1896

TOTAL ABSTINENCE

AND THE TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT

6

6

THERE is a sound of thoroughness and even latent generosity in the term 'total abstinence.' It suggests the complete enjoyment associated with a whole holiday.' We think of one who is every inch' a man, and has the courage of his convictions. We are encouraged in the admiration of those who act up to their principles, and despise a proposal which is neither one thing nor the other.' Whatever it may be to astronomers, we look with imperfect interest at an eclipse which is only 'partial.' It was a happy change in the language of its advocates when they began to talk of 'total abstinence' instead of teetotalism,' which has a timid, stammering, and insignificant sound.

Though now suggesting an exclusively alcoholic flavour, it is plain that this term covers a large field.

At certain seasons, indeed, or for a while, every man wholly refrains from something which is allowable. He sits down to his meals instead of nibbling at his food all day. Civilised life is regulated by time-tables which are intended to formulate our actions and to prevent business from encroaching upon relaxation. After a temporary way we are all 'total abstainers' from one thing or another. The Sabbath itself was marked by a law of complete prohibition, though it lasted only for a day.

Every right-minded man, however, recognises the desirability of permanent abstinence from what he believes to be radically wrong. He admits no via media in the following of righteousness, corresponding to that of 'temperance' in the use of alcohol. He may pardon a weak offender, but he would not allow that a strong man may disregard the extreme rigour of, say, the Ninth Commandment, since he can be trusted not to indulge himself in perjury to excess.'

But though the number of universally accepted moral laws may be few, we witness in these days the wide-spread and growing erection of some which are held by their framers to be as essentially imperative as the Ten Commandments themselves, inasmuch as they are assumed to rest, not upon convenience or expediency, but upon facts, the

ignorance or disregard of which is fatal to the development and wellbeing of our nature.

Such is the attitude of those who believe that the 'use' of alcohol or flesh-meat is radically prejudicial to human life. There are some, indeed, who admit the employment of stimulants' under medical advice, but the genuine 'total abstainer' looks on alcohol as always essentially injurious, and those are unjust to him who resent his assertion that the 'temperate' man does more harm to society than the drunkard.' His contention is perfectly logical. If he really believes alcohol to be irremediably poisonous when present in beverages, any recognition of their use which fails in displaying its evil effect is a bar to that revelation of its nature which he desires to be made and acknowledged, and in the end does more harm to the good cause than the most obvious intemperance, which is an effective object lesson in support of his teaching.

Much the same line is taken by the thoroughgoing vegetarian who traces disease and premature decay to the eating of flesh-meat. He cannot, indeed, point to revolting spectacles of gluttony as the exclusive result of its consumption, since it is possible for a man to sicken himself by eating too much permissible food-such as jam. Thus he points to the health and strength of those who have adopted his diet without injury to themselves. He not only ransacks history and the literature of science, but quotes the current testimony of simplefeeding races in support of his faith. He claims to prove by the analysis of grain, fruit, leaf, kernel, nut, and root that these viands provide all things needed for the building and repair of the human body. If, by the chemistry of nature, a sheep can be made out of grass, and so much corn and water be changed into a horse, he pleads for such a bloodless construction and preservation of man as raises him above the carnivora.' Indeed, the vegetarian looks on the Lord Mayor, so long as he eats the flesh of animals, as no better than the pedigree-cousin of a cannibal.

Both he and the total abstainer rely chiefly upon the testimony of science.' Without our admitting, however, the soundness of its apprehension or use by them, it is remarkable that, in their anxiety to support their claims, some in both parties appeal also to the Bible. One points to a sentence in the first chapter of Genesis, where 'seed' and 'fruit' are announced to be given to man for meat,' and some try to prove that the wines of Scripture were unfermented, and therefore not intoxicating. They had much better all have the courage of their convictions and boldly affirm that teetotalism' or 'vegetarianism' can be proved to be vitally true, and therefore worthy of acceptance, by reason of our present knowledge, and that they decline to place any reliance upon what the Scriptures have to say about human diet. They are wise in doing this, since their case is weakened in the minds of thoughtful men by forced

appeals to a book which refers plainly to the eating of flesh and drinking of wine as not only permissible and customary, but ordained and imperative under circumstances of special solemnity.

It is difficult, by the way, to appreciate the position of those total abstainers who permit the use of wine in the reception of the Holy Communion. If an act is wrong in itself, one would think the doing of it to be most indefensible at a moment of supreme expressed devotion to the will or law of God. A Roman Catholic might say that the element had been changed, and was no longer wine, but the Anglican has no such miraculous escape from the paradoxical reflection that in seeking communion with God he has partaken of that which he denounces as a social poison.

Moreover, the divine use of this at the first Lord's Supper indicates no choice of a special liquor 'permissible' on such an occasion, but recognises it as the most widely accepted drink, as bread was the commonest food. Their legitimate combination, indeed, is (at least by the Church of England) assumed to be still in force, since it is so referred to in the catechism, where it is admitted that our bodies are strengthened by 'bread and wine.' The position of those Hindoo Christians who are said to have administered the Holy Communion with rice and water (their usual food) is much more logically in accordance with its original institution than that of those who prohibit the use of wine as pernicious at an ordinary meal, and then accept it as a divine representative of strengthening drink, worthy of consecration at a sacred feast.

An unbiassed reader of the Bible, however, can have no doubt that it recognises the use of alcohol, not as exceptional, but as a factor in the common drink of the 'people of God,' about whom it speaks, and thus moderate drinkers keenly resent the misuse of a book whence they claim to draw much in support of their position. They are well advised, however, not to lay too much stress upon a miraculous changing of water into wine, since the advanced scientific prohibitionist' is little affected by that which claims to be supernatural evidence. The witness of the Scriptures to the use of fermented liquor by the people of God' is of another sort. Look at that from the Old Testament. When the Hebrews came out of Egypt, they left a nation familiar with the use of wine for a land of vineyards. And while on the way they received a minute code of sanitary and sumptuary laws, many of which concerned their diet. They were forbidden to touch certain meats eaten in the country they had left and in that to which they were going. But nothing whatever was said about what they should drink,' save in reference to two exceptionally situated classes of people-namely, priests, when about to officiate, and 'Nazarites,' who took peculiar vows.

In the case of these sectaries we read (Numbers vi. 2, 3, 4): "When either man or woman shall separate themselves to vow a vow

of a Nazarite, to separate themselves unto the Lord: he shall separate himself from wine and strong drink, and shall drink no vinegar of wine, or vinegar of strong drink; neither shall he drink any liquor of grapes, nor eat moist grapes or dried. All the days of his separation shall he eat nothing that is made of the vine tree, from the kernel even to the husk.' Thus it would seem that when these were ended, he was at liberty to return to the use of its fruit, for meat or drink.

The other prohibition applies to the priests while officiating, and runs thus (Leviticus x. 8, 9): And the Lord spake unto Aaron, saying, Do not drink wine nor strong drink, thou, nor thy sons with thee, when ye go into the tabernacle of the congregation."

From this it appears that, except under special circumstances, the priest and the people were at liberty to drink the vinegar of wine, and the vinegar of strong drink,' as it suited their convenience or taste.

It

It is notable, moreover, that when the Hebrews were first about to enter Canaan, those who went to spy the land brought back great bunches of grapes as acceptable specimens of its fertility. abounded with vineyards, which were not (then or subsequently) planted for the produce of fresh fruit alone, since the building of a 'wine-press' is repeatedly associated with their use. And the assumption that this was employed for the purpose of getting grapejuice, to be drunk unfermented, is disposed of by the well-known august illustration which appealed to a general custom: 'No man putteth new wine into old bottles, else the new wine doth burst the bottles, and the wine is spilled, and the bottles will be marred; but new wine must be put into new bottles.' To this is added, in another record of the saying, and both are preserved.'

Arguments for the prohibition of intoxicating liquor, or for total abstinence from it as essentially righteous, should be made to rest on social and sanitary considerations which have arisen in later days. Appeals to the Scriptures really tend to weaken the position of teetotallers. At the same time it is ungracious to murmur at those self-denying men who, in part, follow Scriptural examples, and call themselves modern Rechabites or Nazarites. I say pointedly, in part,' since, as I have remarked, it was only during the days of his separation' that the ancient Nazarite abstained from the 'liquor of grapes; and the full obligation of the old Rechabite was neither to build houses to dwell in, neither to have vineyard, nor field, nor seed.' It should be remembered, however, that the vows taken by these separatists involved no condemnation of wine as essentially injurious, and, in the case of the Rechabites, pointed to a paternally exceptional test of obedience, rather than to such an example of total abstinence as invited general imitation.

But whatever abstainers' choose to call themselves now, the

self-denial and devotion of their leaders (who need no special safeguard against intemperance) have come to be recognised as some of the most powerful among distinctly organised efforts in promoting temperance, for it is felt that very few drunkards can be reclaimed except by their being obliged or induced to give up the use of any intoxicating liquor altogether. It is almost hopeless to preach 'temperance' to them. Their sole chance of recovery, with most, lies in total abstinence,' and (though dipsomaniacs might well be more subjected to coercion) the modern formulated protests against intemperance certainly owe their chief immediate force to the influence of the total abstainer.'

Meanwhile the moderate drinker' looks on 'temperance' as man's true aim in the conduct of life, and as more agreeable to his full development than 'total abstinence,' since it involves a greater exercise of elevating self-control. Seeing, too, that the Bible denounces the drunkard while it does not forbid the moderate use of 'strong drink,' he appeals to it not only as directly supporting his attitude, but on Scriptural grounds he resents the drinking of wine being classed with customs which disappear in the fuller light of Christianity. Under the Gospel there was a notably emphatic relaxation for believers in the matter of diet. The eating of certain meats was no longer forbidden to the Christian, and no drink was freshly prohibited. Indeed, not only was the vine (repudiated by the Nazarite and Rechabite) chosen as a symbol of excellence by Christ Himself, but when He was called a wine-bibber,' in contrast to the Baptist, He said, 'Wisdom is justified of all her children,' and thus left to the world an emphatic example of temperance rather than of total abstinence as best fitted to the doctrine and practice of the new dispensation.

While, therefore, the temperate Christian deplores excess as much as any one, and urges the weak, who cannot command themselves, to abstain altogether from strong drink, he looks on an example' in temperance as, rather than total abstinence, the most Christian that can be set, and relies upon the social and religious growth of selfrespect for the mitigation of intemperance rather than upon the introduction of a peremptory law (condemning the use of alcohol) which neither the Church nor the Bible has enjoined, though 'excess' in using it is not new, and is denounced by both.

And he does this the more readily because he sees that one class of society has notably changed its drinking habits without the assistance of fresh prohibitory' vows,' and because he cannot examine Christianity without perceiving that its drift is to lessen the number of imperative commandments (all the law and the prophets' being said by Christ to 'hang upon' two), and to place the individual recognition of high principles above the multiplication of restrictive ceremonies and rules.