The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1871-02-11
The Relation of the Church to the Ten
perance Cause.

The following essay was read by Rev.
Thos. L. Poulson, at the Methodist Epis-
copal Convention, recently held at Smyrna,
Del:
Without difficulty the relation of the
Church to any cause may be definitely
determined. When we have certainly
ascertained the true nature and invariable
tendency of an act, we have clear and SIM
pie Scriptural rules by which to accurately
establish and settle the Churchs relation
thereto. The Church, as we here speak of
it, is a probationary appliance, originated
and perpetuated for the specific purpose of
facilitating the discharge of the august
duties involved in mans proprietorship in
the welfare and salvation of his brother
The Church therefore manifestly holds
intimate relation to every enterprise that
surely makes men better, by bringing them
nearer to Christ. Hence the Church bears
the same relation to the cause of Temper
ance that it sustains to any and all other
forms of righteousness. The measure of
her relationship to this phase of christian
reform is in precise ratio to the immortality
of intemperance. If it can be certainly
decided that intemperance is irreligious and
immoral, then the inevitable corollary
ensues, that the church is to throw all her
influence and instrumentalities in favor of
temperance.
Htemperance saps tic rery ,foundations of
all our Educational Interests, and seriously
neutralizes and damages the good results
that flow from scholastic training, however
wise the curriculum, or prudent the disci-
pline. 1t annually bequeaths us two mil
lions of ragged apprentices to the active
traders of vice and vagrancy in this coun-
try, i'll the unkempt offspring of drunken
ness. These rude and turbulent children
of sin are far more refractory and difficult
of reclamation than so many Juvenile
heather on the dark shores OF India
Their almost inaccessible haunts are the
ceaseless sources Of supply to the depleted
ranks of paupers, criminals and drunkards
who steadily march to death eternal, in
yearly columns hundred Thousand strong
We authorize and protect four naturally
illicit rum-shops, where we barely build
and inadequately support one insufficient
school-house, to educate the children who
seek to be lifted from the slough of igne-
rance up into the light of knowledge. In
the presence of such matchmaking forces
intemperance never wants for patrons, and
temperance is at a discount. Furthermore
two hundred thousand children per annum
are doomed to the cheerless paths of Or
phanage, by the vicious traffic, in this
nation, to bear the hard burdens of life,
untutored and unloved. While the preci-
Gus words of Jesus remain, "Suffer little
children, and forbid them not, to come unto
me, will the Church fail to see her relation
to this aspect of the cause, and dare forbid
these hosts from coming unto Christ? Still
more startling is the frightful fact that
nine tenths of the male children we sur
render to the care and culture of the
schools and colleges away from home, are
returned to us, when the diplomas are won,
fearfully dissipated and hopelessly drunken,
fully graduated at least in the degrees of
the primary department of corrupt school
ing that leads by easy steps to a useless
life, and a rayless death.
There is u deterior0ti0n in tile pr0ductice
energies Of tie United Suites, in one gear, of
one billion eight hundred miliion dollars
wherein labor is deprecated and crippled
to that amount of material cost, by mud
ding the brain, making tiabby the muscles
and in waste Of time. Herein we see what
an unhallowed and irremediable onslaught
is made on the industries, self support, and
growing wealth of the nation. The seeth-
ing crater never ceases to cast forth its fiery
streams of idleness, from which the land is
| flooded with the deathly lava of pauper-
ism, prostitution, increased taxation and
crime. On the fields of valor, in the con-
tests in which physical strength wins the
victory, where men row, and race, and
box, and wrestle, and play, for champion
ship, alcoholic intoxicants are excluded as
inimical to the highest achievements of
muscular potency and endurance. Yet we
contemplate, with cool Indifference, the
disgusting spectacle of earnest men, with
fortune and fame to win on the nobler plane
of real life, frittering and spelling theil
functions and forces in the ignoble practice
of inebriation.
There is nothing so Thoroughly debasins
and brutahzing as intsmperance. In one
year, in this country, it sends one hundred
thousand criminals to prison; makes fifty
thousand prostitutes occasions three hun
dred murders: and, with self-destruction
visits four hundred immortal souls This
dreadful ruin is wrought by five hundred
and seventy thousand more wicketlly guilty
parties who are engaged in the manufacture,