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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadRalph Wardlaw Lectures on Proverbs - Proverbs 23:29 - 23:35
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
(THIRD DISCOURSE.)
{eS module note: see the two lectures on Pro_20:1 for the first two discourses....}
Pro_23:29-35.
"Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath contentions? who hath babbling? who hath wounds without cause? who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colour in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things. Yea, thou shall be as he that lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth upon the top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I was not sick; they have beaten me, and I felt it not: when shall I awake? I will seek it yet again."
It was my purpose to have reserved any enlarged illustration of the evils of intemperance, till I should arrive at this passage in the ordinary course of exposition. I have thought it preferable, however, to follow up my two former discourses with an immediate exposition of its contents. A more graphic and vivid description,-a more powerful and awakening appeal,-a more solemn, earnest, and alarming expostulation and warning, it is hardly possible to conceive.
Before entering on the illustration of it, I cannot avoid requesting attention to the clear and ample confirmation it affords of all that was formerly said about the intoxicating character of the wines of Palestine. I stated before, and repeat it, that no learning is necessary to make out the only point which it is of any consequence to establish. It is easy to speak of the weak and light wines of that country. But how can any one read such a passage as this-and it is very far from standing alone-without being satisfied, that, whatever varieties there might be in the wines in ordinary use,-just as, with ourselves, there are weaker and stronger, lighter and more heady wines, there were some of them, that were not only intoxicating, but intoxicating to the utmost conceivable degree. For assuredly, nothing can go beyond the stage of drunkenness depicted in the verses which I have just read. Why, then, all the learned discussion? Why the raising of subscriptions for the purpose of sending commissions to Palestine, "to examine into the history of ancient wines, their manufacture and use?" Can this be necessary, to ascertain, to any reader of the Bible, whether they were intoxicating, when he reads of " the drunkards of Ephraim," and finds so frequently meeting him, warnings against the sin of intoxication, and against not "strong drink" alone, but "wine," as its fatal cause. To any one, therefore, who says he cannot believe that the wines of Judea were at all of the same heady qualities with ours,-I should think it enough to say Read these verses. No matter whether they were the same, in their manufacture, and in their qualities generally, with ours or not,-one quality they evidently possessed,-the quality which is the only ground of controversy:-they were intoxicating.
It will ho impossible to avoid, in the illustration of this passage, repeating sentiments of a similar description to some of those advanced in last lecture. For this,-so far as it may be the case,-allowance will readily be made.
Our subject, then, is the Sin Of Intemperance. Here, there is no great likelihood of difference of opinion. Should there be difference, it will be on the part of such as are themselves, in a greater or less degree, addicted to the vice, and fond to discover grounds of palliation and self-defence,-or who are just in the perilous predicament of contracting a fondness for it.
Intemperance is the use of any intoxicating liquor to excess. It matters not what the liquor be-whether wine or malt-liquor, or ardent spirits, or extract of opium, or anything else. The evil lies, not in the article used, but in the excessive use of it. Now I fancy I hear some one say-and smile with a kind of self-complacency in saying it, as if he had found a puzzle for the speaker and a convenient refuge for himself-Ah! but what is the excessive use of it?-Allow me to say to such persons, that I never hear this question put, without trembling for him who puts it. I state it as my pastoral experience, that among all the cases of discipline for the sin of intemperance that have come under the cognizance of the church, I have hardly known one in which the party concerned, when evidence was clear against him, has not been disposed to take refuge in such excuses as-"I grant that I have at times taken pretty freely-perhaps I may at a time have gone a little further than I should have gone; but I always knew what I was doing."
Now, first of all, this is far from being always true. A man frequently says and does things, when under the influence of liquor, of the strangeness of which he is not at the time sensible; and does even right things in a manner that plainly betrays his condition to others, when he is entirely, or in a great measure, unconscious of it himself. But this is not all. Even supposing what these persons say of themselves were true, what a ground is this for a professing Christian,-nay, what a ground for any man holding even the common principles of morality,-to take! What! is it consistent with Christian principle-with Christian prudence-with Christian self-knowledge-with Christian vigilance-to venture thus to the very confines of evil,-to sport upon the borders of sin-to tread, with heedless step, the verge of hell? I can have no hesitation in saying, that the man who goes thus far has exceeded. He may not have got drank; but he has tampered with temptation;-he has violated all the admonitions to self-jealousy; he has shown a conscience not impressed as it ought to be with "abhorrence of that which is evil," by the very fact of his venturing so near it; he has shown an inclination, that would go further, if he dared,-that has not boldness enough as yet to sin freely;-if he is not a drunkard in fact, he is one in will,-and he is in most imminent danger of very soon being one in fact too. There are some to be found who, constitutionally or by custom, can take more than their neighbours, without being, as they say, the worse for it. And such persons have been many a time known to boast of how much they can stand. But not only is this grovelling and disgustful,-it is deeply criminal. It is a waste of God’s bounties,--a perversion of them to purposes they were never meant to serve; it is a species of indulgence at once deleterious to the body, and hardening and brutalizing to the mind; the boasting is a lure to others to try their strength,-a lure which, when successful, brings to the account of him who presents it all the sin and guilt produced by the imitation. There cannot be greater curses to society than those who are thus "mighty to mingle strong drink," and whose boast is, how many they can, as the phrase is, "lay under the table," while they themselves keep sober! The Bible says-"Woe unto them!" and all who wish well to mankind will say Amen! to the woe. There are some, too, who, though they never perhaps get themselves thoroughly drunk-are for ever at it-tasting-tasting-tasting-whenever they can find the opportunity. One does not like to make comparisons; because such is the deceitfulness of the heart, and such men’s proneness to palliate their own forms and modes of evil, that when you represent another form as worse than theirs, they are tempted to a latitude of inference, such as makes them feel at ease in their own indulgence, as if it were hardly an evil at all, as if the sin were extracted from it by comparison with the greater sin of the other:-yet, in some respects at least, the incessant tippler is a worse and more hopeless character, than the occasional drunkard. The habit gets stronger-the craving more imperious-and the danger greater of the character of a confirmed sot being the result. Even although the tippler should never fall into absolute intoxication, he is intemperate. He may not go to great excess in any one particular case; but his incessant use is excess. He may be more intemperate in this respect, than the man whose fits of intoxication-or whose rambles (to use a cant word, which will convey to many my meaning better than any other,) are the exceptions, more or less frequent, to their ordinary sobriety. But away with such comparisons. All the modes of the evil are bad,-all to be shunned,-all to be abandoned. Men addicted to the vice, in one or other of its modes, have drawn variously the line of demarcation between temperance and intemperance, according to their different tastes and propensities,-have drawn it sometimes seriously, and more frequently in jest-" fools making a mock at sin." I will not descend from the dignity of the place I occupy by meddling with any of these. They are not the results of sober-minded conviction; and to refute the jokes, either of the low tippler or of the jovial debauchee, would be as degrading as it is unnecessary.
In the passage before us Solomon speaks of those that "tarry long at the wine, that go to seek mixed wine." They "tarry at the wine" from fondness of it, and reluctance to quit it-yet another, and another, and another cup:-and they "go to seek mixed wine"-that is, either they inquire with eagerness where the best, the most deliciously flavoured, the strongest, the most highly seasoned and thoroughly inspissated wines, are to be found,-that there they may hold their carousals; or, they seek still a stronger and a stronger stimulant;-having recourse, when simple unmixed wines have failed of their effect, to those more heady and intoxicating combinations of liquor, or those liquors that have been mingled with drugs and spices of highly stimulating virtue, by which the efficacy may be enhanced as well as the relish improved. But the terms are evidently applicable to the indulgence, in whatever way, and by whatever means, in the propensity to excess. They describe drinking to intoxication, whatever be the beverage, and whether in solitude or in company. The terms too, it may be remarked, are expressive of habit. They suppose the habit formed. But everything that tends to the formation of the habit, must of course be considered as included. The habit is the height and consummation of the evil; but all the successive acts by which the habit has been formed come in for their proportional shares of the guilt. Habitual intoxication is the worst state of the vice; but occasional intoxication is still the vice. It is out of the occasional that the habitual arises. Men may think lightly, and talk lightly, of going beyond due bounds at a time, so long as they keep from the habit. But they would do well to remember, that every individual instance of excess is an act of decided and flagrant sin; and that, while it is vicious in itself, it is additionally vicious, as conducing to the formation of the habit. The man who makes light of occasional intoxication, is in the high way to the character of a habitual drunkard. There is, on this subject (and the observation applies to swearing and other sins, as well as to intemperance,) a strange perversion of principle at times to be found, in the estimates which men form of evil, or perhaps rather in the manner in which they talk about it. I refer to the manner in which we frequently hear men allege the strength of habit in palliation of their misdeeds. The swearer has got so habituated to the use of oaths, that he utters them, without being sensible of doing it. The drunkard has become so addicted to the use of stimulating and intoxicating liquors that he cannot do without them; he absolutely requires them; the craving has become such that it must be gratified. So they speak; and in speaking so, they are guilty of the extraordinary delusion of making the very worst form and most flagrant degree of a sin the apology for the commission of it;-the habit of profaneness the excuse for being profane!-the habit of intemperance the apology for its individual acts! forgetting that the habit itself involves in it the accumulated guilt of all the individual acts which have either contributed to its formation, or have arisen from it when formed! The sin, then, of which I now speak is intemperance, as including the immoderate use of intoxicating liquors, even although absolute intoxication should rarely if ever be the result; and especially intoxication itself, in all its degrees, and all its stages,-from the first unsettlement of sober reason, down to the lowest pitch of drunken insensibility.
Our next inquiry must be-what are the effects of this sin? and our reply to this question will bring out more clearly the nature and the amount of its criminality. We shall take up the effects, as they are here, directly and indirectly, enumerated; there being few of the evils resulting from this prolific parent sin, which may not find a place, naturally enough, within the limits of this most graphic and vivid portraiture.
We begin with observing, that, on the very first and most superficial view of the case, there is apparent in it a very flagrant evil. God has given man reason, for the superintendence and direction of his conduct in all the situations and connexions of life in which His providence may be pleased to place him. How, then, is that man to answer to his Maker and Judge, who wilfully deprives himself of the presidency of reason over his mind, and heart, and conscience, and behaviour?-who, of his own accord, irrationalizes himself-reduces himself to a brute? When I use this comparison, I refer exclusively to the unseating of reason from the throne of its legitimate and divinely appointed rule, or the impairing, in whatever degree, of its capacity for duly maintaining it. There is a sense in which the man who acts this part sinks himself far lower than the brute. Yes:-it is a slander on the inferior tribes of the animal creation, to compare a drunken man to a brute. The brute follows the prevailing instincts of its constitution,-and acts according to the measure of understanding which the all-wise Creator has conferred upon it. But the drunkard voluntarily bereaves himself of understanding; voluntarily incapacitates himself for his required functions; voluntarily becomes a half-witted fool, a violent maniac, or a drivelling idiot.
The first question in the passage cited is-"Who hath woe? who hath sorrow?" Many, alas! are the sources of "sorrow" and "woe" to the drunkard, especially so long as his conscience, and his relative affections, and his regard to reputation and self-interest, retain any portion of sensibility, and have not been reduced to absolute callousness by protracted indulgence in sin. First of all, there is the woe of conscious debasement and guilt. Impelled by the unnatural cravings of a disordered appetite, or by the love of company and of social mirth, all is, for the time, joviality and glee:-who on earth so happy as the drunkard, when under the immediate impulse of his exhilarating stimulus? But, to form a true judgment, you must look at him when the excitement is past, and he is left to sober recollection-to the awful collapse of his over-stimulated spirits. Then come-(I am supposing the case of one not yet seared in conscience)-then come his fits of penitence. He is stung with remorse. He is ashamed, and dissatisfied with himself, painfully, fretfully, indignantly dissatisfied. He thinks, it may be, of the good principles of piety and virtue in which he was educated; of the parental example by which these were recommended and enforced; and of the anguish and heart-break which his conduct must occasion to fond parents. Or again, if he has a family,-if he is himself a husband or a father,-his heart is wrung with the agony of self-reproach, in looking on his wife and children, whom he has been depriving of his company, denying the endearments of domestic life, dishonouring, distressing, abridging of their comforts, impoverishing, famishing, and possibly, while in his cups and rallied by his jovial associates, he has spoken of with unkindness and contumely, and, when he has come home, has treated with the words and the acts of abuse and violence;-or in gazing on the bitterly reproaching look of his heart-broken partner, whom he has wantonly and cruelly alienated by his unnatural neglect and profligacy,-or on what (if any spark of nature's sensibility still lingers in his bosom) is still more full of anguish-the affectionate smile, through glistening tears, that would fain and fondly win him back to the joys of home, and to the ways of sobriety and virtue and happiness!-Then, again, there is the "woe" and "sorrow," when he thinks how he has forfeited his reputation-that "good name which is better than precious ointment;" how he has injured his credit, and shaken the confidence that was reposed in him; how he has neglected and left undone something of essential moment, or has said, or done, or consented to, something eminently detrimental to himself, to his business, to his family:-he is angry with himself , he sees the damage, and he sees it to be irretrievable; he chafes and frets in vain; and by this very feeling of restless irritation, he is perhaps driven to seek refuge from his self-inflicted wretchedness in new and still greater excesses!-These are but specimens of the woes and sorrows, of which the variety is without end, that spring from this fountain of bitterness. It follows-"Who hath contentions?" I need not surely say, how frequently these are the accompaniments and consequences of intemperance:-how teazingly and provokingly troublesome on the one hand, and how senselessly quarrelsome on the other, it often renders its poor unhappy victims. They become reckless of all reason and of all risks. They will fight; they must fight. They contend for contention’s sake. To tell them there is no cause, is to speak to madmen. Broils and angry debates are fomented, over which reason has left passion to preside alone,-whence come blows and battles, such as not seldom terminate seriously and even fatally. How many feuds and animosities, that separate friends and families, and spread discord and strife through neighbourhoods, and sometimes end in blood, have had their rise over the bottle, when men continue at it till wine or strong drink inflame them!-How many of the murders that from time to time take place, and of which the scaffold is the just requital, may be traced to intemperance!-how large a proportion of the "blood that crieth unto God from the ground" may be justly laid to the charge of that sin! "Who hath babbling?"-All who have marked the effects of intoxication must have observed how different they are on different mental temperaments. Some who are naturally quiet, good-humoured, and gentle, it renders loquacious, irritable, and headstrong; while others, naturally perhaps far from being the most easily managed, are converted into personifications of good humour. Like a temporary insanity, (which in truth it is) it works various and strange transformations of character. But, while the frantic fury of the drunkard is frightful, the silly incoherent drivel, and the broken, drawling, inarticulate, babbling speech, of the drunkard, is, to the last degree, pitiable and disgusting. Surely could the poor man see and hear himself-that would work a reformation, if anything would! How often may the drunkard, in his cups, be heard maintaining, with pertinacious and unmoved obstinacy, the most foolish and impertinent absurdities;-reiterating the affirmation of them with a stoutness and a violence growing with contradiction;-giving utterance to the most wretched inanities, without meaning and without coherence;-stammering out vows of eternal attachment to persons whom he has hardly seen before, or for whom he cares not a rush when sober:-and all this too, with looks, and tones, and gestures, of the most infantile imbecility! Drunkenness destroys all distinctions and varieties of mental capacity and energy. When reason is once dethroned, wisdom and folly are on a level; and the wisest and most intelligent man in the company sinks into the pre-eminence of the veriest fool,-all froth, and emptiness, and absurdity!
"Who hath wounds without cause!" These maybe the result of various causes:-sometimes of contentions, when he picks quarrels and gets into brawls with all he meets,-interrupting them, laying hold of them, teazing and insulting them, and receiving in return what from many might be expected:-sometimes of his stumbles and falls, by which he is covered with cuts and bruises:-sometimes even of self-mutilation and violence,-the temporary madness having, in some instances, been known to produce the infliction of severe contusions, and the cleaving off of fingers,-by which they have been confounded afterwards on being told that it was their own doing! These are "wounds without cause"-not merely wounds needlessly incurred, and which by sobriety might have been shunned,-but of which the drunkard himself cannot tell the cause, but, when he gets sober, marvels whence they have come!
"Who hath redness of eyes?"-The habits of the man come to be marked by their effects upon his looks. The inflamed and turgid eye, and the blotched, and fiery, and disfigured countenance, indicate, that the deleterious poison has gone through his frame, and has incorporated with, and tainted, and set on fire the entire mass of circulating blood. His very looks become the index of his character, and give warning to all who look at him to have nothing to do with him.
To these melancholy evils, others still more melancholy are added:-"Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things." The two vices, of drunkenness and lewdness, are almost inseparable associates. The one proverbially inflames the other. Intoxication is many a time the first step in seduction to other evils. When unprincipled men are desirous of obtaining the instrumentality of others for any wicked purpose, how often have they been known first to disorder their understandings by tempting them to free indulgence at the bottle! Thousands of crimes have their origin here. The fable is no doubt familiar to many of you-but though a fable it involves an important truth, and an important warning,-of the man to whom the devil is said to have offered the alternative of a choice between three sins, one or other of which, as the means of averting some evil or obtaining some good, he was bound to commit. The three sins were, murder, incest, and drunkenness. The man made choice of the last, as, in his estimation, incomparably the least. This was the devil's device; for, when he was under the influence of it, he was easily beguiled into both the other two!-It is needless to say, how insensible the drunkard becomes, when in his cups, to all the feelings and laws of delicacy and decorum,-committing unblushingly the most shameless indecencies, and glorying in his shame; and how readily in such a state, he becomes the prey-the wretched and dishonourable prey-of every vile seducer.
"And thy lips shall utter perverse things."-It was "babblings" before. But mere drivelling and folly is not all; it would be comparatively well if it were. But too often intoxication is the inlet to licentious and impure conversation; to profligate and obscene songs; to slander and abuse even of the best and most venerated characters; to the treacherous and injurious betraying of secrets (which it is sometimes, indeed, the means employed for detecting); to impious and heaven daring profanities and blasphemies, oaths and curses, and reckless jestings at sacred things. These form the frightful compound, amidst growing confusion, and riot, and violence, of the drunken revel! When a man is in his cups, "perverse things" may find utterance, such as will cost him many an hour and many a day of bitter suffering; such as he would cheerfully give all that he is worth to be able to recall; but such as he regrets to no purpose, the utterance and the consequences being alike irretrievable.
The 34th and 35th verses describe the lowest point in the descending scale of the detestable and loathsome vice-the state of drunken stupor and insensibility. The man reduced to this condition, when he begins to awake from it, wonders where he has been, and wonders no less to find himself where he is; and he shudders with horror to think of the imminent perils by which, when he knew it not, he has been surrounded. How strange must be the feelings of him who, while sunk in a profound sleep, has been launched alone on the deep, and on waking finds himself there, in this dangerous solitude; or who, while his senses have, in like manner, been locked up, has been laid, insensible, on the masthead, and opens his eyes to his unwonted and unaccountable position?-Thus it is with the drunkard. When he is informed, on his reason returning to him,-after he has slept away the fumes of his miserable debauch,-where he has been, and what he has said and done,-he startles in astonishment, incredulity, and self-reproach; but he recollects nothing of it. What a graphic delineation we have, in the last verse, of a drunkard beginning to recover!-When he has passed through the different stages, of violent excitation, and of subsequent unconscious impotence;-the vacant stare,-the stammering speech,-the double vision,-the falling jaw,-the reeling step;-when he has fallen, and, on attempting to rise, has fallen irrecoverably again;-has been carried senseless to bed, and has fallen into a profound and beastly sleep:-here he is before you-beginning to awake;-feeling his contusions and wounds, and wondering where and how he can have got them; stiff and sore; trying to raise or to stretch himself; scarcely believing that he is not still asleep; yawning and listless, in that state of intolerable languor which is said to succeed the fits of high and fevered excitement! A most wretched state of remorse, and regret, and bitter reflection, and anticipated and dreaded evils; and yet-accompanied with the unendurable craving and longing for the necessary stimulus,-a craving, which is, alas! so seldom effectually resisted and subdued-"I will seek it yet again." The language of the thirty-second verse-"At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder" may be applied to all the subsequent effects together of this sin;-all the misery of an awakened conscience,-of keen self-reproach,-of corporeal and mental suffering,-of domestic discomfort,-of the loss of reputation, credit, health, life, soul,-all may be comprehended in this emphatic similitude.-O my friends, let us not forget, especially, the last of this sad series of particulars! The drunkard destroys His Soul. The temporal evils that result from the course he pursues are many and deeply deplorable. But O! what is any, what are all of them, compared with this!-compared with the spiritual desolation which this sin spreads around it, and the irretrievable ruin of everlasting interests, in which it terminates! Think of the deathbed of the drunkard,-a deathbed to which, it may be, his criminal and infatuated indulgence has contributed prematurely to bring him! He has lived "without God," and he dies "without hope." He quits the world in the horrors of despair, or in the hardly less fearful insensibility of a seared conscience, an exhausted mind, and a heart drugged into apathy by "strong delusion." He leaves behind him a ruined character, a ruined fortune, and, it may be, (no thanks to him if it is otherwise,) a ruined family;-and his ruined self plunges into hell!
I use this strong language freely and boldly, because I have formerly shown you how decidedly I am borne out in the use of it, by the positive assurances and awful denunciations of God’s word. I have shown you, that by the express and irrevocable sentence of the Judge of all, intemperance is one of the sins which indicate a heart unrenewed by divine grace, and which finally exclude from "the kingdom of heaven." O that I could impress the fearful truth, with practically dissuasive power, on the consciences and hearts of all! The renunciation of the vice, where it has been practised, is one of the essential evidences of conversion to God:-"Such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God," 1Co_6:11. It follows that no one belongs to the number of the "washed and sanctified and justified," who belongs to the class of drunkards. And from this it further follows, that none such should ever be admitted to the fellowship of the church below, seeing they stand excluded from the church above, but must be kept out and cast out. O! well might Solomon say, with all the emphasis of pointed and affectionate warning-"Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his colo1u' in the cup, when it moveth itself aright." The look forbidden is the look that springs from and provokes desire. There is always danger in looking at a tempting object. It was when Eve looked on the tempting fruit that she fell. The man who looks on the wine with special pleasure, when it sparkles and mantles in the brimming cup, excites his longing after it, and is in imminent danger of being overcome. If he would conquer, and avoid being conquered, he would do well to turn his eyes away; for it is, in this and in other cases, by the eye that the temptation enters and prevails. The people of God themselves are expressly warned against the indulgence and the encroachments of this miserable vice: "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit," Eph_5:18. On this remarkable passage I may be allowed to observe-that being "filled with the Spirit" is the best preventive, the most effectual safeguard, against this and all other sins: for "the Spirit lusteth against the flesh, that we may not do the things which we would." And further-what a contrast is between the utterance of the man who is thus "filled with the Spirit," and that of the man who is "drunk with wine." We have seen what the latter is:-we have the former in the verse immediately following the expression quoted-"Be filled with the Spirit; speaking to yourselves: in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord." Our Lord himself, in very solemn and awful terms, admonishes his people on this subject;*1 and the warnings of His apostles are no less impressive and powerful.*2 Yet does it not strike you as remarkable,-and is it not deserving of the notice of those of our brethren who are accustomed to speak of abstinence as the only true temperance,-that when our Lord himself,-"the great Teacher,"-whose instructions, as well as whose example, were perfect,-admonished his followers, in terms so solemn and alarming, against such excesses as were inconsistent with due vigilance, and might expose them to be taken by surprise at the coming of their Master,-he never should have thought of the "more excellent way" of preventing the evil against which he warns by an injunction of abstinence? Never, one should think, was there a more appropriate time for it. The very admonition shows that the sin was not a rare one, or their danger of falling into it a great unlikelihood. Yet we have nothing of the kind. The rise is not interdicted, as the surest means of avoiding the abuse. The warning is solely against excess. Was this an oversight-an omission and imperfection in the Saviour's teaching? It must not be said, there was not the same danger:-had there not been danger, there would not have been warning. Observe me-I find no fault with the man who, in attending to the Saviour's admonition, acts upon the principle that the best and surest means of avoiding excess is, abstaining from whatever might tempt to it. He may act upon this principle himself; he may advise others to act upon it. All that is pleaded for is-that he do not condemn those, as disobeying the Saviour's admonition, who, whether in eating or drinking, can partake of God's bounties without the excess, and who, in so partaking, are imitating that Saviour's example.
*1 See Mat_24:48; Luk_21:34. rr
*2 See Rom_13:11-14; 1Th_5:4-10.
I wished to have enlarged a little now on one or two topics that were touched upon in last discourse. But your time will by no means admit of my doing so. I then stated what I conceive to be the only reasonable basis on which the advocates of Abstinence Societies should ever attempt to found them;-namely, the principle contained in the Apostle's words-"It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak:"-that is, the principle of selfdenial for the good of others,-or, in other words, the expediency of having recourse to means, in some circumstances, which, in different circumstances, might be unnecessary and uncalled for. It would, in my apprehension, have been well for their cause, had the friends of abstinence confined themselves to this ground. Although by no means to all Christian minds satisfactory to the extent to which they carry the application of the principle, or unobjectionable on other accounts,-yet to a certain degree it was solid. But by attempting to extend their foundation, they have weakened it. By seeking to prove too much, they have lost, in many minds, the hold they might have had. They have adopted principles which trench upon Christian liberty, by imposing human authority for divine, and condemning as sin what God has nowhere forbidden; which thus lead to uncharitable and censorious estimates of character; which require for their maintenance the violation of the canons of sound criticism and legitimate biblical interpretation; which, introduced into the church, would exclude from its communion many whom "Christ has received;" and, above all, which throw an injurious and most revolting reflection (how undesignedly and unconsciously soever, and I need not say I regard it as altogether so,) on the character of the all-perfect pattern of every excellence-''the man Christ Jesus." All this is to myself matter of sincere regret. The object they prosecute is one of unquestioned and primary excellence-the diminution and eradication of an evil of enormous magnitude, and the inlet to a deplorable variety and amount of other evils, both moral and physical, personal, domestic, and public. In so far as this object is prosecuted by scripturally legitimate means, we cannot but wish the prosecution of it God-speed. I avow my preference of means, as far as they can possibly be brought into operation, of a different description;-means that go more directly to the root of other evils as well as this,-that go immediately, that is, to the rectification of the principles of human conduct;-means, that leave less likelihood of the minds of those on whom they are brought to bear being absorbed in this one concern, deluded into the notion that the temperance reformation is all in all,-to make this reformation their righteousness, to put their sobriety in the place of godliness, their reformation for conversion; and, though cured of one great evil, and freed from the miserable effects arising from it, to live as really without God as before;-means, which, while they saved their objects from intemperance, would, at the same time, bring them to more than what the world call sobriety,-which would bring them to faith, to holiness, to God;-which would thus combine ends of which the combination is so desirable,-providing for "things that accompany salvation" as well as things that accompany outward virtue and this world's well-being. Mistake me not. I do not mean that it is at all wrong to avail ourselves of motives and considerations of an inferior kind to those which relate to the high interests of the soul and eternity, in order to induce men to abandon an evil which so injuriously affects themselves, their families, and the community. I am far from saying or thinking so. The Holy Scriptures make frequent use of such motives:-but the Bible, at the same time, should be our pattern in combining both, and in placing the highest first. I have also, as I formerly said, more confidence in the permanence of the results, when the means by which they are produced involve the infusion of principle. Is it so, as has been reported, that many of the Irish papists, who took the pledge from Father Matthew, are now, at the hands of other priests, get. ting absolution from their pledge for a shilling? So it is said. For my own part, I should rejoice to hear that it is not time:-but still, I should not be at all surprised if it is. It would only be an exemplification of what I stated last Lord's day-the slender hold we have on a man when such a pledge is unaccompanied with knowledge, and unfounded in just principle. In the case alluded to, the bond and the release are alike the fruit of ignorance. Ignorance takes it; ignorance is absolved from it;-the ignorance of a soul-deceiving superstition,-a superstition which would lead its victims to make a merit of the keeping of their pledge,-and yet to feel themselves not the less safe for giving it up when their release was obtained from priestly authority.
I do not vindicate either myself or others from culpability in not bringing more into active operation such means as those of which I have intimated my approbation. Be it so, that in this we have erred, and do err. That affects not the present question. I have formerly said, and say it again,-that I have been reluctant to utter a word that could by any be construed as if it were pointed against, and designed to hinder, the advance of a good cause,-of a great reformation. And yet, conscious as I am that my sole object is truth-the basing of Christian plans and Christian doings upon right principles;-why should I fear the result? Essential truth, in the principles on which we proceed, will be sure of producing ultimate good,-even should it, for a time, appear to interfere with it.
And now, having laid before you what I believe to be the mind of God on the subject that has occupied the last three morning lectures-I trust I may say without the charge of presumption, what my conscience tells me I say, though with confidence, without elation,-" I take you to record this day," whether, either by what I have said or by what I have not said, I have justly incurred the heavy imputation of "casting the weight of my influence into the scale of intemperance;" whether, for the last three Sabbath mornings, I have been "employing myself in promoting the dreadful evil of intemperance!" I have been describing its nature; exposing its sinfulness; shutting out those who are guilty of it from the kingdom of God both on earth and in heaven; showing its dreadful consequences, in time and eternity, and denouncing it in the name of the Lord. And I have been pleading for temperance as a Bible virtue, commanded by God, and exemplified by Christ, and a fruit of his Spirit in all who believe his truth. But, because I cannot see temperance and abstinence to be the same thing,-or, in the face of my Bible kind of experience, assent to the position, that abstinence is the only and the incumbent means of promoting temperance, I must bear the weight of imputations, which, if true, would render the man who is justly chargeable with them unworthy ever to open a lip again as a minister of God's truth. My conscience acquits me of having ever, within my recollection, used a single passage of the word of God, during the whole course of my ministry, in a sense inconsistent with what I believed to be its meaning, or for a purpose aside from its design. On the present subject, my sole desire has been to ascertain the mind and will of the Lord; and whatever the Lord sayeth, that to speak: and I trust that, "through your prayer, and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ," I shall ever be enabled, faithfully and unflinchingly, mildly but firmly, without the "fear of man, which bringeth a snare,"-" fearing God, and knowing no other fear,"-to "declare unto you"-" shunning" no one part of it-" the whole counsel of God;"-"not walking in craftiness, not handling the Word of God deceitfully, but by manifestation of the truth, commending myself to every man's conscience in His sight!"