Dr. ALEXANDER WHYTE ON THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND THE DRINK TRAFFIC.

Te Aroha News, Volume XXVI, Issue 43084, 25 April 1907, Page 1

Dr. ALEXANDER WHYTE ON THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND THE DRINK TRAFFIC.

Their commence, are dormant as to the responsibility for the. wveck of olhor live® tha' thv

sanction of drinking inevitably carries.

After more than half a century of Temperance teaching and agitation, the first principles of the total abstinence move* ment have not found unanimous acceptancce even in the Churches, so strong are the chains that “ interest and habit and fashion and appetite v can forge.

Were the Churches unanimous on this subject, we should soon see great changes. The weight of Christian opinion would quickly be felt throughout the land, and many of the loathsome features of our socalled civilised life would be swept away. The attitude of the average Christian is too nearly in agee* ment with the attitude of the average man. If none were abstainers but those who could not drink in moderation, to be an abstainer would be a confession to all the world that the person abstaining could not govern himself. It is unreasonable to make the only way so difficult. When you press this argumeut on the Christian moderate drinker, he practically abjures his Christianity, and prates of his liberty} as| though he had made no vows and given himself to no leader. He asks hotly why the liberty of nineteen persons to partake of intoxicants in a harmless way., should be curtained for the sake of the twentieth person who cannot control his appetites. This question completely ignores the teaching of St. Paul with regard to subjects of this character. Asceticism may or may not be a desirable thing x iu itself, but there is no question that the asceticism that has for its aim the redemption of others is commended and even enjoined with the most solemn injunctions, / .

If the New Testament, and particularly the Epistle to the Romans, were taken seriously, .q' and acted upon in daily life, ab- f? iutoxicants would be recognised as a plaiu Christian duty. The assumption underlying the moderate drinker’s plea is contradicted in iuuumerale places, and by the whole - ’ spirit of the great apostle’s teaching. “We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves,” must be altered into •• We ihai are strong ought to do as we can square with mo derate drinking in the face of the evils of drinking to-day “Let us not therefore judge one another any more; but judge this rather, that no man put a stumbling block, or an occasion to fall, in his brother’s way,” 4 becomes in the mouths of those clinging to the liberty to partake of intoxicants. “ Let us bring | the drunkard to the Police Court and the jail, but leave us to enjoy our quiet glass iu peace.”

What can the Christian \vl 3 drinks intoxicants made ofr Paul’s declaration. “It is good neither to eat flesh nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended or is made weak”; or this, “ Destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died”?

In the awakening of conscience lies onr hope, but we cannot deceive ourselves 1 hat consciences are already awake. Too many are sleeping j.n . ignorance, or have.been drugged into indifference. We yet no reason to slacken iu our fight, or to boast ourselves as w those who put off their armour, but we have still to place 0 - selves for the couificf, and 0 go forward strong in the cor- -J viction of the righteousness of our cause and the ultimate triumph of the principles whuffing 1 we profess,