Litchfield enquirer., 1874-04-02
Temperance and the Bible.

l 0~'~ S-- O01 Out0ASAO GAhI&Cl6 1EOU the circular of Archbishop Purcell agains the Women's Temperance Crusade, al able sermon recently delivered by Dr Crosby in New York substantially on th, same side of the question, and an eloquen reply of Dr. Holland to the Purcell circu lar. Unsound as we deem the views O Messrs. Purcell and Crosby they are cer tainly by no means singular. They art held indeed by very large minority, i not by majority, of the Christian minis 1 ters and laymen of the United States There is much truth also in Dr. Crosby'l criticism of the popular 1eniency towards the drunkard. While with the few, hab- its of interperance may arise from an un. comfortable mania, with the many they or iginate from what the law would term "criminal negligence" They yield know ingly to an indulgence that eventually be- comes too strong for control. The strong, hold, however, of the christian opponent of Total Abstinence is the Bible itself. We could not without disingenuousness affirm that that the wines usually referred to in the Bible were not intoxicating, nor that the Temperance advocated there is Total Abstinence. What we do maintain is, that, even with the Christian who holds to the fullest inspiration of the scriptures, the practice of New Testament times ought not to control the practice of our more advanced stage of civilization.
 History abounds in instances of that form of scripture peryersion which makes the practice of New Testament times a binding rule for all time. In this way the Bible has been made 8 stumbling block in the way of all the great political reforms of the last two or three centuries. The church which upheld the despotism of the Stuarts found their justification in the passive obedience taught by Paul The Tories of our revolution chung to the same texts. Slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law relied on what P. V. Nasby calls the "blessed case" of Onesimus. The seclusion of the women of the East and of ancient Greece is being urged to-day against the aspirations of the women of New England for freedom and equal rights. The true answer to all these ob- jections is that there has been such moral progress in the world since the year One as renders many of the rules of social and political conduct that were justifable and useful then, unjustifable and hurtful now. Had the early Christians held to the Right of Revolution in Psuls time they would have been involved in the great Jewish instruction that resulted in the destruc, tion of Jerusalem and the repatriation of the entire race. Progress had not then reached the point where such an insurrec- tion was justifable. We must not forget that even slavery was reform in the begin ning.s It substituted a more humane practice for the slaughter of captives that used to be rule of war. Only at higher stage of civilization cid it become an abuse. The treatment of the doctrine of divorce by Christ himself is notable in- stance in point. The Mosaic law had al- lowed the husband to put away the wife by mere writing of divorcement. What had very likely been reform in Moses time had become an abuse in Christ's time, and was denounced as such by him. Is it for the christian to say that the mor- al progress from Moses time to Christ's time has not been at least equalled by tho moral progress from the First Centu " to the Nineteenth? And if such is the case, and if christianity has really been the benefit to the world christians claim, have not many practices which were justi- fable, and perhaps useful, in Christ's time became unjustifable and hurtful in our time? The doctrine of passive obe- dlence which Paul very properly inculca- ted ill the first century was totally inap- plicable to the England of 1640 and to the America of 1776. A movement against Sla- very would have been as absurd under Nero as it was necessary and justifable under Abraham Lincoln. Polygamy which was probably reform under the patriarchs, has become an intolerable nuisance under Brigham Young. Is it not at least equally probable that total abstinence reform which would have been absurd eighteen hunded years ago has become practicable now? All that the ex- ample of Christ can be held to prove is that total abstinence movement was not then desirable among the poor people of Palestine. No doubt, as Dr. Crosby ayers, drunkenness formed large item in the debauchery of the Roman grandees. Is there any evidence. or any reason to believe, however, that the lower classes of Palestine suffered from wine what our lower classes suffer from whiskey? The evil of drunkenness was no doubt one of the minor evils of those times, that could wait, with slavery, till grand moral ad- vance "along the whole line" made it's re- moval practically and necessary.
 AACAS AS e VoAOCASJ AA AAOeOOtoASASAA SO make of the Bible what the Catholic makes of his Director, a sort of refuge from responsibility. The Protestant who goes to the Bible for text, instead of for. great principle. is rather worse guided, we imagine, than the Cath olic. The one is at least under some sort of rational control, while the other is the slave of chance or caprice. No great mor- al question like that of Total Abstinence can be settled except by the rational appli- cation of great moral principles to present social conditions; and the very different social conditions of the first century ren- der any solution of the temperance prob lem of that era of very little use to us of the nineteenth century.