Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1897-05-14
y. %. o. Q. Column.
|. Q. G. T. DIRECTORY OF ADD.
SON COUNTY
DRUNKENNESS IN CHURCHES.


DRUNKENNESS IN CHURCHES.
A death recently occurred in a promi- !
nent Congregational church in c.
which, it is believed, may be taken as an
exponent of an extensive generalization
going on unperceived, but surely, in
many of our churches. A man Of APP
parently iron constitution, universally
esteemed, of unimpeachable integrity,
of active business habits and bearing
great business responsibilities, is seized
with ty phoid fever. In the course of
ten days his physician observed an I'M
expected nervous debility, showing it.
self in excessive and uncomfortable
tremulousness. The symptoms were in
applicable in such a patient. He was
reluctant to attribute them to the cause
which his professional judgment led him
to suspect, but in consultation with a
friend and business associate of the
poor man whose day of reckoning had
thus suddenly come, it appeared that he
had been for years the subject of a
growing habit of secret intemperance.
Every day he sought his alcoholic stimu-
lus, beer or spirituous liquors, some
times in. this place, sometimes in that,
yet so slyly through all these years that
scarcely any one knew he was running
the career of a drunkard. That he was
in effect slain by rum is not, and proba-
bly, never VIII be known in the commu-
nifty where he lived respected, and died
lamented.
And yet this was a man of good stand
ing in an evangelical church of Christ,
waiting regularly on all its ordinances,
often in the weekly prayer-meetings
and passing among his felowmen and
brethren as one who had received the
grace which bringeth salvation and
teacheth the denial of ungodliness and
every worldly lust. That reputable
man died of drunkenness. He was
victim of the habtual use of lntoxicat
ing beverages. The fever of which he
was supposed to die was only the occa-
sion of revealing the destruction of the
organs of life caused by the poison of
alcohol. Medicines had no effect in a
system so deranged. Still he was proba-
bly, never intoxicated, never reeled on
the street, never talked thick, never was
untitled for business. He was moder-
ate drinker; what is called a moderate
drinker by those who maintain that to-
tai abstinence is not temperance, but
stand in the way of it. Here is one
sign of the state our churches. They
contain many Just such users of alcoholic
stimuants. Sometimes the same re-
suit is sought in the use of opium or
other substances. 1t is lot called drunk
enness. But there are representatives of
this class in almost every church. men
who, in their families, in a social way,
in some out.Of-the-way saloon, apothe-
cary store, club room, political conclave,
or wherever, must have their regular
and constantly increasing drains.
OF course the prevalent Christian SEN
timent allows thls-does not feel its
WlChcuucSSs DlClpIlut Is uOl dulnlHlS
tered. The gospel is not preached in a
way to make men feel that this vice is
incompatible with the grace of Christ In
the heart; and gospel pety is in danger
of degeneration until the house of the
Lord shall become asplace of ease for
all kinds of sensualists. We learn from
such examples the awful power of evil
to corrupt the conscience and deceive
one as to his good estate before God
The Bible explicitly declares the drunk.
ard shall not inherit the kingdom OF
heaven. Yet man may know himself
the subject of inebriate passion, or other
unchrstian lust, and be making ever
feebler efforts to renounce it, in order tC
live soberly, righteously and godly, ano
at the same time flatter himself that he
loves the holy God, is purposed to dc
his will and is resting his hopes of saliva
ton on the cross of the Saviour's cruel
tixiOn for sin. That mans religion i:
vain.