TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20450, 3 July 1928, Page 2

TEMPERANCE COLUMN.

SHOULD A CHRISTIAN BE A TOTAL ABSTAINER. By the Rev. Henry Carter, London, England. 11. So far our reasoning has been directly concerned with individual life, its quality, its allegiance to God, but Christian thinking cannot stop at that point. The Christian is subject to a royal law —“ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Attitude of mind and personal habit are to conform to that obligation. Suppose a Christian feels himself unbound by the preceding argument, he has yet to consider his duty to others. Three considerations at least are involved. (1) What of men and women fiercely tempted by drink? None can deny their presence amongst, us. No one ot us knows who, in his circle of friends or is likeliest to find in drink an enslaving master. Its victims are of all ranks and on all roads. The guidance of the New Testament is clear: Let no mail “ put a stumbling block in his brother’s way, or an occasion of falling.”—(Romans xiv, 13). (2) What of the children of the nation? Where, in any rank of life, the father or mother is intemperate, the children lose love and care. Where the family earnings barely suffice for life’s necessities, every shilling spent on liquor means a shilling less for food or fuel or clothing. In 1923 the money spent in Great Britain to buy drink averaged more than 12s per family per week; this figure includes abstaining families, and the average expenditure of drinking families would therefore be considerably higher. In tens of thousands of instances the children paid this heavy family drink bill; beer and whisky were bought at the cost of their health and prospects in life. “It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.” Yet is not a C’tfristian who himself indulges in drink tongue-tied in the presence of this vast unreckoned cruelty? Can he claim from others an abstinence which he himself will not practise? (3) What of the nation, its moral quality, its responsibilities to mankind in this unparalleled age? No one has measured or can measure the loss to a nation through the prevalence of alcoholism. It is customary to name the loss of health and physical efficiency, and the impairment by crime and destitution of which drink is the acknowledged cause. I hold that there is a loss more serious than the sum of all this recognisable wastage. I refer to the dwarfing of mental and moral stature.’Every citizen who, because of alcoholic indulgence, thinks on a low plane, is,content with low purposes, or contributes no sustained social service, lessens actually and positively his nation’s power to serve God, his fellow-men, and the present age. Britain, like her every son and daughter, should rise to full stature of character in these decisive years. On the vision, wisdom, integrity, and constructive goodwill of the British peoples depend in large measure the power to restore this stricken world. The mind of the nation should work freely; the soul of the nation should respond to the call of the Highest. Men and women who are torpid or sensual cannot see the vision of the “ new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” Is not the Christian, as citizen, summoned to-day by the supreme demands which the needs of the world make on the moral resources of our nation, to accept a sterner solf-discipline? Ought we not, for the sake of human good, “ to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul”? THE FLESH AND THE SPIRIT. Whether the argument be personal or public, fundamentally there is one issue, and the only. Shall we answer the call of the flesh or the command of the spirit? The plea for the use of intoxicants as beverages is a plea on behalf of “ the flesh.” Strong drink ministers to the senses only. 7t is a gratification of appetite and bodily desire. Alcohol does not quicken thought; it confuses the powers of the mind. Alcohol does not incite to the spiritual quest; it deadens the yearnings of the soul, unleashes carnal passion, and again and again has betrayed man’s soul. The only honest explanation for the liquor habit, which a man can give who knows the scientific indictment of alcoholic liquor, is “ I like it.” Is that sufficient for the Christian? ‘‘The mind of the flesh is death,” wrote St. Paul (Romans viii, 6). By “the flesh ” he meant more than the merely physical side of our nature. He saw that “ the flesh ” and “ the spirit ” —the lower and the higher elements of moral life : —are at war in us all. Every moral strife, whether in the career of a man or in the history of a nation, is at the heart of it a struggle between the flee', and the spirit. It is manifestly so as regards the drink question. Self-control, idealism, social obligation are the forces impelling a man —or a people—to wrestle with and renounce the use of intoxicants. These are the elements involved in the triumph of the spiritual nature. They rise to supremacy where Christ holds sway. , This brines us round, in full circle, to the point at which our inquiry began. A Christian, we said, is on quest for the Will of Christ; as he discerns it, the Wi l ! of Christ I icomes his daily rule or law. There is no doubt concerning the “ way ” which Jesus trod. The four narrators depict One Figure,,, dominated by one purpose. He came “ not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.” He taught that service was greatness. We do not follow Jesus when we seek in the customs of another age and clime sanctions for an indulgence in appetite. We only truly “ follow ” Him when His attitude to others’ needs is the accepted guide to our duty; as did St. Paul when he wrote that the right course Was to abstain from wine if wine were a stumbli r block to a brother (Romans xiv, 21). This was his reply to the assertion that a man has a right to drink without excess; the highest right is the right to forego a right for others’ gain. Deeper still was Jesus’s teaching Concerning life and its quality. _ Self-centred desires were not to rule in the heart of His followers. The sincere follower would deny himself, and take up his cross day by day. St. Paul, with penetrating speech, sharpened in the stress of actual experience, said: “They that are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with the passions and lusts thereof ” (Galatians v, 24). Should a Christian, knowing the scientific indictment of alcohol, and realising the extent of the drink evil, be a total abstainer from intoxicating drink? For such a one, the issue is narrowed, on the one hand, to-the-plea, “I like it”; on the other, by the Cross, with its appeal to sacrifice for the highest good. Can appetite withstand this high appeal? Is it not clear that the Christian “ way ” is sacrifice—ungrudging sacrifice —fo- His sake Who said, “ Follow Me ”?