, ii, 12, 21, 25, 
 26), that is to say, these counsels are intended, not for Christians 
 universally, but for those specially called to such a life — not for 
 the many but for the few. Our Blessed Lord did not enjoin 
 universal communism when he said to the young man, " If thou 
 wilt be perfect go and sell all that thou hast." I have, then, 
 nothing but respect for those who out of love for God and desire 
 to devote their lives to his service take vows of celibacy, and 
 band themselves into communities to further their aims. But I 
 do object to one thing — it is a small matter, perhaps, it may seem 
 like a mere wrangling about words ; still " little leaks may sink 
 great ships." I object to their calling this vow of celibacy by 
 the name of the vow of " chastity." Now, I submit that the bride 
 
PROHIBITION vs. TEMPERANCE. 
 
 15 
 
 
 and bridegroom, as they stand before the altar, take the vow of 
 chastity just as much as any celibate. I know, of course, that it 
 is only used in what may be called a technical sense ; but the 
 technical sense is too apt to become the conventional one. And 
 so I object to the terms " temperance " and " chastity " being 
 appropriated by those specialists ; bt ause temperance and chas- 
 tity are of universal obligation ; but such " temperance " and such 
 "chastity," if universally practised, would speedily put an end to 
 the human race. 
 
 I hope, then, it is perfectly understood that I wage war, not 
 with any legitimate efforts to diminish drunkenness, but with 
 prohibition. I am glad the question has now shaped itself into 
 one of national prohibition. For a long time one could feel that 
 all the " temperance " talk was shaping that way. Now " tem- 
 perance " has at last shown the cloven foot ; it has told us what it 
 means to accomplish, and we can fight it on that plain issue. 
 And I first charge against prohibition, that it is not only un- 
 scriptural but anti-scriptural. I shall not dwell on this point at 
 greater leng.h than is absolutely necessary (my published sermon 
 has given the outlines of the argument). But to show the insidi- 
 ous nature of this new propagandism — to show that its tendency 
 is to lower the tone of Christian faith, and make the Gospel of 
 Christ subservient to itself, I quote two eminent prohibitionist 
 authorities : 
 
 1. The Rev. J. Benson Hamilton, of the Cornell Memorial 
 Meth. Epis. Church, Chicago, in a lecture on " God's wine, man's 
 wine and the devil's wine " thus delivers himselt : 
 
 " If " (mark the " if ") " the Bible commends wine-drinking 
 and thus intemperance ! the Lord Jesus cannot be my example." 
 
 2. The second instance {Iwrresco re/erens) is from the Chris- 
 tian Advocate of the M. E. C. in the U, S., edited by Rev. C. H. 
 Fowler, D.D., L.L.D. " If" (mark the "if" again) "Christ made 
 alcoholic wine. He must be put on his trial, not as a sot, but as 
 a moderate drinker, who, according to the law of human nature 
 with so many illustrations, was possibly saved from becoming an 
 example for sots by being crucified in early manhood." 
 
 Now I will not stop to dilate on the horrible blasphemy of the 
 above ; for what do such prohibitionists care for the third com- 
 mandment or any of the ten, if it interferes with their new com- 
 
lb 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 m 
 
 mandment, " Thou shalt not take alcohol ?" I simply beg my 
 readers to observe this : that these two authorities avow them- 
 selves "Christians if you please, but prohibitionists first." Their 
 faith in Christ is contingent upon its being satisfactorily proved 
 that He was a total abstainer. This can never be done, and the 
 amount of exegetical gerrymandering that has been indulged in 
 to distort passages of Holy Scripture to suit the views of those 
 who confess that they cannot believe in Christ unless He were 
 a total abstainer, is a disgrace to our common Christianity. It 
 shows, if nothing else, how degrading and demoralizing prohibi- 
 tion is. 
 
 Thank God, the Church of England will have none of this 
 scandalous word-twisting. She has proclaimed — in England, in 
 the United States, in Canada, her abhorrence of this dishonesty, 
 this "handling the Word of God deceitfully." Every priest of 
 the Church is bound to celebrate and administer the Holy Eu- 
 charist in fermented wine. Thank God, our faith in the Lord 
 Jejus Christ does not depend on the legerdemain of these novel 
 "exegetes." With us it is Christ first, and the "commandments 
 and ordinances of men " nowhere. 
 
 No. III. 
 
 "different HEBREW WORDS." 
 
 We now come to the consideration of this tremendous argu- 
 ment of the prohibitionists about there being " different Hebrew 
 words to express different kinds of so-called wine ;" and let us see 
 what are the facts of the case. 
 
 There are three Hebrew words regarding intoxicants to which 
 we shall confine our attention. Some four or five other terms are 
 used by the later writers, but only casually, and they do not affect 
 the argument either way : 
 
 I. "Shekar" — which occurs 22 times in the Old Testament 
 and is rendered (generally in the authorized, uniformly in revised 
 version,) by "strong drink." Its verbal root in all Semitic lan- 
 guages signifies, "to be drunken." There is no mistake about 
 this word. It means intoxicating liquor of any kind, including 
 wine. 
 
DIFFERENT HEBREW WORDS. 
 
 «7 
 
 see 
 
 lan- 
 out 
 ing 
 
 2. " Tirosh " — which occurs 3S times. Of these it is used 34 
 times in connection with " corn " or " oil," or both, as signifying 
 the annual products of the land. The juice of the grape as soon 
 as expressed was called " Tirosh," just as we call the juice of the 
 apple as soon as expressed " cider." When the word occurs else- 
 where than in the above connection it is rendered in our version 
 " new wine " or " sweet wine." It was " Tirosh " which, as our 
 Lord says, (Matt, ix, 17) men never put into old wine-skins, be- 
 cause of its fermenting, alcoholic properties. But that this ** new 
 wine " did itself intoxicate is shown in Hosea iv, 11. 
 
 3. "Yayin" — this was wine — genu, le,, old, unmistakable fer- 
 mented wine, which had passed its " Tirosh " stage. The differ- 
 ence is well shown in Mich, iv, 15. The authorized version says : 
 Thou shalt . . . tread sweet wine but shalt not drink wine." 
 The revised version says : *' Thou shalt tread . . . the 
 vintage, but shalt not drink the wine." Hebrew, " Thou shalt 
 tread . . . the Tirosh, but shalt not drink the Yayin." 
 This, by the way, was not as a matter of " prohibition " but 
 as the part of a terrible curse. This word " Yayin " occurs no less 
 than 141 times. 
 
 It was " Yayin " which made Noah drunk (Ger . ix.) It was 
 Yayin which Melchizedec, priest of the Most High God, " brought 
 forth " along with the bread. It was Yayin and ^hckar, "strong 
 drink " which the law permitted the Israelites to buy and consume 
 if they felt inclined (Deut. xiv, 26.) It was Yayin which Eli 
 unjustly supposed that Hannah had been drinkinj; (i Saml. i, 14.) 
 It was a bottle (a Avine skinful) of " Yayin " which that same 
 Hannah brought as a thank offering to the House of the Lord (v. 
 24.) It was Yayin " which maketh glad the h(,'art of man " for 
 which the psalmist praises God (Ps. civ, 15). It was Yayin which 
 the book of Proverbs tells us is "a mocker" (Prov. xx, i) and 
 cautions us not to tarry long at (Ch. xxiii, 30) .'.nd yet bids us ad- 
 minister " unto those that be of heavy hearts," (Ch. xxxi, 6) : and 
 so on through the whole Old Testament. , 
 
 And then again, as if to protest again this hair-splitting about 
 fermented and unfermented wines, when any man took, for a cer- 
 tain time, the Nazarite vow of total abstinence, he was forbidden 
 to touch anything whatever connected with the grape or the vine 
 itself. (Numbers vi, 2, 3, 4). At the fulfilment of his vow he 
 " may drink Yayin " (v. 20). 
 
i8 
 
 PAPERS ON prohibition: 
 
 # 
 
 And once more. It was *^Yayin" and not ^* Tirosh," \\h\ch 
 always formed the "drink offering," a necessary adjunct of every 
 sacrifice, (Numb, xv, 2-7, xxix pixssim) along with the "meat 
 offering " of cakes or wafers of unleavened bread. (Lev. 11.) In 
 one verse, as if to emphasize the character of the wine, the " drink 
 offering " is called Shekar — strong drink. (Numb, xxviii, 7, re- 
 vised version). So "bread and wine, which the Lord hath com- 
 manded to be received " have always been most important features 
 in the worship of God from the time of Moses.* 
 
 Now what argument do the Christian prohibitionists urge 
 against all this ? The main reason in defence of all their word- 
 juggling is much the same wherever it appears, and is embodied 
 in a short letter criticising my sermon and signed E. B. which ap- 
 peared in the Recorder of 6th March, 1886. The argument may 
 be summed up thus : 
 
 The Bible cannot encourage or allow anything intrinsically and 
 absolutely evil. But the consum.ption of alcohol is '.itrinsically 
 and absolutely evil. Therefore the Bible cannot countenance the 
 consumption of alcohol. But the Bible, we admit, does speak ap- 
 provingly of the consumption of wine and strong drink of some 
 kind. Therefore the wine and strong drink spoken of with favor 
 must have been devoid of alcohol. Otherwise the Bible and 
 Christianity must be rejected. (So say the two authorities quoted 
 on page 15). 
 
 Now our answer to this is that the second of the above prem- 
 ises (viz. that alcohol is absolutely evil) is begging the question. 
 It is a baseless assumption. I deny the proposition in tote. 
 
 E. B. speaks of the impossibility of our Blessed Lord encourag- 
 ing "a purely selfish indulgence." I deny that it is "a purely 
 selfish indulgence." We shall take up this subject later on. 
 
 But E. B. adduces an argument for prohibition from Scripture, 
 which is, I think, original ; at any rate it is put in a unique way. 
 I quote it verbatim : 
 
 * Of course this is only a condensation of the argument from the Old Testament. Those 
 who would wish to see it treated learnedly in full are recommended to read, Wines of the Bible, 
 by Rev. C. Bodington, S. P. C. K. ; Covimunirn Wine, by Rev. Dr. Jewett, (jChurch Guar- 
 dian office, Montreal) — Rev. Dr. daxxy^s Exposure ^ &c., (Rowsell & Hutcheson). And to those 
 who may be prejudiced against Anglican authorities, and indeed to all, I would strongly recom- 
 mend The Biblical Reason why Prohibition is Wrong; by Rev. J. A. Sikes, an Evangelical 
 Lutheran minister, of Perryville, Ohio, himself o total abstainer and temperance luorker. All 
 these pamphlets together would not cost much over a dollar. 
 
DIFFERENT HEBREW WORDS. 
 
 «9 
 
 ,'ay. 
 
 Those 
 'iibU, 
 
 ■those 
 
 Icom- 
 
 plical 
 
 AU 
 
 " Is there not a curse connected with the very first account we 
 have of wine drinking ? " (This refers to Gen. ix, 20-27). 
 
 Now I admire the ingenuity of that argument ; I admire the 
 way it is put ; interrogatively, you see. It is so innocent, so non- 
 committal, so "child-like and bland." 
 
 Yes, brother E. B., there is " a curse connected," &c., &c. You 
 were quite right to say " connected with the uccount." If you had 
 said '* a curse attached to the very first wine drinking " that would 
 have been another affair. But you said — very properly — " a curse 
 connected with the account," (v. 25). But you forgot to mention 
 that there were also two blessings (v. 26, 27), so according, to your 
 own reasoning the blessings as compared with the curses " con- 
 nected with wine drinking" are as two to one. 
 
 And now let me ask you, E. B., on whom did the curse fall? 
 Not on the drunken Noah, for he " awoke from his wine " in the 
 spirit of prophecy ; a prophecy which h?s been wonderfully ful- 
 filled to the present day. We shall allude to it again by-and-bye. 
 Now, God forbid i\ at I should condone the drunkenness of to-day 
 by extenuating the conduct of Noah, but I conceive the Bible gives 
 us here, in its own terse and vivid style, an account, not only of the 
 first wine drinking, but of the first wine making. Noah partook 
 of this newly-discovered liquor and found it exhilarating — he took 
 more and got intoxicated — he took still more and became stupi- 
 fied. It was a new experience ; he erred through ignorance. Be 
 that as it may, the sin was seemingly not imputed to him (Rom. v, 
 13) for he "awoke from his wine " in the spirit of prophecy. But 
 on whom did the curse fall ? Not on Shem and Japhet, those two 
 noble sons who covered their father's failing with the mantle of 
 charity, and who, in perfoiming their filial act, took good care not 
 even to be witnesses of their father's disgrace. No ; the curse fell 
 on — the informer — " Ham the father of Canaau " — the man who 
 went and "told." Oh yes, E. B., there was "a curse connected 
 
 with the very first account we have of wine drinking." 
 ment you on your ingenuity. 
 
 I compli- 
 
so 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 No. IV. 
 
 W. C. T. U. AND COMMUNION WINE. 
 
 Is there not a cause ? Is it not time that a stand was made 
 against the encroachments of prohibition ? This week's paper will 
 mainly consist of the foUov.'ing prohibitionist tract. It came to 
 me along with other temperance leaflets, through the post, from (I 
 believe) the office of the Canada Citizen. The italics are mine. 
 In all other respects the tract is reproduced unchanged. 
 
 THE IMPORTANCE OF THE USE OF UNFERMENTED WINE IN THE SACRA- 
 MENT OF THE LORD'S SUPPER. 
 
 A TAPKK RRAD AT THR W. C. T. U. IIV MISS S. WILLMOTT. 
 
 r .K 
 
 fi* 
 
 
 The vine in Eastern lands was regarded as one of the choicest 
 blessings that God had bestowed upon his people. Its fruit, while 
 most delicious to the taste, was exceedingly nutritious and con- 
 ducive to health. Therefore, in Scripture it frequently symboli/.cd 
 the richness and fulness of the gospel feast. It grew luxuriantly, 
 and produced prodigious clusters of grapes, as reported by the 
 messengers who were sent to spy out the land of Canaan. 
 
 Palestine was indeed a land of vineyards, and as the heritage of 
 obedience, it is said : " They shall sit every man under his vine and 
 under his fig-tree." 
 
 We do not only gather from the Bible, but from other sources, 
 that wine anciently was the mere pressed juice of the grape, free 
 from fermentation. 
 
 The Egyptians drank no fermented wine — they believed it to 
 be an invention of an evil genius — but partook freely of the pure 
 juice of the grape. As was customary, the attendant, or cup- 
 bearer, pressed the juice into the cup, and immediately bore it to 
 his master ; this is corroborated by the interesting narrative of the 
 dream of Pharaoh's chief butler. " In my dream behold a vine was 
 before me, and in the vine were three branches ; and it was as 
 though it budded, and her blossoms shot forth ; and the clusters 
 thereof brought forth grapes ; and Pharaoh's cup was in my hand ; 
 
W. C. T. U. AND COMMUNION WINE, 
 
 flt 
 
 and I took the grapes and pressed them into Pharaoh's cup, and I 
 gave the cup into Pharaoh's hand." 
 
 Notwithstanding, every Bible reader must observe, that various 
 wines are spoken of, and as so much is said of the evils of the wine 
 cup, it has been too generally accepted, especially at the present 
 day, that all beverages bearing that name must necessarily be fer- 
 mented, and therefore intoxicating, which was not the case ; that 
 such wines were made and used, all must admit, but to affirm they 
 were sanctioned by God is at variance with the whole tenor of the 
 inspired word. God's heaviest judgments are pronounced upon 
 the drunkard. The wine which the Lord approved was found in 
 the cluster, according to his own declaration. "Thus saith the- 
 Lord, as the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith. De- 
 stroy it not for a blessing is in it." 
 
 Christ forseeing that the term " wine " would be misunderstood 
 most carefully guarded the cup that symbolized his shed blood 
 from that appellation. Neither he nor his apostles called it wine, 
 but " the cup," " the cup of blessing," " the fruit of the vine." 
 
 At the close of the "Passover Supper," which Christ had just 
 commemorated with his disciples for the last time, and when about 
 to fulfil in his own body all it had prefigured, " He took the cup (the 
 passover cup, the pure juice of the grape, in accordance with the 
 expressed law of tha^ institution which strictly excluded all leaven 
 from the elements of the feast), and when he had given thanks, he 
 gave it to the'u, and they all drank of it ; and he said unto them : 
 This is mv blood of the New Testament, which is shed for many. 
 Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, 
 until that day that I drink it new in the Kingdom of God." 
 
 We think there is conclusive proof, in which the highest 
 scientific authorities agree, that alcohol does not exist in the fruit 
 of the vine, neither in its growth, nor in its decay, but it is the sole 
 product of fermentation. By this chemical process the essential 
 quality of the juice is destroyed, and converted into an intoxi- 
 cant. 
 
 The art, of perverting this beneficent God-bestowed blessing 
 into a curse, most assuredly emanated from " the Evil One," who 
 employed man as his agent, to carry out his infamous devices. 
 No language or pen can portray in the faintest degree the told 
 and untold miseries that have followed in its course. Ruined 
 homes, blighted hopes, crushed hearts, the destruction of the body, 
 
r 
 
 
 22 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 and banishment from God ; for it is written, " No drunkard shall 
 enter the Kingdom of God." We wonder not this pervertion of 
 God's bounty shall call forth His indignation, and fearful denun 
 ciations : " Woe to the crown of pride, to the drunkards of 
 Ephraim ; the crown of pride, the drunkards of Ephraim shall be 
 trodden under feet." "Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor 
 drink!" "Wine is a mocker." We are commanded not even to 
 look at it, whtn it giveth its color in the cup. For alas ! " at the 
 last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder !" 
 
 We wonder, with profound astonishment, that the Church of 
 the living God has been so long in recognizing the imperative duty 
 of remolding from the table of the Lord, that ivhich we ere strictly 
 forbidden even to look upon. This is a vital question, all must admit. 
 It therefore demands a most careful, earnest, and prayerful con- 
 sideration. That sad consequences have resulted from the apathy 
 of the Church in this matter, many affirm. And shall they be re- 
 peated ? Shall the commemoration of that most precious and 
 sacred ordinance, instituted by Christ Himself, and bequeathed 
 as a legacy to perpetuate his dying love, be symbolized by an 
 element that contains in itself the germ of moral ruin and death ? 
 0, that the Church would awake to her responsibilty, and throw 
 round the weak her protecting arm. 
 
 Many there are who have deprecated the evUs of Inteuiper- 
 ance, and are striving to reform, and have therefore pledged them- 
 selves " to abstain from all intoxicants, except for medicinal and 
 sacramental purposes." And here we pause a moment to ask, is it 
 not hif:;h time this second reserve, if not the first, should be forever 
 erased from the ''''Temperance Pledge 1 " 
 
 There are earnest ones, but weak, who in full confidence in 
 the ordinances of the Lord's house, forgetting that through wine 
 or strong drink they have lost their will-power to control their ap- 
 petites, have approached the table of the Lord, thereby testifying, 
 by partakmg of the emblems of Christ's broken body and shed 
 blood, their faith in the atonement made for sin, when, alas ! the 
 first sip from the deceptive cup inflames their desire for more, and 
 they go on without power to resist, until their sun sets in tndless 
 night. 
 
 Dear sisters, members of the Women's Christian Temperance 
 Union, and all who are in sympathy with this great Temperance 
 Reform, let us each and all awuke to the duty of the hour, and by 
 
fV. a T, U.AND COMMUNION WINE. 
 
 23 
 
 B 
 
 voice and pen, give no rest, until the fatal desecration of the ^^ Lord's 
 Tabic " be swept away. 
 
 'by 
 
 Now I am not going to criticise the work of this good lady ; it 
 .shall tell its own story. But I beg leave to address myself, on this 
 occasion, exclusively to my own fellow-members of the Church of 
 England : 
 
 Brethren, — We are all alike committed to one line on this 
 matter ; that line was drawn at the last provincial synod. At that 
 synod all the delegates, I believe, clerical and lay, abstainers and 
 non-abstainers alike, unanimously passed Dr, Carry's resolution, 
 pledging the whole Church to follow the ancient customs and the 
 Word of God in using fermented wine. Now I ask you to read 
 the italicised portions of the above. Note what is the next plank 
 of the prohibition platform : They will lay it. Observe what 
 is the next step of the prohibition party : They will take it. 
 They have not failed in any step hitherto. I give them great 
 credit for their boundless energy, zeal and consistency in carry- 
 ing out their convictions; they will not fail in this step either. 
 These tracts are disseminated by thousands, and their doctrines 
 are affecting the tens of thousands. As Miss W. says, no effort 
 will be spared ; it will be " here a little and there a little," until at 
 last they will succeed in imbuing the minds of all " temperance " 
 people with the conviction that it is a " sin " to taste alcohol, even 
 at the Table of the Lord. Our own people will turn away from 
 our altars, because that awful thing is there. I do not blame the 
 prohibitionists for taking this step. They are consistent, they are 
 logical ; they need that plank to complete their platform ; they 
 need that doctrine to justify the whole movement ; they need that 
 link to perfect their chain of reasoning, which was given in the 
 last paper. If tlie consumption of alcohol is an absolute evil, the 
 conclusion of the W. C. T. U. logically follows ; or the dreadful 
 alternative of those two authorities quoted on page 1 5. The logic 
 of events, as well as the logic of reason, points that way. The 
 next prohibitory Act of Parliament which will supersede the 
 Scott Act will, )'^« nniy be sure, erase the " second reserve." The 
 Protestant public will be educatec up to it in the meantime. Re- 
 member that all the Methodists (and they are far more numerous 
 than ourselves) are to-day just as much pledged to use unfer- 
 
'" .If "J 
 
 it 
 
 
 . ...1 
 
 i P 
 
 ^ ir 
 
 If 
 
 (i 
 
 n 
 
 24 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 mented grape juice in observing the Lord's Supper as we are to 
 use wine ; and remember that such an amendment will be a matter 
 of perfect unconcern to our Roman Catholic fellow citizens ; for 
 their laity receive only in one kind ; as for their priesthood, they 
 will, of course — for they have the courage of their convictions — 
 get a saving clause inserted to protect the integrity of the Sacra- 
 iiient in their own churches. 
 
 But we. brethren, what are we going to do ? We have made a 
 big talk in the synod about it ; we have made big talks before, 
 which have resulted in nothing. What about this matter ? We 
 have crossed the Rubicon, and planted our banners with a great 
 flourish of trumpets. What next ? Shall we watch our opponents 
 increasing day by day, swelling their ranks from those of our own 
 household ; and then at last when we find ourselves completely 
 overwhelmed by numbers — subside ? 
 
 No. V. 
 
 NEW TEST — BIBLE AND SCIENCE — WAH NOTES. 
 
 We have so far confined our attention to the Old Testament, 
 because it is from thence the prohibitionists have drawn theii 
 mystifying arguments about the " different Hebrew words." Con- 
 cerning the New Testament, our remarks will be brief. 
 
 I. Our blessed Lord inaugurated His ministry with the miracu- 
 lous manufacture of wine. (St. John 11.) 
 
 2. He closed that ministry with consecrating that same al- 
 coho''c element as the sacrament of His own most precious 
 blood. 
 
 Some capital has been made by the prohibitionists out of a 
 quibble that the New Testament never actually mentions the word 
 " wine " in connection with that " cup." To this we answer : 
 
 {a) We know from Jewish authorities what that** cup" con- 
 tained, viz : wine i^real wine) and water. 
 
 {l>) " The bread " and " the cup " were the " meat offering and 
 drink offering " which attended every sacrifice, as stated on page 18, 
 and the Passover was a sacrifice. (Exodus xii, 27.) 
 
 {c) Whatever that " cup " contained, it could make men drunk. 
 (i Cor. XI, 21.) 
 
NEW TEST— BIBLE AND SCIENCE— WAR NOTES. 25 
 
 3. St. Paul says: (Eph. v, 18) "Be not drunk with wine." 
 Why did he not say at once, " Never touch it ? " He says (i Tim. 
 Ill, 3, and Titus i, 7) that the clerical overseer of the congregation 
 should be "not given to wine," (rev. version, "no brawler" on 
 margin, "not quarrelsome over wine"), and that the deacons 
 should be " not given to tnuch wine ; " (i Tim. iii, 8) and that the 
 aged should be " temperate " (in the true sense ) ; and that the 
 aged woman should be " not enslaved to tnuc/t wine." (Titus 11, 
 2 and 3.) Now, why this " much ? " Why all this qualification ? 
 Why did he not say, out and out, " never touch wine or strong 
 drink?" Nay, he even charges Timothy, the superintendent of 
 all these congregations, (or as Ave now say bishop) who had been 
 a total abstainer, to desist from that ascetic practice henceforth. 
 (i Tim. V, 23.) 
 
 Now, in the face of all this, for prohibitionists to tell us that the 
 Bible insists on total abstinence, is taxing our credulity too far. 
 As a great English statesman once said : " If a thing is not true, 
 we should not lie that it may he true." 
 
 Hitherto we have been acting on the defensive ; we have 
 shielded ourselves behind the ramparts of Scripture ; now we 
 mean to "carry the war into Africa," and assail the principles of 
 prohibition on the grounds of reason and science. The Christian 
 minister is bound to defend the Word of God. That Word has 
 been trifled with by Christian prohibitionists in such a way as to 
 cause the agnostic to laugh us to scorn. Prohibition agnostics — 
 like the late Mr. D. M. Bennett, of New York, and W. McDonnell, 
 of Canada — hold up The Book to execration for inculcating the 
 use of wine. The anti-prohibitionist agnostics pour, and with 
 good reason, ridicule upon Christian prohibitionists, for making 
 "ducks and drakes " of the statements of their own Scriptures. 
 
 The prohiljition line of reasoning, which we have already out- 
 lined, has for its minor premise, "The consumption of alcohol is 
 absolutely evil." This we must disprove or the conclusion is in- 
 evitable. 
 
 The line of argument we pursue, on the other hand, begins with 
 the Word of God. We state — what one would think any candid 
 man would at once acknowledge as a truth — " The Holy Scripture 
 sanctions the moderate consumption of alcohol." With this for 
 our foundation-stone we proceed to construct, as follows : 
 
a6 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 The Scriptures cannot sanction an absolute evil, therefore the 
 moderate consumption of alcohol cannot be an absolute evil. But 
 further, the Scripture cannot sanction "a purely selfish indul- 
 gence," therefore the moderate consumption of alcohol is not " a 
 purely selfish indulgence." But we go further yet — whatever the 
 Scripture sanctions must be good in itself, therefore, the mod- 
 erate consumption of alcohol is good in itself. 
 
 And then the thoughtful and educated believer in Christ must 
 carry on that argument to the following conclusion : " Since the 
 Scripture and science — when both are rightly interpreted — cannot 
 disagree, therefore, both must agree in the previous conclusions. 
 This it will be our next object to establish. We begin with quot- 
 ing a prohibition paper : 
 
 In the early stages of the great Scott Act campaign there was 
 issued (March 2 2d, 1884,) from the office of the Montreal Witness, a 
 small sheet headed " War notes — sample copy — distribute promptly ." 
 From the one in my possession I now quote. Its argumentative 
 piece de resistance had a glaring caption in thick type: — "Facts 
 for the drinker ; scientific investigation of alcohol ; what the 
 London doctors report ; one out of ten deaths hastened by drink ; 
 one out of twenty-five deaths caused by it ; terrible havoc," etc., 
 etc. After this alarming heading it gave a compilation of its own 
 out of i\\(i British Medical Journal iox 1883. This compilation 
 stated that the '"habitual use of an excessive quantity of alcohol" 
 had accelerated death or caused it in the above proportions in 
 certain diseases there specified (chiefly those of the liver and 
 kidneys). Now I should hope no one in the world would advo- 
 cate "an habitual use of an excessive quantity of alcohol." The 
 Witness's argument amounts to this : An habitual use of an exces- 
 sive amount of alcohol causes "terrible havoc " in the case of cer- 
 tain diseases, therefore let us prohibit its use altogether. What 
 kind of reasoning is this ? 
 
 But this is not all. At the close of the article comes a strange 
 admission ; so striking that it made a deep impression on my mind 
 at the time. Although I saw, as any man with an ounce of brains 
 could see, the non- 'uitur of the War Notes argument, still I was 
 in grave doubts at the time whether, after all, notwithstanding the 
 Bible's sanction, it were not better to join the Scott Act move- 
 ment — whether a " purely selfish indulgence " should not be given 
 up " for the present distress," if we could thereby stop this 
 
NEli^ TEST— BIBLE AND SCIENCE— WAR NOTES. 27 
 
 "terrible havoc" — this shortening of life — on which prohibition 
 speakers and prohibition literature so incessantly expand. 
 
 But that next sentence finished me ; it knocked all the Scott Act 
 out of me. I have not space to comment on it now ; it shall form 
 the text of my next paper. But I want my prohibitionist friends, 
 who, like myself, are anxious to stop this terrible sacrifice of life. 
 to think over it in the mean time, so I close by reproducing it 
 verbatim et literatim. 
 
 " On the other hand, intemperate people did not seem to die 
 of phthysis (consumption) in the same large proportion, or at the 
 same early age, as the temperate. Neither did they die so soon 
 of heart disease, bronchitis or emphysema." 
 
 No. VI. 
 
 * 
 
 CONSUMPTION — UEART DISEASE — BROXCniTIS. 
 
 "On the other hand, intemperate people did not seem to die of phthyeis (consumption) 
 In the same large proportion, or at the same early age, as the temperate. Neither did they 
 die BO Booi: of heart disease, bronchitis or emphyaema." 
 
 In commenting on the above let us remind our readers of what 
 we stated in our previous paper ; that the facts are drawn from 
 the British Medical Review for 1883 ; while the Var Notes is re- 
 sponsible for the diction. 
 
 I. We meet with a little difficulty at the outset. What is here 
 meant by intemperate and teiiperate} Are these words used in 
 the prohibition sense, or in piain English ? This it would be very 
 hard to determine. 
 
 2. " Intemperate people did not seem to die." I like that word 
 "i^w/,"it's so handy just there. When talking about the " ter- 
 rible havoc " caused by an habitual use of an excessive quantity of 
 alcohol, War N'otes could be very positive. But when it has to 
 admit how alcohol prolongs life in certain cases, then it says they 
 don't ''''seem to die." It is a good word, that "seem." Like E. B.'s 
 question, it sounds so " child-like and bland." -.-- - ' 
 
 3. " Did not seem to die of phthysis (consumption) in the same 
 large proportion, or at the same early age as the temperate ; neither 
 did they so soon of heart disease or bronchitis." 
 
28 
 
 PAPERS ON PROUIBITIO.y. 
 
 %%' 
 
 Now I want my readers to thoroughly digest this paragraph ; it 
 speaks for itself. Then let them turn to the annual reports of 
 births, deaths and marriages issued by the Hon. A. S. Hardy of 
 the Provincial Government of Ontario. Let them observe what 
 a fearfully important place consumption holds among the " rauses 
 of death " — a long way ahead of all others. In the re])Oit for 1884 
 (the last to hand) we find 2,347 deaths from this disease ; and 
 with reference to this, the report says (page 40) : 
 
 "If 2,347 human beings were annually killed upon the rail- 
 roads of our province, the legislature would promptly prohibit the 
 running of trains. If a contagious disease were annually im- 
 ported into the province that swept from existence 2,347 living 
 souls, the province would protect every rod of her frontier by a 
 cordon that would require an army of 10,000 able men, and the 
 expense would be of secondary account." 
 
 Now turn we to Heart Disease, first quoting the following pas- 
 sage from a Temperance medical pamphlet — "Alcohol, its place 
 and power," by James Miller, F. R. S. E., &c. ; Glasgow Scottish 
 Temperance League, p. 2iZ- (The italics, of course, are mine in 
 these extracts.) 
 
 " There are some affections of the heart in which the organ 
 acts with great feebleness ; the functions of life flag in conse- 
 quence, the general circulation is insufficient, and danger to life is 
 apt to ensue. Now alcohol is a stimulant to the heart and blood 
 vessels as well as to the nervous system ; and from small occa- 
 sional doses, as with the ordinary meals, medical experience has 
 shown that in such cases decided benefit may be obtained." 
 
 Now let us return to the reports of the Registrar General of 
 Ontario ; and in that o^ 1883 p. 49, we read, concerning heart 
 disease : — " The number of decedents is increasing yearly. In 187 1 
 there were only 333 deaths recorded from this cause. In 1883 
 the mortality has increased to 921 or 2'j6 per cent. It has held 
 either the fifth or sixth place in the highest causes of death every 
 year since 1871, both in the cities and in the whole province." 
 
 Let the reader bear in mind that since 187 1 *otal abstinence 
 principles have made enormous strides. 
 
 And then again, consider the great prevalence of Bronchitis and 
 the number of its victims. Emphysema we shall leave out of con- 
 sideration ; its ravages, according to the report, being trifling. 
 
 Now, on the admission of the War Notes, alcohol is in all these 
 
CONS UMP T ION— HE A R T DISEA SE— BRONCHI TIS. 
 
 29 
 
 cases a most powerful factor in prolonging life. Every household 
 or family which has had experience of these dread diseases knows 
 this. Physicians will endorse the conclusions of the British 
 Medical Review. Now, in view of this fact, so grudgingly ad- 
 mitted by War Noies^ so attested by universal experience, every 
 family thus afflicted is, we submit, bound in conscience to stop 
 this TERRIBLE HAVOC by determining that alcohol shall never be 
 wanting in their homes. They are in duty bound to be " intem- 
 perate," in the prohibition sense. Nothing, of course, would warrant 
 them in being intemperate in the true sense of the word ; but " in- 
 temperate," in the prohibition sense, they should always be. 
 There are some prohibitionists, I know, who would not allow this, 
 such as Rev. Sam. Jones, who, in Toronto, uttered sentiments to 
 this effect ; I do not remember his exact words, but anyhow it is 
 impossible to put them in coarser language than his own: " If my 
 wife could not live without taking beer, I should say, let her die." 
 Most men, however, I should hope, would regard such language 
 with horror, as making the 6th commandment of none effect, in 
 comparison with this new commandment of men, " Thou shalt not 
 take alcohol." Besides, one does not understand this blowing hot 
 and cold at once ; this condemning of alcohol because it shortens 
 life, in one breath, and in the next condemning it even though it 
 lengthens life. 
 
 It will be said by those prohibitionists who do not altogether 
 go the length of the Sam Jones school : " Oh, but this need be 
 no objection to a prohibitory law, for those who are so afflicted 
 can go to their doctors and obtain their orders, and so they will 
 be secured." 
 
 Now to this we reply : No, thank you. Why should we have 
 to submit to this incessant burden ? Why should we be obliged 
 to go to the medical adviser and pay him a fee every now and 
 again ; and then (because this particular traffic is over protected) 
 pay double or treble prices for what we know, just as well as the 
 doctors can tell us — thanks to War Notes — that our households 
 need ? And the more so considering what thousands of house- 
 holds are thus dependent on alcohol for prolonging life. No one 
 can have a higher respect for the medical profession than myself, 
 I believe the very study of physiology has a tendency, like all scien- 
 tific pursuits, to make a man love truth for its own sake. I believe 
 it has a tendency to make its votaries not only truthful but humane ; 
 
30 
 
 PAPERS OA' PROHIBITION. 
 
 M 
 
 and as a clergyman I can bear ample testimony to the physician's 
 generosity. But for all that — as a Briton, and in company with 
 my fellow citizens of all classes, Tory, Conservative, Liberal, Rad- 
 ical — I am a lover of liberty ; and I believe the secret of national 
 liberty to be this : Not to put too much power into the hands of 
 any order or class of men, be they priests or laymen. A medical 
 man must need be under strong temptation to advocate prohibi- 
 tion ; for, of course, any one can see what tremendous leverage 
 it confers on his order. It says very much for the honor of the 
 profession, that they have not succumbed to this temptation. 
 Highly as I think of physicians in general, still I know they are 
 men of like passions with ourselves, and it is dangerous for any 
 class of men — for doctors no less than parsons — to be invested 
 with too much power. For my part, like that brilliant Irishman, 
 Bishop McGee, of Peterboro, I would rather belong to a nation of 
 " drunkards " than a nation of slaves, whether that slavery be to 
 King-craft, Priest-craft or Leech-craft. 
 
 There are those (and they are by no means few in number) 
 who confess, "I am ' temperate,' you know ; I go in for prohibi- 
 tion ; but then, don't you see, I have to take stimulants myself be- 
 cause the doctor orders it in my case." I forbear to express my 
 opinion of such diplomacy ; but I would ask such a one : Do you 
 think you are a solitary instance ? Do you not reflect that there are 
 hundreds, aye, thousands, that need it just as much as you do, but 
 who cannot afford, like yourself it may be, to run to the doctor for 
 his "dispensation " or his "indulgence" every few days? And 
 don't you know that the hardened sot, whom you are trying to re- 
 claim, when he comes to hear of your little weakness, will only 
 smile ? 
 
 There are others — and they are, alas ! too many — who are re- 
 strained by these prohibition principles from taking what they 
 ought to take ; men and women of sensitive consciences, tender 
 feelings, gentle lives ; men and women of whom the world is not 
 worthy ; for among humanity's sweetest characters and most 
 valuable lives, intellectually and spiritually, if not physically, are 
 many of those delicate ones to whom Providence has assigned 
 what French divines have called " The Death of the Elect." And 
 they — because of this jjrohibition cry, because men curse what 
 God hath not cursed, and defy what the Lord hath not defied — 
 are being hurried into their graves. A brother clergyman, from 
 
 N 
 
CON SUMP TIOxi—IIEAK T VI SEA SE— BRONCHI TIS. 3 1 
 
 a rural parish, lately told me of the case of a young man in his 
 cure, of consumptive tendencies, who had maintained himself in 
 tolerable health through the use of alcohol. When the Scott Act 
 came in force he determined to give it up, rather than go through 
 the tedious, red-tape process of doctor's orders and all that. He 
 sank from that time forward. By and bye the doctor was called 
 in. He prescribed alcohol, of course, but it was too late. Now 
 we hear a great deal about the " terrible havoc " caused by alcohol. 
 Prohibition orators love to talk of the " murders " it commits. 
 We retort in their own language and say, the Scott Act murdered 
 that young man. 5 . 
 
 But more than that ; there are hundreds of similar cases to- 
 day ; khere are hundred? of individuals who, because of this most 
 unjust stigma cast upon the consumers of alcohol, forego its use, 
 though they know its benefits, and are rapidly approaching their 
 end. Prohibition is responsible for shortening their lives. The 
 results of prohibition v/ith respect to consumption are shown fear- 
 fully in the statistics of Maine, the pioneer champion prohibition 
 State. In Ontario deaths from consumption are eleven per cent, 
 of the whole number, but in Maine they are eighteen per cent. 
 
 These three diseases, consumption, heart disease, and bronchitis 
 are rapidly increasing amongst us, as the statistics show, and they 
 are taking off their victims at an earlier age. And now I venture 
 on a prediction ; time alone, of course, will test its worth : 
 
 These three diseases, consumption, heart disease, and bron- 
 chitis will continue to spread just in proportion as the prohibition 
 movement spreads. 
 
 No. VII. 
 
 "science," a liA PROniBITION. ' - 
 
 We now proceed to the examination of the arguments advanced 
 in favor of prohibition. Again let us insist on the distinction : — 
 Temperance is one thing, prohibition another. Voluntary total 
 abstinence in the individual is one thing: enforced prohibition on 
 all is quite another thing. It may be good, praiseworthy, neces- 
 sary for the individual to abstain : it may on the other hand be 
 prejudicial, as it was in the case of St. Timothy, and as it is in the 
 
38 
 
 PAPERS O.V PROHIBITION. 
 
 irt- 
 
 i 
 
 case of very many to-day. But that it would be ruinous to the 
 whole community to enforce universal prohibition, the history of 
 the world has invariably shown, and it is our object to prove. We 
 are combatting not the practice of the individual voluntary ab- 
 stainer, but the position of the prohibitionist, which is that alcohol 
 is essentially and absolutely evil. Arguments to establish this 
 position are being widely and zealously disseminated ; tracts with 
 this object in view are being circulated everywhere ; while too many 
 of those who know these arguments are childish and baseless hold 
 their peace and allow judgment to go by default : 
 
 I. The favorite assertion of the prohibitionists is that alcohol 
 is a. poison. We are told this again and again : and such disputants 
 are fond of referring to " science " as in their favor. One would 
 think that, however much they trifled with Scripture, they were at 
 all events "scientific." E. g.,\ht Rev. J. Benson Hamilton, who 
 has been already quoted as declaring the \ he could not accept the 
 Lord Jesus Christ as his example unless He were proved to be a 
 total abstainer, thus delivers himself: — "Science now declares 
 that alcohol is a deadly poison, in a drop or in a barrel, pure or 
 diluted." One marvels at the coolness of this man. What 
 "science" has he studied, I wonder? 
 
 Alcohol " pure " is a poison, no doubt. So is common salt, so 
 is phosphorus, so is oxygen; and yet the human body requires 
 these and many other "poisons" both for construction and repairs. 
 Alcohol absolutely " pure " it is next to impossible to obtain ; 
 oxygen " pure " can be obtained with comparative ease. Oxygen 
 "pure " is not only a poison, but a powerful intoxicant : it would 
 make a man "drunk" worse than whiskey, and an "excessive 
 amount " would kill through over-stimulation more surely than 
 alcohol : and yet without oxygen " diluted " in the air we breathe 
 we should die in an hour. Nitrous oxide, the gas which dentists 
 give us to intoxicate us before drawing our teeth, contains only 
 the elements of common air, with an extra amount of oxygen, and 
 yet, plays sad pranks with our brains. Pure, fresh, wholesome air 
 contains (to speak in round numbers) 20 per cent, of oxygen : our 
 health, our very life, depends upon the air we breathe containing a 
 due proportion — but not excessive — of that " stimulant," that " in- 
 toxicant," that " poison " oxygen. 
 
 Nature then teaches us this lesson : To take our alcohol like 
 our oxygen, 7Mell diluted. In fermented liquors this is the case : 
 
" SCIENCE " A lA prohibition. 
 
 33 
 
 The strongest wine contains only i8 per cent., and the lightest 
 beer about 4 per cent, of alcohol. Strong spirits contain about 
 50 per cent. It is the whiskey " straight " which, like oxygen 
 " straight," plays havoc with men. 
 
 In this connection we might notice a harrowing recital of Arch- 
 deacon Farrar's, which often docs duty on prohibition platforms, 
 viz. : How he had seen, in the back slums of London, crowds of 
 women staggering under the influence of gin, and pouring the same 
 liquor down the throats of their infants. A horrid, ghastly spec- 
 tacle indeed. But where does the main fault lie ? Why does he 
 not see the same spectacle on the breezy downs of England } The 
 trouble is, those poor creatures are huddled together in thousands 
 in a space so contracted that the air is vitiated : there is not suffi- 
 cient of that ''poison" oxygen in it; they are like fish on dry 
 land, panting, gasping, they know not why. They are breathing 
 air over and over again, which has lost its stiniulating property. 
 And so they take gin because their whole system craves the "stim- 
 ulant" which oxygen should supply. That is the primary cause of 
 all this gin drinking in the back slums. And who knows but that 
 even in this most disgusting instance, the alcohol serves some pur- 
 pose — in a wretched and most deficient way, of course — like all 
 make-shifts .'' One wonders why it is that in the filthy, poisoned 
 atmospheres of the back slums of London and other huge cities 
 there does not periodically break out the " Black Death," or the 
 l)lague, as would infallibly occur in crowded localities under Ma- 
 hommedan rule. The remarks of Dr. Farr, Registrar of England, 
 which will be quoted hereafter, corroborate this view. 
 
 2. Again, the Rev. Mr. Hamilton says : 
 
 " Science is now the sternest and harshest advocate of total 
 abstinence." This sentence can only be characterized as a false- 
 hood. When and where has " Science " ever uttered such senti- 
 ments.'' Possibly some erratic individual who, it maybe, signs 
 M. D. after his name — like Dr. Richardson, whose assertions have 
 been disproved over and over again — has uttered such nonsense 
 as Mr. H. ascribes to him that *' its use makes four times as many 
 deaths as its disuse." But again we ask when and where has 
 "Science" issued such an ultimatum as the above? 
 
 Did Mr. H. ever read Mr. Sutton Sharpe's essay in the Fort- 
 nightly? or the Times article of August 14th, 1884.? or the London 
 Lancet oi November, 1884.'' or the volume on "Food and Diete- 
 
34 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 ..I 
 
 tics" of Wood's standard series of Medical Authors? or the con- 
 chisions of Drs. Anstie, Pavie, Dupr^, Thudicuni, etc. ? or that of 
 Dr. Everts, of the Cincinnati Sanitarium, who considers that " uni- 
 versal abstinence would be deleterious to mankind by reason of 
 brain deterioration V or the opinions of the eleven famous physi- 
 cians, beginning with Sir James Paget, who contributed to the 
 " symposium " which came out in the Contemporary, not one of 
 whom advocated universal abstinence ? or Dr. J, B. Yeo's article 
 in the Nineteenth Century, March, 1886, entitled " Food Acces- 
 sories," reviewing tlie experiments and researches of Sir Wm. 
 Roberts, M. D., of Manchester.' or the conclusions of J. M. 
 Fothergill, M. D., in his work lately issued, "A Manual of Diet- 
 etics," wherein he characterizes alcohol as "a readily o.xidizable 
 fuel food?" or the article on "alcohol" by Dr. Binz, of Bonn, 
 Germany, in the Dictionary of Medicine, edited by Dr. Quain, 
 1 2th edition? Let me produce some extracts from this last. 
 "Alcohol : a material which is most readily assimilated by the 
 system, and which, by its superior combustibility spares the sacri- 
 fice of animal tissue." 
 
 "According to the experiments of Dr. Frankland and others, 
 the burning of i-o gramme of alcohol yields sufficient heat to 
 raise the temperature of seven litres of water 1° C, and the 
 burning of i gramme of cod liver oil suffices for nine litres. Now 
 in taking three tablespoonfuls of oil daily wc yield abort the same 
 amount of warmth to the body as is given by four tablespoonfuls 
 of absolute alcohol, the quantity contained in a bottle of claret 
 or hock. The oil, however, is digested and oxidized by the organs 
 of the body with difficulty, while for the assimilation of the 
 alcohol scarcely any exertion of the tvorking cells is required" 
 
 " It can be demonstrated by calculation .... that 
 heat producing material, sufficient to supply nearly one-third the 
 whole amount of warnth ren'vjv d by the body within twenty-four 
 hours, is offered in a quantify of 100 grammes (about 3J fluid 
 ounces) of alcohol. In this sense alcohol is a food." 
 
 Here is the reason of its superiority to cod liver oil in cases 
 of consumption. Again, let Mr. H. read article " alcohol " in the 
 last (1884) edition of *' U. S. National Dispensatory." 
 
 This list — which could be greatly increased if necessary — con- 
 sists, V' it observed, of most eminent European and American 
 physioAogists, and are the latest authorities, as the dates will show. 
 
" SCIENCE •' A LA PROHIBITION. 
 
 9S 
 
 The fact is, until about 1850, alcohol was almost universally viewed 
 in civilized countries as a valuable article of diet. But about 
 that time, Dr. W. 15. Carpenter, in England, and others on the 
 continent, propounded the theory that alcohol was not assimilated 
 in the system, but thrown off, at great expense of energy, by the 
 various organs of the body, just as a thorn or " sliver " in the flesh 
 causes the surrounding organism to exert itself to eject the intruder. 
 But this theory was thoroughly exploded by Dr. Anstie, when he 
 published (1864) "Stimulants and Narcotics," and again (1874) 
 " Final Experiments on the Elimination of Alcohol." Dr. Anstic's 
 conclusions were amply confirmed by Drs. Pavey, Dupr&.Thudicum, 
 etc. Indeed, Dr. Carpenter, the author of the exploded theory, 
 himself abandoned the practice of total abstinence in his later years. 
 
 I have in my possession a copy of a "Catechism on Alcohol" 
 by Julia Colman, published by the National Temperance Society 
 of N. Y., in which all these exploded notions — and a lot of ab- 
 surdities which Dr. Carpenter himself would have laughed at — are 
 taught for truths. This catechism was circulated in a certain An- 
 glican Sunday School (not mine) without the knowledge of the 
 Rector, Now when those children grow up mid learn the true 
 state of things, and how they were misguided and duped, what 
 think you, my readers, will be the result } 
 
 If the students of prohibition literature will only scrutinize it, 
 they will see that temperance tracts carefully avoid the latest au- 
 thorities, but give us the opinions of Sir B. Brodie, Dr, Andrew 
 Clarke, and others who are behind the age (and even they were 
 not advocates of universal abstinence) and Dr. Carpenter, who as 
 we see, cried peccavi. This is not " science : " it is not common 
 honesty. 
 
 And again : Did Mr, Hamilton and his brother prohibitionists 
 ever hear of the great International Temperance meeting which 
 was held in Antwerp, Belgium, in September, 1885 ? Certainly 
 the prohibitionists of America knew of it, for they sent their dele- 
 gates, and at that time great jubilation was held, and bright antici- 
 pations of the glorious success of the " temperance cause " through 
 this gathering were constantly heralded. But since the meeting 
 was held we never hear a word about it. Why ? At that great Inter- 
 national Convention, there were some five hundred and fifty 
 delegates representing some twelve or thirteen countries. The 
 continental nations sent eminent men of science to attend it. 
 
36 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 England and America sent — prohibitionists. The teetotallers of 
 England and America got sat upon by such men of science as 
 M. Fred de Laet and M. Goeman-Borgesius. The former gentle- 
 man, after listening to the prohibition speeches of Mr. Fortescue 
 Cole, Mrs. Lucas, and Mr. Taylor, all of London, said in the 
 course of his remarks : " We have so often heard ever so many 
 good and excellent things from and about the temperance socie- 
 ties in England and elsewhere that we can easily forego further 
 enlightenment .... We are called here for the purpose of 
 discussing with competent men from all countries the means where- 
 with to combat inebriety. Moderate temperance societies are no 
 doubt one of those means, but their action is necessarily limited. 
 They offer us no social remedy. I insist, Mr. Chairman, that the 
 speeches of their representatives be ruled out." 
 
 The prohibitionists were completely ignored by the whole con- 
 vention, who laughed at the idea of treating all men as infants 
 and imbeciles, and of going back to the tyrannical legislation of 
 the dark ages. 
 
 That is why we hear nothing now-a-days of the Great Inter- 
 national Temperance meeting of Antwerp. 
 
 " Science " — quotha ! 
 
 No. VIII. 
 
 PROniBITIOIJ ARGUMENTS— SLAVERY— UEER— EGG IN ALCOHOL — LIEBIG — 
 
 TWO TnOUSANP M. D.'S. 
 
 We will take up a few more of the startling " arguments " in 
 favor of prohibition. 
 
 I. In dealing with the Scriptural view, Rev. J. B. Hamilton of 
 Chicago, (in the lecture already alluded *o) and other prohibi- 
 tionists with him, defend their dishonest word-juggling with the 
 Bible by alleging that in former times pro-slavery men used to 
 do the same. To this we answer : 
 
 a. " Two blacks do not make one white." 
 
 />. The love of personal liberty inherent among all Christian 
 nations and amounting to a passion with the English-speaking 
 
PROHIBITION ARGUMENTS. 
 
 yi 
 
 races, and the idea that all men zxtjure divino free and equal, at 
 least seem to have some support from Scripture. 
 
 c. That same passionate attachment to personal liberty and the 
 rights of the indi^'idual, which at last effected emancipation, is 
 the very same sentiment which to-day makes us resist this new 
 slavery of prohibition. 
 
 II. " The constant use of beer is found to produce a species 
 of degeneration of most of the organism, profound and very 
 deceptive," etc., etc., etc. So says an American school text-book 
 (" Lessons on the Human Body ;" by O. M. Brand), and so say, in 
 varying terms, a whole number of temperance fly sheets and tracts 
 now ' fore me. 
 
 Now if this be so, one's first impression is : What fearfully 
 " degenerate " races by this time must be the English and the Ger- 
 man, who have been drmking beer " immoderately " and con- 
 stantly for the last 2,000 years ! Is it possible that the victors of 
 Sedan, whose skillful strategy and physical prowess were the 
 marvel of the world, were beer drinkers and the descendants of 
 beer drinkers from the times of Tacitus ? Is it possible that such 
 a degenerating habit, pursued for so many centuries, can produce 
 a Xaiser Wilhelm, a Bismark, a Von Moltke ? Or do such men 
 die in the flower of their youth ? Is it possible that this same land 
 produces, after 2,000 years of this degeneracy, such profound 
 and original thinkers in metaphysics, theology and science of all 
 kinds that the whole educated world rushes eagerly after their 
 writings ? 
 
 But again : Mr. G. Thomann, the manager of the Literary 
 Bureau 01 the U. S. Brewers' Association — all of whose valuable 
 works should be studied by those who wish to hear both sides and 
 form dijust judgment on this matter — has, in his pamphlet, " The 
 effects of beer on those who make and drink it," challenged the 
 prohibitionists to prove the truth of their statements. The Brew- 
 ers' Association, on their part, have had a medical examination 
 made of no less than one thousand workers in New York and 
 Brooklyn breweries — each of whom daily consumes an amount of 
 beer that would frighten ordinary people — and that investigation 
 has proved that the health of brewers is unusually good ; diseases 
 of the kidney and liver occur rarely amongst them ; and their 
 average lives are longer and physical energies greater than those 
 of other workmen. The challenge has not been met, except by 
 
 c" 
 
 t 
 
38 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 it 
 
 vile personal abuse. But the statistical proof adduced by Mr. T. 
 has been strengthened by a report of the Federal Bureau of 
 Statistics of Switzerland, of which the following is an extract : 
 
 During the years 1879 to 1885 the average annual mortuary 
 rate among Swiss brewers was as follows : 
 
 Age, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70 to 80 years. 
 1.6 5.4 10.4 13.5 15.5 24 104.5 
 
 The mortality, from 1879 to 1882, among men of all callings, 
 and of the same ages as above, was 4.7, 7.90, 10.72, 15.31, 26.30, 
 51. II. 109.22. 
 
 III. One favorite piece of clap-trap — for it is nothing else — 
 with prohibition orators, is to take an egg and crack it open and 
 pour the contents into a tumbler-full of whiskey. Thereupon 
 the albumen gets " cooked " as they say : and the horrified spec- 
 tators are informed that this is how drinking habits affect the 
 brains. Our reply to these orators is twofold. 
 
 I St. Let me assure you, my good folks, that people don't take 
 their alcohol that way. Now, in order to verify your illustration, 
 you should take a man with good healthy brains, and crack his 
 skull open and pour the contents thereof into a pailfuU of whiskey. 
 I have no doubt whatever that under such treatment said brains 
 woul' get badly "cooked." But I repeat, people don't take their 
 ale -ncl that way. , 
 
 2d. Let me inform you, or remind you, good folks, that pre- 
 cisely the same results would follow if you were to take and crack 
 open an egg and pour its contents into a tumbler of — not whiskey 
 but — tea. 
 
 I trust, therefore, good folks, that whenever you reproduce 
 that experiment you will take care to supply yourselves with two 
 eggs apiece, one for each of the beverages named : or if you don't 
 care to go to that trouble you will at least add the remark, " On 
 the other hand a cup of good hot tea would seem to have the same 
 effect." 
 
 IV. Another piece of sophistry that readers of prohibition 
 literature will find thrust before them constantly, in varying terms 
 (for prohibitionists have a marvellous faculty of ringing changes 
 on one peal) is : ** Baron Liebig asserts that there is more food in 
 a grain of flour than in any quantity of alcohol." To this we 
 answer : 
 
PROHIBITION ARGUMENTS, 
 
 39 
 
 1. Liebig's contention (viz., the absence of nitrogen in alcohol,) 
 applies also to sugar and other articles. 
 
 2. Liebig's opinion is behind the age now. 
 
 3. The authors already quoted and many others, of later date 
 than Liebig, have shown where he was mistaken. 
 
 4. Liebig himself admitted its great value, along with oils, fats 
 and sugar, as a heat-producer, and he himself endorsed the ancient 
 adage that it was " the old man's milk." 
 
 V. Another argument which crops up continually — I met with 
 it (along with the Liebig statement) in the temperance column 
 of the Mail a few weeks since ; and wt shall encounter it again 
 and again. 
 
 " Over 2,000 medical men in England signed a memorial in 
 favor of total abstinence." 
 
 Now this clap-trap has been exposed, and I trow must yet be 
 exposed, again and again. What are the facts ? 
 
 About forty years ago — when the physiological action of 
 alchohol was not nearly so well known as now — some 2,000 
 medical men in England and India did sign a certain document 
 urging total abstinence. That document came to grief, as it 
 deserved to do, for it was found that very many of its signatories 
 had about the same time signed another memorial testifying to 
 the valuable dietetic properties of some particular kind of Burton 
 ale. Many years after, viz., in 1871, (these things get dreadfully 
 mixed up in the public mind through the disingenuous manipula- 
 tion of such men as Rev. Dawson Burns), another manifesto was 
 drawn up, to which some 150 (observe the reduction in numbers) 
 n>edical names were attached, stating that '' many people im- 
 * .insely exaggerated the value of alcohol as an article of diet." 
 'T' 's IS a i'ery long luay from total abstinence, be it observed. 
 
 But more than that, signatures were obtained, even to this 
 very mild document, by all sorts of 
 
 Ways that are dark ^ 
 
 And tricks that are vain. 
 
 Sir Geo. Burrowes, the then president of the Roy. Coll Phys., 
 headed the list, signing through inadvertence, and, of course, 
 many then followed suit. We all know ho7v signatures to a docu- 
 ment can be obtained. But when a certain M. D. refused to sign, 
 and wrote expostulating with Sir Geo. Burrowes, the latter had 
 
 «.' 
 
 Q 
 
40 
 
 F .rERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 the candor to reply : " I entirely agree with you in the opinion 
 you express about alcohol as an article of diet. I think that to a 
 large class of persons in the climate of England it is indispensable, 
 and I know of many remarkable cases in confirmation of your 
 own experience. On the other hand I think there are large 
 classes of persons in more favored and tropical climates who may 
 and do abstain." 
 
 The whole thing has been exposed by Mr. Sutton Sharpe in 
 his article in the Fortnightly, of November, 1884, to which I refer 
 all candid readers for full particulars. 
 
 Still, for all that, we shall have it cropping up again and again 
 that " once upon a time " 2,000 medical men signed a document 
 advocating total abstinence. 
 
 Can a cause be holy or righteous which requires to be but- 
 tressed by such ui .^^'-'^nus means ? 
 
 No. IX. 
 
 PnOniBITION ARGUMENTS (CONTINUED) "MAKE MEN SNEAKS.' 
 
 Another argument, which prohibitionists urge in favor of their 
 views, I shall give in the words of the Montreal Star, (temperance 
 column) of 8th January. 
 
 "Prohibition robs the traffic of respectability. It drives it 
 into rebellion against law and order. It makes it disreputable. 
 It brands every man who sells and every man who buys as an 
 outlaw. It makes the devotees of the wine-cup, the mean, sneak- 
 ing, night-prowling vagabonds of society." 
 
 I, myself, have heard a Methodist minister and prohibition 
 orator say on the platform : " We don't expect to exterminate 
 drinking any more than we can exterminate theft or any other 
 crime, but we do expect so to legislate that no man will be able 
 to get intoxicating drink without becoming a sneak." 
 
 Now this hopeful state of things (in the eyes of prohibitionists), 
 is what makes the whole movement so odious. It will " make men 
 sneaks" — and that not the drinkers only. It will familiarize men 
 with "ways that are dark and tricks that are vain." It will 
 plunge — it is plunging — the whole land into a sea of dishonesty, 
 disrepect for law, lying, perjury, duplicity and craft that will 
 
• f 
 
 PROHIBITION ARGUMENTS. 
 
 41 
 
 destroy our national character for manliness and truth. One has 
 only to read the details furnished by the Mail as to how the Scott 
 Act is working in the various counties, to see how it is driving 
 men into " rebellion against law and order." In " branding every 
 man that sells and every man that buys as an outlaw," it is simply 
 driving the traffic into unscrupulous hands instead of into hands 
 responsible to society. It is not stopping the traffic : it will never 
 stop the traffic : it has not stopped it in Maine, after thirty-five 
 ye Ts of prohibition, and most stringent and tyrannical laws. It 
 has there, on the confession of Gen Neal Dow himself, simply 
 transferred the traffic from responsible into irresponsible and 
 vicious hands. It is doing the same thing in Canada, as the MaiVs 
 articles have shown. It can never stop the traffic, until it can 
 reverse the laws of nature, and eradicate the basal elements of 
 alcohol which God has implanted in every seed and root and 
 grain that grows. It is not removing drunkenness here, any more 
 than in Maine, as the reports of the State show, and Gen. Dow 
 himself confesses : but it is demoralizing the country ; it is making 
 us a nation of " sneaks." 
 
 In connection with this let me recommend to all a pamphlet, 
 entitled, " Pen Pictures of Prohibition and Prohibitionists," by 
 Rev. J. R. Sikes, the author of "The Biblical Reason Why," etc., 
 referred to previously. This is a little brochure that should be 
 read by all "temperance" people, especially the ladies of the 
 W. C. T. U. They ought to see both sides. 
 
 As an illustration of the demoralizing nature of prohibition, 
 to show how it blunts all sense of right, I know of no more glaring 
 instance than is gathered from an editorial in the Globe, of 8th of 
 January, entitled, "An Amazing Question." It seems some pro- 
 hibitionist correspondent of that paper is troubled in his con- 
 science, and so he refers to the Globe as his "spiritual director;" 
 he asks, ought he to vote for a Boodler candidate if that candidate 
 be a prohibitionist } His " father confessor " — the Globe — certainly 
 gives him good sound advice. It bids him, under the circum- 
 stances, to ouocrve the eighth com.mandment in preference to this 
 new commandment of men — this eleventh commandment : "Thou 
 shalt not take Alcohol." But the very fact of such a question 
 being put at all shows how this craze is warping men's judg- 
 ment, and I fear most prohibitionists, when it comes to a pinch 
 at election times, won't heed the " direction " of the Globe. 
 
42 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 
 
 Again we quote Hon. Edward Blake, {Globe, loth January); 
 " I find many supporters of temperance legislation who do not look 
 upon drinking, even in Scott Act counties, as a crime, and who 
 refuse that moral support and help to the enforcement of that 
 law which they give to the general criminal law. Just compare 
 things. Suppose one of us is walking along the street behind a 
 neighbor, a friend or stranger, and seeing his pocket being picked. 
 He would make himself a special police constable at once, would 
 try to prevent the crime, and if he was big enough would arrest 
 the criminal. But supposing in a Scott Act county, we pass an 
 unlicensed house, for they are all unlicensed, no licenses being 
 granted — and seeing some one going in and getting drink ; we turn 
 to the other side ; we say nothing about it ; we do not propose to 
 enforce the law." 
 
 Brave, honest words ! " We do not propose to enforce the 
 law." and why.' Because we feel in our hearts that the man is 
 not committing a "crime," and that the law is a wicked tyrannical 
 one. There is that in all of us, more or less, which makes us 
 endorse the sentiment of Junius, " The subject who is truly loyal 
 to the chief magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary 
 measures." But still I fear Mr. Blake's charity has outrun his 
 judgment in this instance. He generously imagines that all in his 
 audience are like himself, and that no one would be so base- 
 minded as to turn informer. But we must not forget that the 
 seeds of evil are in all humanity and only require proper soil and 
 culture to make them increase and multiply. Once inaugurate a 
 system of rewarding spies and informers and blackmailers, and 
 we shall soon find the breed increasing. Under tyrannical and 
 arbitrary law s such characters always abound ; and what Juvenal 
 has shown in his Satires to have been prevalent in Rome in her 
 worst days of Imperialism will soon be found amidst ourselves. 
 Only make the surroundings favorable by means of rewards and 
 bribes, and soon the body politic will be swarming with such 
 parasites. And especially when charges of this nature can be 
 so easily trumped up. On one occasion — I do not record this as 
 an exceptional instance, for who is there that has not heard similar 
 remarks.' — a total abstaining friend of mine was relating an 
 altercation he had with another teetotaller, and he said " I assure 
 you he was so excited that if I had not known him to be a 
 total abstainer I should have said he .vas drunk." So the total 
 
PROHIBITION ARGUMENTS, 
 
 43 
 
 abstinence principles of his opponent alone saved my friend from 
 breaking the ninth commandment ; and we may rely upon it that in 
 the golden days of prohibitio:i which we are promised, since there 
 are so many other "stimulants" to the mind than alcohol, (pride, 
 anger, jealousy, good news, sudden joy, revival meetings, etc.), the 
 spies and informers will have many a chance, when they have seen 
 a man "excited," to say he was drunk. But then of what conse- 
 quence is the ninth commandment compared with the eleventh } 
 
 But, happily for us, we have not as yet reached this stage : still 
 for the present the manly words of Mr. Blake are true of the vast 
 majority, and reflect the public sentiment on the matter. There 
 is a great conflict waging between the Dominion and Provincial 
 Governments as to which of them should undertake " to enforce 
 the law." Each shifts the responsibility on the other. Small 
 blame to either. Neither of them wants the dirty job; neither 
 of them wants lo play the part of " Ham, the faiher of Canaan." 
 
 By making a crime of that which is no crime, society is put 
 upon a false basis. It is no statesmanlike or logical plea that 
 thereby some harm, at any rate, will be prevented. Such a plea 
 would justify the re -introduction of the curfew bell, the passport 
 system, the censorship of the press and every other arbitrary 
 measure from which we have freed ourselves. The very faci that 
 prohibition needs so many measures which would never be toler- 
 ated by a liberty-loving people regarding any other infraction of 
 the law; — the testifying of a wife against her husband; — the 
 allowing and even compelling a man to incriminate himself; — the 
 believing a man guilty until he has proved his innocence ; — the 
 subversion of every safeguard of British law and justice; — prove 
 how demoralizing, how degrading, how enslaving the whole pro- 
 hibition movement is; — and it will end — as all such tyrannical 
 and enslaving legislation has done in all countries and in all the 
 centuries of history — in making us a nation of " sneaks." 
 
 ill 
 
44 
 
 PAPEKS ON PROHIBiriON. 
 
 No. X. 
 
 prohibitionists' exaggerations. 
 
 The main argument of the prohibitionists, and where, indeed, 
 they show their strength is — not when they talk of Scripture or 
 science, for they make a sorry mess of both, but — when they dilate 
 upon the horrors of drunkenness. Here, indeed, they have most 
 ])ositive and powerful grounds ; and, // they would only draw legit- 
 imate conclusions therefrom^ they would carry the world with them. 
 But when they draw false conclusions, and when they overstate 
 the facts in the premises themselves, they may be sure that some 
 day, and that before long, a tremendous recoil will come. Their 
 facts and statements will not get even the credit they deserve. 
 Whenever people find themselves duped to the slightest extent 
 they learn to distrust their deceivers in the slightest matter : and 
 so the last state becomes worse than the first. But prohibitionists 
 have so shamefully exaggerated the evils of even the " habitual 
 use of an excessive amount of alcohol " that just as soon as the 
 public learn this, and learn it they will, then the main prop, not 
 only of prohibition, but even of true temperance will be under- 
 mined. In illustration of this let us take some of the positions of 
 prohibitionists on the "evils of drink :" 
 
 I. " Drink fills our jails, our penitentiaries and our lunatic 
 asylums." 
 
 We answer : 
 
 I St. Drink does indeed fill our jails ; for I readily grant that a 
 very large proportion indeed of those who are Q.Qva.xm\.X.t^ for short 
 periods are classed among the " drunk and disorderly." 
 
 2d. Drink does not *' fill " our penitentiaries. The worst 
 crimes are those which require a cool head. The burglar, the 
 forger, the poisoner, the assassin, does not get drunk to carry out 
 his crime. The reports of the wardens of penitentiaries in the 
 United States and Canada entirely dissipate this idea. 
 
 3d. Drink does not " fill " our lunatic asylums. In the reports 
 from the Canadian asylums for the years 1881, 1882 and 1883 we 
 
PROHIBITIONISTS' EX AGGER A TIONS. 
 
 45 
 
 find the total number of cases attributed to intemperance were 52, 
 while 56 were attributed to " religious excitement." Shall we 
 therefore say that religious excitement " fills " our lunatic asylums ? 
 and shall we therefore prohibit all religion ? And even of the 52 
 we should take into account, as Mr. Sutton Sharpe says, that very 
 often it is the diminished self-control of incipient insanity which 
 leads to drink and not drink which leads tn insanity. In regard to 
 these assertions of the prohibitionists, I would urge my readers to 
 study Mr. Thomann's work, " The real and imaginary Effects of 
 Intemperance," in which are given, not wild and baseless asser- 
 tions, but solid statistics, and proved facts from hundreds of 
 cases. 
 
 II. " Drunkenness has caused the misery and ruin of many 
 homes." 
 
 Yes, indeed it has, God knows. But even here some discount 
 must be made ; for too often domestic misery and ruin, as many 
 can tell, have been the cause of the drunkenness. 
 
 III. " Drunkenness causes suicide." 
 
 But statistics have clearly proved that suicide is most prev- 
 alent in countries noted for temperance. And our reasoning 
 faculties can easily discern why. Many a man, driven to extrem- 
 ities, either through misfortune or crime, "takes refuge in c'rink" 
 amongst ourselves, while in other countries he takes refi ge in 
 death. Which of the two is the better I do not care to enquire. 
 
 I merely dispute the statement that drink is the cause of suicide. 
 It is much oftener its substitute. 
 
 IV. " Drink leads to crime." 
 
 This statement, so often made, is a grievous exaggeration, 
 most mischievous and misleading. Indeed prohibition orators 
 themselves confute it by their other arguments. Not long ago the 
 great Daniel Webster was spoken of on a Toronto platform as an 
 awful example of drunkenness. Would the orator like to say of 
 him that drink led to crime ? Did drink lead to crime in the 
 cases of Lords Brougham, Eldon, Thurlow, Mansfield, and hun- 
 dreds of other great men in the days when excess 'n drinking 
 was the fashion ? Have we not all recollections of old men who 
 made their mark and whose loss the world deplored, whose drink- 
 ing habits would now-a-days be very reprehensible : and would 
 we like to say of them that drink led to crime } It is a libel on 
 
4(> 
 
 FAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 our ancestors. The fact is, too often in these days crime leads to 
 drink. Many a man, whose fraudulent transactions or wicked 
 schemes have been exposed, has become reckless and taken to 
 drink to drown his conscience. Such a one should have been 
 put in the penitentiary before he began to drink. 
 
 If all these terrible results are due solely, or even largely to 
 drink, what a glorious record of health, progress and prosperity 
 are we entitled to look for from that champion prohibition State, 
 Maine, where prohibitory laws have been in operation for nearly 
 forty years — and what does Maine, whom we are all striving to 
 copy, the prohibition pocket-borough of Gen. N. Dow, show us 
 after all these years for our emulation ? 
 
 An almost stationary population — an actual decrease of the 
 native population — a decrease of the birth-rate — a fearful increase, 
 especially in consumption and miasmatic diseases, of the death- 
 rate— a sad decrease of shipping and manufacturing industries — 
 a most burdensome increase of taxation — and a fearful showing 
 as compared with Canada, in divorce, illiteracy, pauperism, in- 
 sanity and crime. Had we not better wait until at least one 
 country in the world, one State, one tribe — whether in the present 
 or in the past (for prohibition is no new thing), can show us 
 unmistakably its vast advantages ? 
 
 It is amusing to see how Gen. N. Dow tries to account for the 
 fearful increase (nearly 200 per cent., while the population has 
 only increased 14) of crime in Maine. In a letter to the Witness 
 towards the close of the year 1884, his *' explanation " amounted 
 to about this : 
 
 " Prohibition does prohibit. But 1 admit crime in Maine hp? 
 greatly increased. But the sole cause of this increased crime is 
 drink. But drink is decreasing in Maine because prohibition 
 does prohibit. But crime has increased, and crime is due to 
 drink. But drink is diminishing," etc., etc. 
 
 This might be called a "circulating" argument. It is too 
 illogical to be even called arguing in a circle. One might as 
 well try to get to the end of a circulating decimal. 
 
 V. Another most outrageous exaggeration is about the number 
 of deaths caused by drink. How many are estimated by prohibi- 
 tionists it would be hard to say : they range from 6,000 to 10,000 
 for the Dominion : that would be about 3,000 (say) for Ontario 
 
PROHIBITIONISTS' EX AGGER A TIONS, 
 
 47 
 
 Now let us look at this matter, not rhapsodically but coolly. We 
 again take the War Notes statement for our guide ; it says "the 
 committee came to the conclusion that the mortality amongst 
 intemperate persons showed a four-fold increase in deaths from 
 diseases of the chylopoietic viscera (liver, etc.,) a two-fold in- 
 crease in deaths from renal (kidney) disease — an increase under 
 pneumonia and pleurisy," etc., etc. Now this is not a very satis- 
 factory statement ; for what is meant by " a four-fold and two-fold 
 increase?" Increase as compaicd with what? Then again, "«« 
 increase in pneumonia, etc," This last is too vague altogether. 
 However, not to be captious, and to make up for this " an in- 
 crease " we will put every single case of death from liver or kidney 
 diseases to the debit of alcohol. I hope my readers, who may 
 be troubled with complaints in either of these quarters will not 
 sue me for libel if I class them among the " intemperate ?" let 
 them bear in mind I only do so hypothetically to give prohibi- 
 tionists the benefit of every doubt. Then, taking the report of 
 the registrar of Ontario for 1884, we have Alcohol debtor : 
 
 Lo de 
 
 ;atns trc 
 
 )m alcoholism, - - - - - 
 cirrhosis, . - - . 
 
 34 
 41 
 
 
 
 gastritis (inflammation of stomach), 
 hepatitis (inflammation of liver), - 
 ulcer of stomach, - . - 
 
 138 
 205 
 
 37 
 
 
 
 diabetes, 
 
 70 
 
 
 
 nephria (Bright's disease), 
 
 121 
 
 T Arv 
 
 Total, 
 
 815 
 
 Again I beg pardon of those who are suffering from some of 
 these diseases named. And for their comfort let me add that 
 eminent physiologists, such as Dr. Flint (professor in Bellevue 
 Hospital College, N. Y., in his work on " The Practice of Medi- 
 cine "), Dr. Anstie, and others repudiate the idea of alcohol 
 being an important cause in kidney and liver diseases — and the 
 1,000 brewers of New York show a remarkable freedom from 
 them. The only danger {and that is indeed very great) is from 
 strong spirits taken undiluted. 
 
 Now for the credit side. ist. Dr. Farr, the Registrar-General 
 of England, quoted by our own Provincial Board of Health as 
 
48 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 the highest authority on medical statistics, thus writes of zymotic 
 diseases : — " I invite the attention of those who have portrayed 
 the bad effects of alcohol to consider whether it does not prevent 
 the actions of various infections in the atmosphere. The neglect 
 of this side of the question throws a doubt on many of their in- 
 ferences. The deaths attributed to zymotic diseases (he is speak- 
 ing of England) in 1876 were 96,660 — to alcoholism, 1,120. Now 
 it is evident that any effect depressing the prevalence of zymotic 
 diseases that kill their tens of thousands loill save the lives of 
 thousands." 
 
 Bearing this in mind let us now sum up the list in which 
 alcohol is creditor : 
 
 «( 
 
 No. of deaths from zymotic (miasmatic) diseases, 3,762 
 
 phthysis (consumption), - 2,347 
 
 heart disease, - - - 958 
 
 bronchitis, - - - - 426 
 
 M 
 
 « 
 
 7»493 
 So, then, it seems that the diseases where alcohol might have 
 caused death carried off their hundreds, while diseases where 
 alcohol might have saved life carried off their thousands. 
 
 With all these statistics officially furnished by the Govern- 
 ment, what is the use of all this preposterous exaggeration ? 
 
 We close this paper with the following extract from the 
 Week : 
 
 " The Revue Scientifique publishes a paper on alcohol and 
 alcoholism, which presents statistics and conclusions of a startling 
 nature. The author, M. Fournier de Flaix, affirms that the out- 
 cry against alcohol is utterly unmerited, as it does far more good 
 than harm. To demonstrate this, M. de Flaix furnishes tabular 
 statements to show that not only in the French departments, but 
 in all other countries the birth-rate is lower and the death-rate 
 higher wherever the consumption of alcohol is small. It is 
 further argued from these figures that neither criminality nor 
 suicide is in proportion to alcoholic consumption. In the Seine 
 et Oise the consumption of alcohol is just about half what it is 
 in the Seine Inferieure, yet the suicide rate is double in the 
 former. In England, again, more alcohol is consumed than in 
 France, and yet in France, the writer points out, the birth-rate, 
 
PROIIIBITIO.VISTS' EXAGGERA TIONS. 
 
 49 
 
 the death-rate, the statistics of crime and suicide, are less favor- 
 able than in England. The comparisons for Italy, Spain, Sweden, 
 Norway, Denmark, Russia, Austria and Germany show analagous 
 results. M. de Flaix's conclusion is that it is the nations with 
 the most vital powers, the greatest wealth, and the besf morals 
 who consume the most alcohol." 
 
 So we see the Holy Scriptures did not make a mistake in 
 allowing, not to say inculcating, the consumption of alcohol. 
 
 !l! 
 
 No. XL 
 
 DOES PROHIBITION FROniDIT ? SUBSTITUTES FOH ALCOHOL — OPIUM, 4C. 
 
 Does prohibition prohibit? Some vehemently answer, Yes; 
 others as emphatically say. No. I think we may decide that both 
 answers are correct. It does prohibit, and it d es not. It does 
 prohibit the open and above board sale f reliable alcoholic bev- 
 erages by those who are responsible to ihe public ; but it does not 
 prohibit the surreptitious sale of villainous spirits by irresponsi- 
 ble parties. It prohibits worthy people from making a good use 
 of alcohol ; but it does not prohibit unscrupulous people from 
 making a bad use of it. Dr. Moxon, in the " Symposium " in the 
 Conteviporary, says : 
 
 "I believe that, to a large extent, teetotalism lays firmest hold 
 on those who are least likely ever to become drunkards, and are 
 most likely to want at times the medical use of alcohol ; sensitive, 
 good-natured people of weak constitution. Drunkenness prevails 
 in spite of teetotalism, whilst the pledge inflicts useless self-torture. 
 Let the Legislature put the sot under control." 
 
 How those, of delicate constitution, who ought to take alcohol 
 are prohibited, I have already indicated on page 31. How 
 those who ought «<?/ to take it can nevertheless obtain it. Gen. N. 
 Dow confesses, as regards Maine, and the articles in the Mail ba.ve 
 shown as regards Scott Act counties in Canada. Justices Rose 
 and Cameron have of late declared from the Bench the same 
 thing. 
 
 But one thing is certain ; whatever may be accomplished in 
 prohibiting the supply, prohibition cannot prohibit the demand iox 
 
 % 
 
 
50 
 
 PAPERS OxV PROHIBITION. 
 
 cerebral !;timulants which this high-pressure age,, with its incessant 
 mental strain, its ambitions and rivalries, its ceaseless brain work, 
 its hurry and worry, its struggle for existence, has created. As a 
 consequence, we find that ever since the consumption of alcohol 
 has been tabooed, its place has been taken by substitutes infinitely 
 more dangerous, and producing in truth what has been falsely 
 charged to beer, (see page 37) ''a degeneration of most of 
 the organism profound and very deceptive." So we hear of vic- 
 tims of the laudanum habit, the morphine habit, the cocaine habit, 
 the chloral habit, the quinine habit, the arsenic habit, the strych- 
 nine habit, increasing in numbers steadily A New York paper 
 says : " So great has been the spread of the opium habit in New 
 York that there are now physicians who attend to nothing else 
 than repairing opium wrecks. The vice strikes high ... In 
 the professions are scores of 'Fiends.' They soon become hope- 
 less wrecks. Physxciauo seem to be especially liable, and pastors 
 are the next most numerous." A short time ago the Daily Times 
 contained an extract from the N. Y. Sun concerning the quinine 
 habit, showing how the use of this drug is growing fast ; it closed 
 thus : " A good proportion of the custom comes from women who 
 grow fatigued or weary while shopping, and who, instead of buy- 
 ing nutritious luncheon or drinking a wholesome bottle of porter 
 or ale, resort to the insidious quinine pill." 
 
 The following extracts from a paper read lately at a meeting 
 of the Literary Guild of St. Peter's Church, by Mr. Allan Turner 
 illustrate the fearful hold -that opium in its various forms is taking 
 of the people of the United States ever since prohibition princi- 
 ples have spread. 
 
 " With the single exception of alcohol in its various forms and 
 combinations, opium is the stimulant and intoxicant most exten- 
 sively used by mankind . . . Bad as the physiological conse- 
 quences of excessive abuse of alcohol may be, (and we have very 
 lively pictures of alcohol's work from temperance orators and 
 writers) the effects bodily and mental of excess in opium, hasheesh 
 and other narcotic stimulants, far surpass those resulting from al- 
 cohol, in horror, misery and degradation. Fortunately the num- 
 ber of opium eaters as comj)ared with the number of drunkards, 
 
 is few on this continent at present But . . .we 
 
 must take into consideration that the habit is growing, and grow- 
 ing with rapidity too." "In its proper place, as a medicine, 
 
DOES PROHIBITIOiV PROHIBIT? 
 
 51 
 
 opium is a great blessing to man, . . . and is appropriately 
 called The Physician's Sheet Anchor." In small doacs it is stim- 
 ulant, in larger doses narcotic." " The habitual user of the drug 
 soon becomes a mental, moral and physical wreck." " It holds its 
 slave in a grasp fiom whence he rarely escapes." "The use of 
 morphine by the hypodermic syringe is perhaps the most seductive 
 form of this habit from the peculiarly pleasant effect of the drug 
 administered in this way, and from the ease and secrecy v,rith 
 which a dose may be taken at any time." "Another form is . . 
 opium smoking." "The habit was imported by the Chinese, but 
 it is no longer confined to the Celestials. Opium joints are fre- 
 quented by a large number of white votaries and this number is 
 constantly and rapidly increasing." " Morphine and laudanum are 
 the forms in which opium eaters in this country generally use the 
 drug." "The imports of opium prepared for smoking into Mie 
 United States in 1870 were 12,603 pounds, in 1883 they had in- 
 creased to 298,153 pounds." 
 
 ■'The imports of ordinary opium into the United States have 
 risen from 135,305 pounds in 1867, to 385,060 pounds in 1881, 
 an increase much greater than the proportional increase in the 
 population." 
 
 " These are statistics which deserve the careful attention of 
 every thoughtful individual. We see and hear much of temper- 
 ance societies and other organizations for preventing the abuse of 
 alcoholic drinks (indeed generally for preventing the use of them) 
 and for the reclamation of drunkards. Here is an evil growing 
 up with almost no effort made to check it. Societies for reclaim- 
 ing opium smokers would be useless or almost so. Men may, and 
 frequently do, use alcoholic stimulants with moderation throughout 
 a long life without injury, or r^ least with very little injury to 
 body or mind; but there is no case on record of a moderate 
 habitual user of opium." -;,;;, ^ 
 
 The great danger of this substitute for alcohol, as Mr. Turner 
 has pointed out, is "the ease and secresy with which it is admin- 
 istered." Formerly, in ante-prohibition days, the individual seeking 
 a stmiulant would go to the saloon in sight of all men, and take 
 his alcoholic beverage — perhaps too much, perhaps just enough 
 for his brain work. But now — though the demands on his mental 
 faculties are as great as ever, and though he may Teel unequal to 
 his task — he knows that to take a glass of wine or beer would be 
 
 ill 
 
f 
 
 53 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 shocking. So he carries his little hypodermic syringe, that tells 
 no tales, and stimulates himself in this way. Frirhtful dories are 
 told of the business men in the Stock Exchange and elsewhere 
 in New York. Fagged out it may be with previous brain work, 
 still they are conscious that a fortune, perhaps, depends upon the 
 mental excitation of the moment. To take a glass of wine would 
 never do, it might lead to social or ecclesiastical excommunica- 
 tion, so they quietly inject the morph.'ne. It renders them brisk 
 for the time, and they are able to transa-t their business or make 
 their speculations with no one the wiser, as they suppose. But 
 alas ! that little injection is infinitely worse then all the beer con- 
 sumed by any laborer in the breweries of the city. 
 
 And doubtless, if the whole truth were known, the speculators 
 and physicians and pastors are not the only transgressors in this 
 respect. I should not be at all surprised if some day it should 
 be revealed that some eminent prohibition orator and '' reformed 
 drunkard " (for it seems the brightest lights of the prohibition 
 platform, from John B. Gough to Sam Jones an«l Sam Small 
 were, and boast of having been, in earlier life, disgusting sots) 
 nerved himself to the task of dilating upon the horrors of the 
 " accursed traffic " by swallowing a pill or two, or by giving himself 
 a stealthy prod with his little syringe. And so in striving to cast 
 out the unclean spirit of drunkenness by such unrighteous means, 
 men are letting in seven devils more wicked than itself, which 
 are entering into the body social and alas ! dwelling there. 
 
 No. XII. 
 
 ALCOHOL AS A BHAIN INVXQOnATOR. 
 
 We have yet to consider another most important part which 
 alcohol plays, and has played since the days of Noah, for the 
 benefit of mankind. We shall pass by that which is nevertheless 
 a very valuable function, viz. : its exhilarating properties, its 
 "making glad the heart of man" ( Psalm civ.) — though its ad- 
 vantages have been incalculable in that respect — so much so that 
 poets of all ages, from the Rig Vedas to Tennyson, not excepting 
 the Hebrew poets of the Holy Scriptures, have sung its praises and 
 thanked God for his good gift, and it has ever been a symbol of 
 
ALCOHOL AS A BRAIN IN VIGOR A TOR. 
 
 53 
 
 hospitality, a cemcntcr of friendship, a pledge of good will, a rec- 
 onciler of adversaries, a reducer of ill-temper. We will waive all 
 this we say, because we know that to the sour ascetic all this 
 counts for nothing. But we do insist on the immense value of 
 alcohol, in all times past and present, as a brain invicorator. 
 
 Of course we mean properly used. Alcohol is not different 
 from any other thing. It is not a solitary exception to all natural 
 laws. Like water, like fire, like steam, like electricity, like gun- 
 powder, it is and ever has been " a good servant but a bad mas- 
 ter." We have already seen its good service in hygiene, in 
 warding off diseases of the miasmatic class, and in prolonging 
 life in others. Again, let me say, properly used j it is tiresome to 
 have to repeat this so often, but when temperance agitators so 
 continuously employ that absurdest and most childish and frivol- 
 ous of all arguments, " if a little is good then a i^reat deal must be 
 better," an argument which no one would think of applying to 
 water, fire, oxygen, steam, or any earthly thing whatever, one 
 must reiterate that alcohol, like everytliins; else, must be used tem- 
 perately, and when used in excess is like every other thing — 
 injurious. 
 
 In support of our contention we quote the following : 
 
 I. Sir James Paget, M. D., the first of the writers in the 
 Contemporary "Symposium." "But as to he working power, 
 whether bodily or mental, there can be no juestion th..L ihe ad- 
 vantage is on the side of those who U' Icoholic drinks. And it 
 
 is advantage of this kind which is mobi i' be desired 
 
 That which is most to be desi: 1 is a national j.owe' 'or good work- 
 ing and good thinking and a long duration of tlic p-^riod of liie 
 fittest for those ; and facts show that these are more nearly 
 attained by the peoples that drink alcohol than by those who do 
 . . . . " I would maintain this and all that ca?^ be 
 
 not." .... 
 reasonably deducted from it, namely, that the best and in pr por- 
 tion to numbers the largest quantity of brain work has been 
 and still is being done by the people of those nations in which 
 the use of alcoholic drinks has been and is habitual. Furtl- r ' 
 would maintain, so far as I can judge of the brain work of dii.ci- 
 ent persons, they have done the best and most who have habit- 
 ually and temperately taken alcoholic drinks." _ 
 
 2. J. P. Lewis, M. D., of University of Brussels L. R. C. P., 
 Edin. M. R. C. S., England : " I prescribe total abstinence as an 
 
54 
 
 PAPERS ON PROlIlBITIOiY. 
 
 1 
 
 'y-x 
 
 extreme remedy for a desperate disease ; but they that are whole 
 need not the physician — nor the remedy." 
 
 " I am bound to give exi)ression to my opinion that teetotal- 
 ism would be highly injurious to this great nation (Great Britain) 
 or any other nation careful of its place in the van of civilization^ 
 
 3. Dr. Evarts, of the Cincinnati Sanitarium^ in his "What 
 Shall we do for the Drunkard ? " (which has been quoted before) 
 says : " Is it not indeed probable that were all brain stimulants, 
 other than ordinary fooas common to man and other animals, at 
 once and forever annihila^^.d, or the alcoholic \'arieties alone 
 withheld forever from common use, that the result would be in the 
 course of time deleterious to mankind, by reason of brain deter- 
 ioration resulting from a loss of such food, and a consequent 
 gradual (no matter how slow) return of the races to a more 
 common level, at the expense of those who have accomplished 
 the greatest upward departure therefrom?" 
 
 4. The London Times article of 14th August, 18S4, on Alco- 
 holic Drinks, 
 
 5. The Popular Science Monthly of N. Y., in April, 1884. 
 
 (I have not space to quote these, but they strongly endorse the 
 opinions of the above). 
 
 6. Any scientific work whatever on the physiological action of 
 alcohol, such as even the Temperance essay of Dr. Miller, ("Alco- 
 hol, its place and power," already quoted) will tell the student 
 that alcohol " stimulates the imagination while it enfeebles the 
 will power." Prohibition writers and speakers constantly harp on 
 this " scientific fact " that alcohol " enfeebles the will power ;" 
 but they always conveniently forget to tell us about its stimulat- 
 ing the imagination. Now what is the " Imagination ? " Let 
 prohibitionists consult, not scientific works, that may be out of 
 their line, but say Worcester's or Webster's larger dictionaries, 
 They will find, if they read the whole article carefully, that the 
 imagination, in physiological and biological language, means the 
 inventive, designing, constructing, creative faculty, that which 
 chiefiy differentiates man from the lower organisms, in contrast 
 to the perceptive or receptive faculties, those which take in and 
 store up the thoughts of others or receive impressions from 
 without. 
 
 Such are the conclusions of " Science," notwithstan 'ng Rev. 
 J. B. Hamilton and his lecture ; and as all science verifies its 
 
ALCOHOL AS A BRAIN INVIGORATOR. 
 
 55 
 
 hypothesis by experience, so all experience verifies these author- 
 ities. Even the researches of late made into prehistoric times 
 have shown that the first people (the Aryans) whom we can trace 
 emerging from barbarism into primeval civilization (see Clodd's 
 '' Childhood of Religions," chap, vi, sec. </, and Prof. Rawlinson's 
 " Origin of Nations," chap, vi,) who learned to domesticate animals, 
 to design various tools, to cultivate poetry and art, had learnt 
 also to manufacture an intoxicating beverage, known as the Soma 
 juice. To this Soma juice they sang hymns as to a god, and 
 extolled its power for inspiring the mind with brilliant ideas, 
 lofty thoughts, and grand designs. From that day to this, that 
 progressive and agressive race to which we ourselves belong, 
 known in Scripture language as the " Sons of Japheth," of whom 
 Noah prophesied when he " awoke from his wine " (Gen, ix), 
 " God shall enlarge Japheth and he shall dwell in the tents of 
 Shem ;" (a prophecy which is still being fulfilled) — that race 
 spoken of by Horace (Odes i, 3) as " Audax Japeti genus " and 
 described in ethnological science in turn as the Indo-Germanic, 
 the Indo-European, and the Great Aryan race, have ever been 
 going on, subduing their brethren of the other races, ever in " the 
 van of civilization " with increased brain power, ami braimocight, 
 and ever large consumers of alcohol. There is a universality 
 about this, a semper iil'iqiie, ab omnibus, which we cannot afford to 
 ignore. Take the greatest drinking nations, as the Germans or 
 the Anglo-Saxons, and you find them the best soldiers, the 
 greatest adventurers, the ripest scholars, the profoundest thinkers, 
 the chief inventors and discoverers. And contrast with them the 
 Turks, the Hindoos, the Egyptians, the Arabs, the Chinese, or any 
 other nation whatever that have made total abstinence from 
 alcohol a part of the " whole duty of man ; " what do they 
 contribute to the world of thought or to the advance of humanity ? 
 Now this question of prohibition is one which should be 
 decided for a nation, not by what Mr. Joseph Cook in one of his 
 " Monday Lectures " calls "count of heads and clack of tongues," 
 but after thorough, calm, unprejudiced, scientific investigation. 
 Science — real science — judges not by isolated cases but by grand 
 generalizations ; she does not say " Here is a man who has lost 
 his mind, or there is another who has lost his health, or there is 
 another who has ruined his family through an ' habitual use of an 
 excessive quantity of alcohol ; ' therefore let us prohibit its use. 
 
 f 
 
56 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 its sale, its manufacture altogether." No ; science will ask : 
 What has been the general effect among the vast masses, through- 
 out all experience and all history, of the ordinary consumption of 
 alcohol? The London Spectator (24th September, 1884, article 
 " Morality of Diet ") says : "As a drunken man does immoral 
 acts, it is natural that a practice, which, if carried to an excess, 
 makes men drunk, should be held in se unholy, and total absti- 
 nence be raised by the exaggeration characteristic of recoil into 
 
 a moral obligation Wine is not wicked in se, and t/ie 
 
 theories they raise on that basis are fallacies contradicted by a glance 
 at the facts of the world. So far from the use of alcohol destroy- 
 ing the races that use it, the "wine-bibbing " races are the con- 
 quering races, and civilization owes everything, not to the Hindoo, 
 who abstains like Sir W. Lawson, or to the Mussulman, who 
 abstains like a convict in prison, but to the wine-tasting Greek, 
 and the hard-drinking Roman and the beer-swilling Teuton. The 
 Hebrew, who drinks and always has drunk from Noah downwards, 
 has done five times as much for the world as his cousin the Arab, 
 who even in Africa is the most rigid abstainer. The single 
 Hindoo sect which has not renounced alcohol, but demands 
 regular rations of rum — the Sikh — is the one which, were we awa,/ 
 from India, would conquer and probably reinvigorate all the 
 others. Nor is the teetotaler's dogma as to the moral effects of 
 total abstinence, especially in regard to violent crime, one whit 
 more irrefutable. The Turks who committed the atrocities of 
 Batouk were hereditary total abstainers ; the authors of the 
 massacre of Cawnpore had never seen liquor ; and the Bedouin, 
 who will kill you for your buttons, wouM kill you also,, if he 
 could, for drinking beer. " 
 
 Here, then, are certain facts which the believer in Christ must 
 face. There are three religions which for centuries have held 
 sway over the minds of innumerable millions of mankind — the 
 Buddhist, the Mohamedan. the Christian, (under this last we in- 
 clude its precursor. Judaism — we mean, in fact, the religion of 
 the Bible from the time of Moses.) Of these three religions the 
 two first named were strictly prohibitionist. Mohammed stigma- 
 tized alcohol as " the mother of sins " (like our prohibitionists,) 
 and as is well known all his followers are bound to abstain. The 
 five prohibitory commandments of Buddha are as follows : 
 
ALCOHOL AS A BRAIN INVIGORATOR. 
 
 57 
 
 ! i 
 
 I. Thou shalt abstain from destroying or causing the destruc- 
 tion of any living thing. 
 
 II. Thou shalt abstain from acquiring or keeping by fraud or 
 violence the property of another. 
 
 III. Thou shp.lt abstain from those who are not proper objects 
 of thy lust. 
 
 IV. Thou shalt abstain from deceiving others either by word 
 or deed. 
 
 V. Thou shalt abstain from intoxicating drinks and drugs. 
 These are thus rendered in that charming poem, Edwin 
 
 Arnold's " Light of Asia " (towards the close) : 
 
 Kill not — for pity's sake — and lest ye slay 
 The meanest thing upon its upward way. 
 
 Give freely and receive ; but take from none 
 By greed, or force, or fraud, what is his own. 
 
 Bear not false witness, slander net nor lie ; 
 Truth is the speech of inward purity. 
 
 Shun drugs and drinks which work the wit abuse ; 
 Clear minds, clean bodies need no Soma juice. 
 
 Touch not thy neighbor's wife, neither commit 
 Sins of the flesh unlawful and unfit. 
 
 Now, will any one in his sober senses pretend to say that these 
 are an improvement on the prohibitions of the Decalogue of 
 Mount Sinai ? At present there is a craze among the " cultured " 
 of Boston and New York to introduce ' Buddhism " as a substi- 
 tute for what they deem an " effete " Christianity. I wonder how, 
 in the face of the researches of Pasteur and other physiologists 
 concerning the immanence of organic life everywhere, these 
 " Buddhists ' are going to keep their First Commandment. Is it 
 sin to "destroy or cause the destruction of" the Bacilli and 
 Bacteria of the various Zymotic diseases ? But this fad must, I 
 suppose, like other fads, have its day. 
 
 In opposition to these two prohibitionist religions, Christianity, 
 the religion of the Bible, has ever tolerated and sanctioned, nay 
 authorized, the use of alcohol. It has done more than that — it 
 has sanctified it ; it has insisted upon it as an integral part of all 
 
 '1 
 
 J 
 
 
58 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 religious worship. It has provided for its use not only ritually, 
 or medicinally, but as an article of ordinary diet. 
 
 And now we ask you, readers, judging — not from exceptional 
 and extreme cases, but as true science always judges — trom gen- 
 eralizations, from the consideration of the " greatest good of the 
 greatest number " — from the universal experience and history of 
 the whole human race — which was right — Mohammed, Buddha, 
 or the " wine-bibber " — Christ ? 
 
 No. XIII. 
 
 ALCOnOL AS A BRAIN INVIGORATOR, CONTINUED. 
 
 1. We said in our last paper that this most important question 
 of the consumption of alcohol i.iust be judged of, not by isolated 
 cases where excess had been ^is we all acknowledge) prejudicial 
 or ruinous, but by its effects in the aggregate, by generalizations. 
 Sir Wm. Roberts, M. D., of Manchester, in his work on " Food 
 Accessories " (such as alcohol, tea, coffee, etc.), thus writes: 
 
 " These generalized food customs of mankind are not to be 
 viewed as random practices adopted to please the palate or gratify 
 our idle or vicious appetite. These customs must be regarded as 
 the outcome of profound instincts which correspond to the im- 
 portant wants of the human economy. They are the fruit of 
 colossal experience, accumulated by countless millions of men 
 through successive generations. They have th.e same weight and 
 significance as other kindred facts of natural history, and are 
 fitted to yield to observation, and to study lessons of the highest 
 scientific and practical value." 
 
 2. In stating in the last paper, that the consumption of alco- 
 hol had always been the concomitant of civilization and mental 
 progress, we adduced the Aryan races : but they are not the only 
 instances. Late researches in the history of the ancient Egyp- 
 tians have shown that they were not only wine drinkers (with all 
 due deference to Miss Wilmot and her interesting little tract), 
 but also manufacturers and consumers of beer. Indeed it is 
 quite possible that in the excavations that are now going on in 
 
 Ut 
 
ALCOHOL AS A BRAIN INVICORATOR. 
 
 59 
 
 " The Field of Zoan " we may yet come across a barrel, a cask, 
 or jug of King Pharaoh's XX. ( See Blackwood, August 1870.) 
 
 Then again take those marvellous people, the ancient Peru- 
 vians. Mr. W. H. Prescott {Conquest of Peru) tells us that their 
 religion was a Monotheism of a very high type — their conquests 
 were astonishing — their progress in the arts and sciences and in 
 every aspect of social life most remarkable; and that they were 
 also " hard drinkers." 
 
 3. Here let me enter my caveat against misuse being made of 
 the physiological fact that alcohol "stimulates the imagination." 
 There are young people whose minds are by nature highly, perhaps 
 abnormally, imaginative; — young poets, young mathematicians, 
 young geniuses of all kinds. For them to stimulate an already 
 over-active imagination would be a terrible mistake ; it would be 
 to court the untimely fate of a Byron, a Chatterton, or an Edgar 
 A. Poe. Again let me warn those who are altogether devoid of 
 imagination, that alcohol, while it may stimulate, cannot create it. 
 They need not suppose that by pouring whiskey down their 
 throats they can become "geniuses:" they will only become 
 drivelling idiots. Steam will make the machine go, provided the 
 machine is in good working order; if it be faulty all the steam in 
 the world won't make it go. Even if the machine be perfect, an 
 excess of steam will quickly injure it. So with that marvellously 
 intricate machine, the brain. 
 
 Besides, very young *' geniuses " have no business to stimulate 
 the imagination ; they have rather to dampen it. Their first duty 
 is to become, not producers but consumers of thought. In re- 
 ceiving and assimilating the ideas of others (which is the first 
 business of the young mind) alcohol is not only unnecessary but 
 prejudicial : when a man is thus studying — taking in and storing 
 up the thoughts of others — when his mind is in what I may call a 
 receptive condition, he does not want alcohol. But on the other 
 hand when he h paying out — when he is originating, constructing, 
 devising, producing — then alcohol under proper control is exceed- 
 ingly valuable. All physiologists, even Liebig, declare that alcohol 
 is beneficial to those past middle life, but many of them pro- 
 nounce it injurious (except medicinally) for the young. They 
 are right, from a psychological standpoint, because the business of 
 the younger is rather to consume, of the elder to produce, thought. 
 
 As for those few — for they are few compared with the vast 
 
Co 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 number of consumers — who take alcohol to excess, not for their 
 health's sake, not for brain work, not for rations' enjoyment, but 
 simply and solely to kill time, to stimulate their baser passions, 
 or to drown thought by stupefying themselves — why the sooner 
 they are put in an asylum the better. But it is too much to ask 
 that all mankind should forego, what (as the authorities already 
 quoted and many others that co"H be adduced, assure us) has 
 been a tremendous agent of man's advance, in order to reclaim 
 the few sots who are deficient in will power. It is hardly worth 
 while to pull down a whole house in order to get rid of a few rats : 
 it is hardly worth while to "prohibit" the St. Lawrence because 
 some get drowned. 
 
 4. Herein lies the reason why so many " clever ' men — brain- 
 workers of acknowledged ability — leaders of men, leaders of 
 thought and action — throughout the world's history, have suc- 
 cumbed to the temptation of excess in the use of alcohol. They 
 know how invaluable it is as a brain energizer — but alas ! through 
 their intemperance they have exposed themselves to the scorn of 
 prohibitionists. Such writers and orators, who are very keen 
 in seeing everybody's faults but their own, have ransacked all his- 
 tory, from Alexander the Great down to Daniel Webster, Pitt, 
 Fox, Sheridan and contemporary public men, to " point their moral 
 and adorn their tale." It is painful and saddening to hear the 
 failing of men to whom the world owes an eternal debt of grati- 
 tude, dragged forth and gibbetted on prohibition platforms by 
 creatures whose very names will be forgotten, when the grateful 
 memories of such "drunkards" are still fresh and green. When 
 such a man as Daniel Webster is thus- exposed to public odium 
 (as he was in Toronto a short while ago) as an " awful example " 
 of the use of alcohol, one is justified in replying : It is a \)\\.y for 
 himself, that Daniel Webster drank to excess : but it would have 
 been a thousand pities, it would have been an irreparable loss, 
 for huma)tity at large if Daniel Webster had been a total abstainer 
 all his life. 
 
 5. It will be said in reply by prohibitionists : "We can show 
 the names of those who have been leaders of men and yet 
 total abstainers." Now in discussing this point, let us first caution 
 the reader — and we do it with sorrow — that the statements of pro- 
 hibitionists are not to be taken without strict investigation. 
 
 i* 
 
ALCOHOL AS A BRAIN IN VIGOR ATOR. 
 
 6i 
 
 English prohibitionists quote Hanlan as an example; I think 
 we Canadians know better. So we hear of Generals Wolseley 
 and Gordon : Mr. Sutton Sharp, (in Fortnightly, quoted before.) 
 has exposed this falsity. Some obituary notices of the late Henry 
 Ward Beecher have spoken of him as a total abstainer. This is 
 false, and I can produce evidence to that effect, if challenged. On 
 the rontrary Mr. Beecher, (who, whatever his oddities, was at any 
 rate a fearlessly outspoken man), in a sermon on St. John, IV, 15, 
 preached in the spring of 1884, and published in the papers, thus 
 expressed himself concerning total abstinence : 
 
 *' I doubt whether this absolutely unstimulating way of life 
 will answer the purpose of civilization, or be as healthy as another 
 way would be. The more brains men have, and the more brain- 
 work, the more they are apt to be addicted to some form of stim- 
 ulants, milder or severer, and only now and then can you find a 
 man who is absolutely simple in his habits, drinking water and 
 eating bread and meat or vegetables. Nor among them do we 
 find the most robust, the most absolutely industrious, the most 
 persistently accomplishing specimens of men." 
 
 Now here we can fancy the Canadian prohibitionist will say : 
 "Look at the Hon. Ed. Blake*; there is a man who, as he avows 
 (see Globe, loth January), has been a total abstainer for the last 
 thirteen years, and there you have a man of gigantic intellect and 
 serene soul." 
 
 We readily grant this ; here is an undoubted instance. But 
 exceptions prove the rule. If we meet, as we can do every day, 
 a sceptic or agnostic, whose outward conduct puts to shame that 
 of many professed Christians, we do not, therefore, conclude that 
 Christianity is altogether useless. Besides, Mr. Blake has not 
 been all his life a total abstainer ; and we must take into consider- 
 ation how much he may be indebted for his great intellect to 
 the millions of gallons of alcohol that his progenitors must have 
 drunk — for prohibitionists are fond of telling us of the "cumula- 
 tive " effects of the " poison " of alcohol. And, moreover, it is 
 impossible to decide whether Mr. Blake's mental faculties are 
 
 * The Hon. Edw. Blake, frequently mentioned In these papers, has been for some time 
 the leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons in Canada. The Government party 
 are called Conservatives or "Tories," of whom only lo per cent., it is estimated, are pro- 
 hibitionists ; while the Oppeeition are called Liberals or "Grits," of whom some 75 per 
 cent, are supposed to be ia favor of prohibition. The " Tori( s " tax the " Grits " with hav- 
 ing no settled policy : they can object to every scheme proposed, but never devise any. 
 
68 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION, 
 
 greater or less as a total abstainer than they would have been 
 otherwise.* All parties admit and admire his immense analytical 
 powers; but men's opinions, even among his followers, are much 
 divided as to those constructive, originating, designing qualities 
 that come under the term ** imagination," which Dugald Stewart 
 calls " the great 'pring of human activity, and the principal source 
 of human improvement." 
 
 We cannot be guided in legislating on such a subject by an 
 exceptional instance here and there. We have still before us the 
 broad fact that the greatest and most brilliant brain work of the 
 world has been done by consumers of alcohol ; and that such 
 consumption, for generation after generation, for thousands of 
 years, has resulted not in physical and mental degeneracy, but in 
 producing the most vigorous and progressive nations of the world. 
 
 No. XIV. 
 
 quehies addressed to mcv of boience. 
 
 %^. 
 
 This paper may be looked upon as parenthetical, for herein I 
 address myself simply and solely to men of science. I do not, of 
 course, mean such " scientists " as Rev. J. B. Hamilton, of Chicago, 
 whom I have often quoted ; those who talk so glibly of " science " 
 and yet show their crass ignorance. But I mean those who have 
 made a life-long study of Nature and her laws ; those who are 
 capable of abstract thought ; and who know something of the 
 new departures in physics and philosophy. I beseech all others 
 to pass this paper by ; for they will only misunderstand and mis- 
 interpret it : let them conclude that I am writing either wildly or 
 jestingly as they please. I address myself to scientists only. 
 
 Fathers and brethren — (for herein I confess myself a tyro : I 
 step down from my theological platform and become a learner : 
 I sit at your feet, and, like an oriental scholar, ask questions). 
 
 • This paper will be of a speculative character. (Of course you 
 will understand the term ; not as a critic of one of my publica- 
 tions in which I had used the expression, '' I grant that these 
 views may be too speculative to be preached as dogmatic truths," 
 
QUEK/ES ADDRESSED TO MEN OF SCIENCE. 
 
 63 
 
 who thereupon taxed me with issuing my pamphlet '* as a specula- 
 tion.") 
 
 1. I wish to ask you, fathers and brethren, concerning the 
 full force of the expression, " alcohol stimulates the imagination." 
 I believe you will assent to the general correctness of my previous 
 definition, that the imagination is that faculty of the mind which 
 chiefly distinguishes man from the lower animals — (not that they 
 are altogether devoid of it. " Darwin's Descent of Man," Part I, 
 sec. 1 18) — the designing, creating, originating faculty : as opposed 
 to the perceptive faculties, in which the lower animals often sur- 
 pass us. It is the preponderance of the imagination which makes 
 the brain of the lowest type of savage immensely larf^er than that 
 of the highest type of ape, while the brain of the highest type of 
 man is in a like ratio greater than that of the savage. (" Man's 
 Place in Nature," Huxley). 
 
 Now, when told that alcohol " stimulates " the imagination, 
 the popular idea — which is fostered by prohibition agitators — is 
 that alcohol acts " like a whip or spur," /. e., an irritant exciting 
 the blood, etc., into undue expenditure of energy, without giving 
 anything in return. Now would it not be well if such prohibition 
 agitators would take a course of instruction in, not only the 
 physiological action of alcohol and its assimilation, but also the 
 Conservation of Energy, and the works of Clifford, Bain, etc., 
 on the Correlation of Mind and Matter ? Under such a course 
 of study would they not learn that alcohol not only provokes 
 energy but imparts it ? And then further, seeing that one may 
 speak scientifically of a lump of coal as being (in view of its past 
 history) concentrated sunbeams, would it not be in perfect keep- 
 ing to speak of alcohol (in view of its " promise and potency") as 
 Bottled Imagination ? 
 
 2. Again, fathers and brethren ; if alcohol does stimulate the 
 imagination — if alcohol consumers are (according to the authori- 
 ties quoted) nation for nation, more vigorous, mentally and physi- 
 cally, than abstainers — if prohibition so works that the scrupulous 
 and virtuous become total abstainers, while the unscrupulous and 
 vicious still get their liquor somehow : will not the ultimate 
 result be that the worse characters will become the more vigorous, 
 and by " natural selection " the better and purer types of human- 
 ity will go to the wall ? Of course, like all instances of evolution 
 
64 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 m 
 
 this will take time, as Dr. Everts says (see page 54) ; but is not 
 the process already begun amongst us ? 
 
 3. Again, supposing the theory of evolution is true — mind I 
 do not commit myself to it : it is at present sub judice, and, 
 although the evidence in its favor is accumulating, still the ver- 
 dict at present is " not proven " — Supposing, I say, it is true ; is 
 it not worthy of enquiry what part alcohol has played in this 
 evolution ? The imagination has been, somehow^ wonderfully 
 developed. Is alcohol yet to be credited with any share ia the 
 " Descent of Man ?" ' . ;^ ' ■ ' : 
 
 4. We are constantly told by prohibitionists that the brutes 
 are wiser than men, because having been once dosed with 
 alchohol, they ever after turn from it with loathing. (See article, 
 Alcohol, " U. S. Dispensatory, 1884 ;" also, ' Darwin's Descent of 
 Man," Part I, sec. 11). But there are exceptions to this : the 
 following instance is furnished by Dr. Miller, in his "Alcohol, 
 its place and power :" 
 
 " In a home park a pensioned pony was leisurely spending the 
 evening of his days under the kind care of his master's widow. 
 One day she Avas alarmed by seeing the poor beast rolling on the 
 ground, evidently in pain. The groom was summoned : his 
 diagnosis was prompt — colic ; and his prescrir>tion consisted of a 
 couple of bottles of mulled ale, which the pony drank readily, and 
 with obvious relief. In a d-iy or two, however, the attack recurred, 
 and the dose had to be repeated. In a few days more there was 
 another relapse, when the same remedy sufficed for cure ; but 
 after a time, the rolling and kicking having become matters of 
 daily occurrence, and always in front of the drawing-room win- 
 dows, suspicion arose as to their truthfulness ; and a little watch- 
 ing convicted the poor pony of shamming the disease for the sake 
 of ';he cure. The ale was accordingly withheld and the colic did 
 not return." 
 
 Surely that pony's imagination was stimulated ! 
 Another very striking instance is given in a late number of 
 Casscl's Faniily Magazine, to which I beg to call your attention. 
 
 The article referred to described the ways and habits of the 
 elephants which are employed in the British military service in 
 India, and gave instances of their surprising intelligence. It 
 
 
 -V^ ::.. 
 
QUERIES ADDRESSED TO MEN OF SCIENCE. 
 
 65 
 
 states that whenever a dispute arises between an elephant in the 
 service and his " mahout," or driver, a regular court-martial is 
 held ; evidence is called for on both sides, and cou^plainant and 
 defendant have an equally fair hearing. On one occasion an 
 elephant was charged with having given his mahout a most un- 
 merciful pounding with his trunk. The evidence conclusively 
 proved that the driver had been badly pounded. When the turn 
 came for the defence, the elephant knelt down — not to ask for 
 pardon but — to point with the tip of his trunk to the wounds on 
 hij, neck and forehead which the mahout had inflicted upon him. 
 Thereupon the men was sentenced to so many days' extra drill 
 and confinement in barracks, while the defendant, the elephant, 
 was honorably acquitted and awarded — oh, tell it not in Gath ! — 
 a bottle of rum ! ! 
 
 And it seems that this is the way they always reward any 
 special effort of intelligence or sagacity (or shall we say imagina- 
 tion ?j on the part of an elephant in the service. 
 
 Now let me ask you, fathers and brethren, do you consider 
 that the said alcohol has played any part in " stimulating the 
 imagination " of these sagacious brutes, or in developing their 
 brain power ? 
 
 4. This opens up another speculation. Supposing the whole 
 human race were finally educated up to prohibition principles. 
 Supposing all were at last fully convinced that alcohol was 
 in all cases a " deadly poison " and had abandoned its use every- 
 %vhere, and the hopes and dreams of the W. C. T. U. were com- 
 pletely realized. And supposing (for it is not quite beyond the 
 bounds of possibility) a member of some collateral branch of our 
 family, some anthropoid ape, for instance, were, accidentally of 
 course, to hit upon the mani'facture of some fermented drink. 
 Supposing the consumption of such beverage became habitual 
 with him and his kin. Is there any possibility, fathers and 
 brethren, that they would in -consequence become a ruling race, 
 and that we humans should have eventually to succumb to, say, 
 our cousins the Gorillas ? 
 
66 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 No. XV. 
 
 SUMMING UP.— CONCLUSION. 
 
 t 
 
 We do not intend to discuss in these pages the economic 
 aspect of prohibition. We leave it for experts in finance to in- 
 form us whether it will bring the country gain or loss. For our 
 part we have only to say : If alcohol is an unmitigated curse ; 
 if it is a " purely selfish indulgence," and nothing more ; if it 
 brings evil only, and no good ; if it is the " Devil's instrument," 
 " the device of Satan," " the accursed thing," etc., etc., which it is 
 said to be ; then in God's name prohibit it, whatever money loss 
 such action may entail. God forbid that any one, for the sake 
 of mere gain, should advocate the traffic in an absolute " curse ; " 
 God forbid that we should seek to prosper materially as a nation 
 upon the "price of blood." 
 
 But all the same, if it be so, we must say : There is a mistake 
 in the Bible somewhere. There is no mistake whatever about the 
 prohibitions of Mohammed and Buddha : " he that runs may read " 
 their interdicts. If prohibitionist arguments are sound, then the 
 ^Vord of God is faulty, to say the least, in not making this as 
 clear as the other two religions have done, and in misleading for 
 so many centuries the countless millions of its adherents. This 
 is to shake our confidence in Revelation ; this is to cause the 
 Bible to be " wounded in the house of its friends." There are 
 plenty to-day, without the aid of Christian believers, to follow in 
 thf,' wake of Robert Ingersoli and tell us about the " Mistakes of 
 Moses:" prohibitionists have added another "mistake" to his 
 list. 
 
 But "let God be true though every man a liar." We have 
 shown already that the sanctions of the Holy Scriptures have 
 been vindicated by the history and experience of the world ; 
 while the prohibitions of Mohammed and Buddha have resulted 
 in mental and moral degradation. V/e have shown how the con- 
 sumption of alcohol — permitted to the individual and enjoined in 
 the ritual of the Church, both in the Old and New Testaments — 
 has ever been the concomitant of liberty and progress, of increased 
 
SUMMING UP~CONCLUSIOi\\ 
 
 67 
 
 mental and physical power and of human development in every 
 phase of life. 
 
 2. Nor have we laid ourselves out in these papers to discuss 
 the question of temperence/ri7/<fr y how to restrain drunkenness 
 and check the evils of excess. Schemes innumerable to this end 
 are already before the public ; let such of them as do not thwart 
 the Christian method have every encouragement. The Christian 
 method is to treat men as freemen, to teach them to exercise 
 self-control, in dependence on the grace of God. It is to be ex- 
 pected, as a matter of course, that under the " Law of Liberty " 
 some will fail of self-control in this vice, as in all other vices and 
 crimes. " It must needs be that offences come." But commun- 
 ity of goods is not the true remedy for theft, polygamy and the 
 life of the convent are not the true safeguards of the seventh 
 commandment ; the censorship of the press and the Index Ex- 
 purgatorius are not the true means for counteracting improper 
 literature, and sumptuary enactments and Blue Laws are not the 
 true way to prevent undue mdulgence among Christians and 
 freemen. 
 
 3. We have endeavored to pay all due regard to those who choose 
 to abstain. We have shuwn that teetotalism is not good for the 
 race at large, whatever it may be for the individual. Undoubt- 
 edly some are so constituted that abstinence is their only safety ; 
 but for many, aye, very many, teetotalism means not safety but 
 ruin to their health, as medical men have testified. It means 
 increase of heart disease by substituting tea, which is pernicious 
 in such cases (see Dr. Yeo's article in Nineteenth Century, March, 
 1886,) for alcohol which is i neficial. It means increase of con- 
 sumption and 1 ironchitis by robbing those so afflicted of a most 
 valuable agent. (See page 29.) St. Paul was not "mistaken" 
 when he urged S Timothy, though he was a bishop, to quit his 
 teetotalism. 
 
 No, we make no scorn of those who abstain, whether for con- 
 science sake or as a matter of prudence. But there are amongst 
 them m.en whom Rev. Mr. Crawford, at the temperance meeting 
 in Toronto, on 12th May, justly held up to scorn, because they, 
 on account of their teetotalism, plumed themselves on being, as 
 he said, a "temperance aristocracy ;" those who " trust m them- 
 selves that they are righteous and despise others." To such we 
 
"r^' 
 
 ■ 
 
 68 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 say : "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant ? To his 
 own master he standeth or falleth." (Rom. xiv, 4.) 
 
 4. The idea that prohibition is going to do away with crime — 
 like the idea of former days that education would bring about 
 this happy consummation — is altogether fallacious. We have 
 already (see pages 48 and 56) shewn this, and the experience of 
 every day confirms it. Some of the biggest scoundrels in Canada — 
 from D. K. Rine, down to Mr. Ward, the late Secretary of West 
 End Christian Temperance Association of Toronto, and Mr. L. 
 Cleverdon, the forger, late reeve of Strathroy, and warden of Mid- 
 dlesex — have been great "Temperance " men. 
 
 5. If prohibitionists think they can force all mankind back to 
 an unstimulating way of living, they make a grand mistake. We 
 cannot go back to the simple, frugal, homely fare of fruits and 
 berries of our primitive savage ancestors ; at least if we do we 
 shall go back also to their poverty of mind. And of all cerebral 
 stimulants alcohol is the least dangerous and most controllable. 
 (See page 51, also Times article on alcoholic drinks, and Popular 
 Science Monthly, April, 18S4). Prohibiting all alcohol means 
 mental degeneracy of the race and resort to the stimulants of the 
 Turks and Chinese. The '' physicians and pastors " of New 
 York can bear testimony to this. To endeavor to suppress all 
 stimulants whatsoever is like striving to sweep back the ocean's 
 tide. The history of prohibition, wherever tried, from the times 
 of Guatama, down to the experience of our own Scott Act coun- 
 ties, ought to satisfy us of this.- 
 
 6. We protest against prohibition, because it is coercion of the 
 vilest character. Our legislators have passed bold resolutions 
 denouncing the contemplated " Coercion " of the Home Govern- 
 ment ; and at the same time enforce coercion on us in the matter of 
 the liquor traffic. The Scott Act of Canada contains clauses 
 which no statesman of England would dare to introduce into any 
 Crimes Bill. The following are extracts from a leader in the 
 Orangeville Sun of 28th April, 18S7 : 
 
 " It seems strange that in the jubilee year of Her Majesty's 
 reign, and in the year of Grace, 1887, the dial of time should turn 
 so far backward, that in a portion of that empire whose proud 
 boast it has been that 'Britons never shall be slaves,' an act of 
 tyranny without parallel in hundreds of years of British history 
 
SUMMING UP— CONCLUSION. 
 
 69 
 
 should receive the solemn and deliberate sanction of a parliament 
 of men of British blood." 
 
 " To say nothing of what may occur there is abundant evidence 
 of the outrageous nature of this law in the actual facts that exist. 
 A most respectable anti-Scott citizen who, it is well known to all 
 his neighbors, does not sell liquor, recently gave a glass of liquor 
 to two travellers who entered his house on a cold winter's night. 
 For this act of charity the man paid fifty dollars and costs. A 
 woman of three score and ten, in whose house some bottles of 
 porter were found, was dragged on her back by manacles and 
 hauled away to jail. Judge Armour openly stated f'"om the bench 
 in Osgoode Hall that ' it seems terrible that any person could be 
 convicted on such evidence.' " 
 
 " Shades of Hampden and Elliott, look down ! Have Britons 
 degenerated ? Is the spirit of liberty become extinct ? Are 
 hypocrisy and time-serving the only rules for a parliament which 
 passes resolutions condemning Irish coercion — though that allows 
 appeals — and at the same time forces a coercion measure more 
 extreme in its nature than Ireland ever knew ? " 
 
 " In both political parties are men who hate tyranny, and 
 realize the purposes which the government ought to fulfil, and 
 love. country before party. The time is one of shame and dis- 
 grace. Parliament is no longer free. It now remains for the 
 people to defend their own liberties." 
 
 7. That such an element as alcohol should be an instrument 
 of evil as well as of good, is in accordance with the whole econ- 
 omy of nature and the laws of God. He has so ordained all 
 things that what is good when rightly used is evil when misused. 
 The Christian believer — seeing that we cannot crush a fruit under 
 our heel but alcohol is the result, seeing how God has made it so 
 available, so easily procured from almost every root and grain of 
 earth — hears His voice, saying of this as of everytliitig in Nature 
 and in Grace, what he said by Moses to Israel : " See, I have set 
 before thee life and death, blessing and cursing, good and evil." 
 
 In alcohol we behold a mighty power for good or ill, accord- 
 ing as it is used : used with judgment, a power for preventing 
 disease, for prolonging life, for enhancing our joys, for alleviating 
 our griefs, for promoting our happiness ; a power for provoking- 
 thought, for energizing the brain, for quickening the creative 
 
1A 
 
 70 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 m 
 
 faculties ; a power which has gone hand in hand with the pro- 
 gress of the races of men, and whose benefits have been incalcula- 
 ble. On the other hand, a power which abused brings noc life 
 but death, not invigoration of the mind but its destruction, not 
 joy but unspeakable misery, not happiness but hell. 
 
 It is like every other force, every other element ; it follows the 
 natural law. We may view the mighty river only to brood over 
 the sacrifice of life it has caused, forgetting its untold benefits ; 
 we may think of steam or electricity or gunpowder only to recall 
 some ghastly accident. So we may think of alcohol, only to re- 
 member the ruin and misery which its abuse has entailed here 
 and there. 
 
 " The evil that men do lives after them 
 The good is oft interred with their bones." 
 
 The evils of its abuse are manifest and glaring ; yet for all 
 that it has done immeasurably more good than harm. 
 
 The very gospel of Christ is, we know, ** a savour of life unto 
 life or of death unto death ; " and wine is often and most fittingly 
 used by the sacred writers as an emblem of that gospel ; for wine 
 is a life out of death — a new life out of decay — and yet a life 
 which, misused, brings destruction and woe. 
 
 8. As we review the history of the world, and observe, on the 
 one hand Christ and his Church saying : '' take this element of 
 alcohol, use it and it will be a blessing ; abuse it and it will be a 
 curse ; " and on the other hand, Islamism and Buddhism saying, 
 " alcohol is an unmitigated curs^, we prohibit it altogether ; " and 
 as we notice after so many centuries the several results of their 
 teachings, must we not confess that the Divine Wisaom has been 
 "justified of her children:" And now shall we reverse the 
 teachings of scripture and history, and return to the barbarous 
 prohibitions of the East ? This " crusade " against alcohol is 
 like all '* crusades ; " founded on fanaticism and destined to come 
 to an Ignoble end. But the opponents of this fanatical onslaught 
 must be firm and true and outspoken^ feeling that they are fighting, 
 not for " a purely selfish indulgence," but for a great principle in 
 which religion and liberty are both involved — a principle which, 
 in spite of frequent and great disasters, has yet accomplished mar- 
 vellous things in the civilization and progress of the world. We 
 must resist prohibition because it implies an insult to our Lord 
 
'^1 
 
 SUMMING UP— CONCLUSION. 
 
 71 
 
 and Master, in distorting His Holy Word, and depraving His 
 Holy Sacrament ; and because it is an unwarrantable interference 
 with the liberty of the subject. We must rally round this stand- 
 ard ; we must fight prohibition on this issue ; and our battle cry 
 must be as of old : 
 
 " PRO ARIS ET FOCIS." 
 
 9. As we began our argument, so would we close it, with the 
 Word of God. But first let us reiterate ; we speak not a word 
 against those who are nobly and self-denyingly striving to reclaim 
 the drunkard and to check the prevalence of this particular sin — 
 we are only resisting those who advocate Coercion. The only 
 " argument," if such it can be called, which prohibitionists can 
 wrench from the Scriptures is the text : " It is good neither to eat 
 flesh nor drink wine nor anything whereby thy brother stumblcth." 
 (Romans xiv, 21.) It is scarcely worth while to answer such an 
 argument seriously ; one would think that the verse immediately 
 preceding and that immediately following the text were enough to 
 show that such a course as coercive prohibition was the last thing 
 in the apostle's mind regarding either meats or drinks. Perhaps 
 the best plan to meet such " argument " is the argumcntum ad 
 absurdum which we borrow from the Doiiiiinon Churchman of 19th 
 May : "The tongue is an unruly member, and by it untold harm 
 and evil have been wrought ; therefore let us prohibit all speech." 
 
 St. Paul does indeed say : (I Cor. viii. 13,) " If meat make my 
 brother to offend I will eat no flesh while the world standeth ; " 
 but he does not add ; " And I will see that nobody else shall, 
 and I will agitate to get coercive laws passed to that effect." The 
 whole drift of the Apostle's argument in both the chapters, (Rom. 
 xiv and I Cor. viii,) from which the above texts are extracted, is 
 as follows : 
 
 ist. To assert, and insist upon, the full and complete liberty of 
 the Christian in the matter of meats and drinks. 
 
 2nd. To concede that " weaker brethren " (probably the later 
 converts from Judaism and Idolatry,) would naturally bring with 
 them into the Church the prejudices of their early training : the 
 Jew finding it hard to free himself all at once from the prohibitory 
 enactments as to meats, etc., of the law of Moses and of the 
 " tradition of the elders ; " and the Greek clinging to his old- 
 time habits and superstitions. 
 
7a 
 
 PAPERS ON PROHIBITION. 
 
 3d. To bid those " strong in faith " to deal tenderly with these 
 prejudices ; and while possessing full liberty themselves yet not to 
 flaunt that liberty before the " weaker brethren," so as to wound 
 their feelings or make them act against their convictions. 
 
 See also I Cor. x, 23-33, where, after a long digression, more 
 sua, the Apostle Paul closes his instructions concerning meats 
 sacrificed to idols. 
 
 The Apostle's whole argument is the very opposite of prohibi- 
 tion 
 
 On the contrary St. Paul warns us that coercive prohibitory 
 legislation will be a sign of decadence of faith in the later times. 
 (I Tim. iv, 1-5.) " Some " says he ''shall depart from the faith 
 . . comi/iant/ini^ to abstain from meats .... for every 
 creature of God is good." 
 
 Here is the warning voice of the Apostle, who bids us resist the 
 tyranny of the "latter times." On the word of God we take our 
 stand : we denounce prohibition as anti-constitutional, anti-script- 
 ural, anti-Christian : and we call upon all men to carry out the 
 sacred injunction (Gal. v, i). 
 
 " STAND FAST THEREFORE IN THE LIBERTY WHEREWITH 
 CHRIST HAS MADE US FREE AND BE NOT ENTANGLED AGAIN 
 WITH THE YOKE OF BONDAGE." 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 The First Miracle of Christ 
 
 AHS 
 
 PROHIBITION 
 
 A SERMON PKEACIIED IN ST. PETER'S CHURCH, BROCKVILLE, ON THE 
 SECOND SL'NDAY AFTER EPIPHANY (ITth JANUARY). 1886. 
 
 "This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, aud manifested forth His 
 
 glory."— St. John ii, n. 
 
 IT i.s a thing for which we ought to ho very thankful, brethren, that the 
 Church's yearly system of teaching brings before us every incident of 
 our dear Lord's life, and forces into prominence, each in turn, every saying, 
 every work of His, whether we personally care to view it or not. In these 
 days, when there are so many different kinds of religion, I think we may 
 without much difficulty discern that each particular kind of religion has its 
 own special " hobby," so to spc^ak. It takes one or two " texts," and out of 
 them manufactures its own theology : every other text must be made to fit 
 into that, and is warped and twisted and turned until it does, after a fashion, 
 fit in ; and if, after all the manipulation, this cannot be effected, then it is 
 summarily dismissed from the count as a "Judaism," or a " metaphor," or 
 an " Oriental hyperbole," or something of that sort. 
 
 And as in other bodies, so in the Church of England, individual preach- 
 ers have their "hobbies," their favorite doctrines, their favorite "texts." 
 It is human nature after all ; we are all partialists, miore or less ; and if we 
 were left unrestricted, our congregations would too often be fed with some 
 particular kind of .spiritual diet, which might be wholesome and beneficial 
 in due proportion, but if persisted in to the exclusion of all other kinds of 
 food, would produce spiritual dyspepsia — a morbid unhealthy state — no 
 matter what that particular doctrine may be. 
 
 Now what a grand and wholesome corrective to the individual preacher's 
 fancies is the system of the Church, which forces us, whether we will or 
 no, to take in every species of food which the Holy Scriptures contain. For 
 to me this is one of the greatest evidences of the Divine origin of the Scrip- 
 tures, that they are so multiform, so complex, so many-sided. Our spiritual 
 nature is like our physical nature, very complex ; and he who imagines he 
 
74 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 can ndminiater to every mind diseased by one prescription, is as great & 
 cliarlatiin as he who thinks lie fan cure every kind of physical ill l)y one 
 particular dose. The Bible is not of this nature ; it is very complex, and 
 rii^htly so ; It contains elements apparently antajfonistic to one another ; 
 just as our food for our bodies must contain many diverse elements, acid 
 and alkaline, sweet and bitter. He thai pro])liesieth, says St. Paul in the 
 Ei>lstle for this day, should proi)hesy (t. «., preach) " according to the propor- 
 tion of faith." The true Churchman, then, I conceive, should endeavor as 
 a r\ile, to put himself en rapport with the I'turgical services of the day, and 
 like St. Chrysostom and other mighty preachers of old, make the pulpit 
 re-echo the teachings of the lectern and the altar. 
 
 Now what is the great lesson of to-day, this second Sunday after Epiph- 
 any ? What is the keynote which the Church strikes, to which we should 
 attune our harmcmiesV The Gospel for the day furnishes it to us, and our 
 text is the essence of that (Jospel. This whole Epiphany season is but an 
 elaboration of the great song of praise begun at Christmastide : " (Jlory to 
 God in the highest, and on earth peace. " " Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, 
 for He hath visited and redeemed his people : and hath raised up a mighty 
 salvation for us." " The Days])ring from on high hath visited us." The 
 manifestation of God in the flesh is the theme : The different modes and 
 degrees of that manifestation the elaboration of the theme. Afanifest first 
 to the shepherds of Bethlehem ; then to the Ee i sages ; then, after twelve 
 years, to the doctors of the Temjjle, if only ih lad had eyes to see ; then 
 after a long period of obscuration manifest to all the beholders at this mar- 
 riage feast in Cana of Galilee, when His Divinity shone forth in this first 
 miracle that he wrought. Let us view this light as it then burst forth, so 
 unexi)ectedly ; let us analyze its rays and see what we can learn therefrom. 
 ^^'Yhm beninning of miracles." Our Lord Jesus ('hrist, then, never per- 
 formed a single miracle — never let the world knov/ that He was the Mes- 
 .siah — until he was thirty years of age. All that long period of time, from 
 His birth, when " all the sons of God shouted for joy," until His baptism, 
 when tht! voice from heaven was heard saying, " Thou art My lieloved Son " 
 (Luke iii, 22), is wrapt in obscurity, save that one gleam which we catch of 
 the Holy Child when he was twelve years of age, and went up, " after the 
 custom of the feast," to His confinnation at Jerusalem. We dwelt upon 
 this on Sunday last. Does he not by this very obscuration reveal Himself — 
 to speak in paradox ? Does He not manifest Himself as the typical, i-»e 
 representative, the perfect human character ? Does he not show us hereby 
 that He does not countenance precociousuess in children and youths ? Does 
 he not teach us that even if we think we have a call from God we must 
 bide our time until the outward call comes V "So also Christ glorified not 
 Himself to be made an High Priest, but He that said unto Him, Thou art 
 My Son " (Heb. v, 5). 
 
 Next let us consider the circumstances under which He " manifested forth 
 His glory." 
 
 It was at a marriage feast. In the East such entertainments often lasted 
 a whole week. What a strange environment, judging with human judg- 
 
THE FIRST MIRACLE OF CHRIST. 
 
 75 
 
 nient, does the Lord select for manifesting forth TTis glory ! A scene of 
 festivity, a time of making merry — of congratulations — of eating and drinlt- 
 ing 1 What a conlrnst to his precursor John the Baptist — the last propiiet 
 of the old di'^pensation— the connecting link between the Law and the (Jos- 
 pel — will) conies into view in the dreary wilderness, clad in camel's-hair 
 dotli and leathern girdh; — hermit-like in his clothing and in his diet — 
 ascetic, austere. To quote tho words of Dean Alford's Couunentarj' : " Our 
 Lof! at once opens His ministry witli the character whicli He gives of Hiin- 
 Belf " (Luke vii, 33, 34, 35). "John the Uaptist," says He to the Pharisees, 
 " canio neither eating bread nor drinking wine ; and ye say. He hath a 
 devil : the Son of Man is come eating and drinkiii;'^ ; and ye say, Behold, a 
 gluttonous man, and a wine-bibber, a ii ieud of publicans and sinners ! But 
 wisdom is Justified of all her children." "He also," as Archbishop Trench 
 admirably remarks, " gives us His own testimony against the tendency wliich 
 our iuilolence ever favors, of giving up those things and occasions to tho 
 world and the devil, which we have not Christian boldness to mingle in 
 and jmrify . , . And such is the verdict of modern religionism, whicli 
 would keep the leaven distinct from the lump, for fear it should become 
 unlraKinied." 
 
 We are not given the name of the host, or of the bride or bridegroom. 
 Doubtless they were relatives or connections ol our Lord according to the 
 flesh. C'ana was not very far from Nazareth : and tli<; Virgin Mother had 
 evidently considerable authority in the household. (St. John ii. i, " 'I'here 
 was a marriage . . and the mother of Jesus was there ;" again, verse 5, 
 
 " His mother saith unto the servants," etc.) Our Lord was invited to this 
 wedding feasst, and He went. 
 
 " And when they wanted wine." This does not mean that there was 
 none originally supplied, but that, for some reason or other, the wine ran 
 short : either the festivities lasted longer, 'ir the guests were more numerous, 
 than had been calculated for. You will observe the Revised Version ren- 
 ders the passage correctly : "And when the vrme failed." Here let me 
 quote a passage of Archdeacon Farrar's " Life of Christ :" " Whether the 
 marriage festival lasted for seven days, as was usual among those who 
 could afford it, or only for one or two, as was the case among the poorer 
 classes, we cannot tell ; but m* some period of the entertainment the wine 
 suddenly ran short. None but those who know how sacretl in the East is 
 the dut\ of lavish hospitality, and how passionately tlie obligation to exer- 
 cise it to the utmost is felt, can realize the gloom which this incident would 
 have thrown over the occasion, or the misery and mortification which it 
 would have caused to the wedded pai'-. They would have felt it to be, as 
 in the East it would still be felt to be. a bitter and indelible disgrace," 
 
 In order to avert this threatened disaster — in order to dissipate the gloom 
 impending over this festive gathering — in order to enhance their joy and 
 happiness — in order to show that He entered heartily into all their lawful 
 pleasures, ana sanctioned their innocent enjoyments — the Son of God, the 
 Eternal Word made flesh, " manifested forth His glory." And how did he 
 do so? I must answer this question with a statement which, 1 know, will 
 
w 
 
 APPEA'D/X. 
 
 shock the feelings of many modern religionists — a statement opposed to the 
 spirit of the age— one whirli may i)ossibly call forth a storm of vituperation, 
 and yet it must Im said : for it is the truth — the truth of Ood and of Hia 
 Holy Word. 
 
 Our Lord Jesus Clirist began His Messianic career — began that glorions 
 and dazzling serifS of mercy-giving, life-prolonging, ])ain-deHtroying, evil- 
 dispelling mirnelcs — with the production of an alcoholic, intoxicating drink. 
 And that in no mean quantity : on the lowest computation the amount of 
 wine thus divinely manufactured was one hundred and twenty gallons. 
 (See Alford in lor.) 
 
 Now let us face this fact ; for faced it must be. Our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 whom we all confess to be Ood, of Ood, and yet very man, began his official 
 career as the Messiah with the miraculous creation of an intoxicating ele- 
 ment : lie was all through his olficial life assaihid by the Pharisees as a 
 "wine-bibber:" and His last official act was His consecrating that same 
 intoxicating element to be the sacrament of His own most precious blood. 
 
 Now what are we to make of this ? Was Christ mistaken ? Was He 
 ignorant of the laws of hygiene and physiology ? Is His doctrine behind 
 the times V For there is of necessity a terrible mistake somewhere. Either 
 our modern moral reformers are wrong, or Jesus Christ was wrong. I put 
 it plainly, but so it is. The Dominion Churchman very truly said last week: 
 If Christ had worked that miracle to-day in one of our Scott Act counties 
 lie would have been convicted of a crime. And so it is. If Jesus Chri.st 
 was right, i)rohil)ition is wrong. If prohibition is right, Jesus Christ was 
 wrong. That is simply the naked truth. 
 
 And what escape can be framed from this dilemma, viz.: that not only 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, but the whole Word of God, from beginning to end, 
 countenances and makes provision for the drinking of intoxicating liquor : 
 therefore either the consumption of such liquor is lawful and light, or the 
 ^^'o^d of Ood is wrong. There are three efforts to answer this : 
 
 I. The effort of some to prove that there are two kinds of " wine " and 
 " strong drink " mentioned in the Bible, one alcoholic and the other non- 
 alcoholic ; that whenever " wine " is commended it means the unfermented 
 juice of the grape. I have only to say of this that such a plea is beneath 
 contempt. No accurate scholar would ever think of thus " handling the 
 Word of Ood deceitfully." A great deal of capital has been made by some 
 of the fact that two words, in special, occur to designate "wine" in the 
 Hebrew — the one "Yayin" and the other "Tirosh;" and they claim that 
 one of these — it makes no matter which — is alcoholic and the other non- 
 alcoholic. The Rev. Dr, Carry, of Port Perry, has lately issued a jiamphlet 
 which effectually disposes of all this sophistry. But it needs no learned 
 Hebraist to understand the matter nowadays. The Rev. Dr. Young, a 
 Presbyterian minister, haj within the last few years published a most valu- 
 able Analytical Concordance ; and any ordinary English scholar, by looking 
 up the words " wine " and " strong drink " in the said Concordance, can see 
 for himself what an amount of special pleading and prevarication they are 
 guilty of who resort to this line of argument. Prohibitionism, it seems, 
 
THE FIRST MIRACLE OF CHRIST. 
 
 77 
 
 like many other " hobbies." has a demoralizing tendency ; it blunts all 
 sense of manliness aii ' truth 
 
 2. The second efTort to escape from our dilemma is one not quite so dis- 
 honest as the last, l)ut e<iually short-sighted, and equally opposed to the 
 truth of the Scriptures. It alleges : "We admit that the Bible seems to 
 allow the use of alcoholic beverages; we admit that Christ used them and 
 countenanced their use when He was on earth. But if he had lived now, 
 and seen the evil effects of the practice. He would have done differently " 
 Surely this argument has only to be thus stated in its simplicity to meet itp 
 own repudiation at the hands of any honest Christian man. Is it no: 
 strange— jjussing strange— that men who arrogate to themselves the title of 
 " Christians "--men who fancy they have a monopoly of " The (Jospel " — 
 men who look upon all those who cannot i)ronounce their sliibl)oleth as 
 " unsaved "—men who boast of " the Bible and the Bible alone "—should 
 thus s])eak of "Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever?" — 
 that such as they should think the Scriptures need supplementing ? — that 
 they should make the Word of Ood of none effect through their tradition V 
 
 3. The third answer to this dilemma is that of the Infidel Prohibitionists ; 
 and their reply is : " It is true that the Bible allows the use of intoxicants ; 
 and so much the worse for the Bible." Well, this answer has the merit, at 
 all events, of being straightforward and logical. But you see to what it 
 leads. Perhaps you may be surpriso<l to hear of Infidel Prohibitionists ; yet 
 there are very many of them in the United States. They have a very 
 extensive literature of their own — newspapers, novels, etc. — all inculcating 
 total abstinence and atheism. The late D. M. Bennett, in his lifetime! the 
 editor of an agnostic paper called the Truth Seeker, founded a town in tlu; 
 State of Missouri, called Liberal, on a prohibitionist and atheistic basis. 
 And this town of Liberal was advertized in the various freethinkiug papers 
 (such as M<in, Tins World, etc.,) in terms to this effect t that in the said 
 town there were " no churches, no saloons, no preachers, no spirit-sellers, 
 no alcohol, no devil, no Christ, no God !" What think you of that for 
 prohibition ? 
 
 Now, in order to answer this third and last argument, that of Prohibi- 
 tionist Infidels — which at any rate is more honest than either of the others — 
 we must, of course, meet them on some common ground. We answer it by 
 an appeal to facts and history, and show how the Divine Wisdom has been 
 justified of her children. Prohibition is no new thing : it has been tried 
 for a thousand years and more. Over one thousand years ago there were 
 two rival systems of religion, each with its own Scriptures, struggling for 
 supremacy in the East. One was the Church of Christ with its Bible ; the 
 other Mohammedanism with its Koran. The Church of Christ said to its 
 adherents : " Take this element of alcohol; use it, and it will be a blessing ; 
 abuse it, and, like every other gift of (iod, it will become a curse. Exercise 
 your manliness, your self-control, in dependence on the grace of God." The 
 other religious system, Mohammedanism, said : " Wine and strong drink 
 are an unmitigated curse ; I prohibit their use. No follower of mine can 
 
73 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 ■1^: 
 
 buy, or sell, or manufacture, or consume, intoxicating drink. My religion 
 is an improvement upon that of Jesus Christ. If He had lived to-day He 
 ■would do as I do." 
 
 We know from history how this last-named religion, in the flush of its 
 •iret enthusia.sm of prohibition, seemed likely to wipe out Christianity from 
 the face of the earth. But, after the lapse of a thousand years, what are 
 the relative positions, morally and intellectually, of those two religious sys- 
 tems to-day? Who was right in the end, Christ or Mohammed V /ipart 
 from all consideration of the religious aspect of the question — for we are 
 tiow addressing ourselves to the infidel argument — let me ask : Would you 
 not rather, a thousand times, be a descendant of four hundred generations 
 of the " drunhen " English, or the '' drunken " Irisli, or the " drunken " 
 Scotch, or the " drunken " German.s, tlian of four hundred generations of 
 the total abstaining but unspeakable Turk ? 
 
 I speak thus strongly, because I feel thai in this question the honor and 
 truth of Christ and of the Bible are involved ; because every one who 
 advocates prohibition flings an insult in the face of the Lord : every such 
 advocate declares that the religion of Christ is insufficient and needs sup- 
 plementing. And because I feel that this whole prohibition movement is a 
 retrograde sten in our civilization, our religion, our liberty. It is a return- 
 ng to " the weak and beggarly elements of the law;" it is destructive of 
 ' .lie right of private judgment ;" it is just another species of "priestcraft 
 and popery." I no more want to l)e told what articles of food are prohibited 
 than I wt.nt to be told what books are placed on the " prohibition list " of 
 the Index Expurgatorius. I do not want to belong to a nation of slaves. I 
 do not want a new Gospel. 
 
 With regard to thc-e who from conscientious motives choose to practice 
 the sell -denial of total abstinence, either because they find it better for 
 themselves, or because they would set an example to others, I have nothing 
 but feelings of the highest respect and admiration. Only let them remember 
 that self-denial is one thing, denial to others a ve/y different thing. St. 
 Paul appreciated tins differ once He says, indeed : "If meat uiuko my 
 brother to offend, I will not eat meat while the world staijdetb," There is 
 the spirit of self-denial. But St. Paul does not .say " I will ^ut no meats, 
 and 1 will see that nobody else shall, and I will agitate to get laws passed 
 to that effect. ' No, his language is, " L; t net him that eateth despise him 
 that eateth not ; and let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth." 
 " Happy is he that condemncta not himself in that thing wh'ch he allow- 
 etli." Indeed, he warns us that the " prohibition ' spirit will be a sign of 
 the de lensio i fnan the Truth : he says that " In the latter limes some shall 
 depart from the faith . . . forbidding to marr\ and covimanding to 
 abstain from meats." St. Paul himself did not marry ; ho advi.eed others to 
 abstain from 'narriage, but he did not ' forbid."' There are many earnest, 
 saintly men and women devoted to 0"lil)acy. There are many clergymen of 
 the English Church who, for the lov c of God and of His work, have deter- 
 irined never to marry— some who bave taken pledgos to that effect. I honor 
 and venerate the holy zeal of such mm : but if they were ever to attempt to 
 
THE FIRST MIRACLE OF CHRIST. 
 
 79 
 
 pass a Canon of Synod — as was done in the Middle Ages— forbidding all 
 clergymen to marry, I think most Churchmen would resist such an act of 
 tyranny unto the death. 
 
 If I am asked, " Will not such doctrines encourage the drunkards?" I 
 answer no; for they are the doctrines of Scripuire. " Yea, let God be true, 
 though every man a liar. " If I am asked, " Will you not admit that drunk- 
 enness would diminish if not disappear, were the temptation jjlaced out of 
 men's reach ? " I answer, most certainly, of course. If the tree of knowl- 
 edge had been placed out of the reach of Adam and Eve they would never 
 have fallen. But that was not God's way of training Ills children, and it is 
 not His way now. We must face temptation, battle with it, and overcome 
 it by the (irace of God, ''which we must learn at all times to ask for by 
 diligent prayer." 
 
 You will observe, brethren, I have orJy been speaking against prohibition, 
 which I hold to be not only unscriptuv j but anti-scriptural, an infringe- 
 ment of the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. I would not speak 
 one word — God forbid — in depreciation of any honest, constitutional scheme 
 for reforming the drunkard, for punishing the drunkard, or for diminishing 
 the amount of this sin and its attendant evils. I, myself, have r.ot much 
 faith in the majority of these schemes. I believe there is one great remedy 
 for this sin, as for all other sins, and that is the Grace of Christ, which 
 we must obtain by using the means of Grace. Still, so long as Christian 
 men and women labor on this behalf, on any lines consistent with the 
 liberty of the Gospel, though I might not personally approve their par- 
 ticular method, I would bid them God-speed, 
 
 And now dismissing this subject, and turning our eyes again to the more 
 grateful conten.plation of the Light of the World as manifested in this 
 miracle, let us view that loving and beautiful character, that Godhead 
 veiled in flesh, scattering his blessings in the midst of this humble yet joy- 
 ous gathering in Cana of Galilee. Let us see Him who " came not to be 
 ministered unto but to minister," enhancing the enjoyments of this happy 
 throng, and showing how to carry out the injunction of the Epistle for the 
 day : " Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that wti])." 
 Let I'.o see in this first miracle that He wrought, not only an act of love and 
 goodness, but a type of His whole work and office. He came into this world 
 to bless, and enoble, und sanctify human nature ; to turn curses into bless- 
 ings ; to turn the ordinary blessings which surround the daily lift' of each 
 of us into still higher, and holier, and sweeter blessings ; to turn the water 
 into wine. And he came to show us that He keeps the good wine \intil the 
 last. For great and niavvellous as have been the humanizing, and civili/injr 
 and elevating, and ennobling effects of His religion even on this earth, they 
 are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in 
 us, when this creation shall be delivered from the bondage of corrupri(m 
 into the glorious liberty of the children of God; when the marriage of the 
 Lamb shall have come: when He Himself shall drink the new wine with 
 us in the Ivingdom of God.