IN EXTREMIS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 85, 23 November 1911, Page 6

IN EXTREMIS.

Feeling its end to be near, the Trade seeks benefit of clergy. Prominent amongst the sick man’s ghostly advisers are Doctor Salmond and the Rev. Willoughby, of Stockton, Cal., and they appear to agree in one thing —that to console the departing there is nothing like the Comminution Service. No urging the sinner to rcpcnteiico, but hearty anathemas for those hypocritical, fanatical (contradictory terms, perhaps, but favourites with “the Trade”) wowsers who have laid low the lusty and strong, the jovial, the generous, the— the(words fail me!) in short, The Trade.

It is a weird and uncanny thing this alliance of the spiritual with the apirituous, this union of Beer arid Bible, but there have been a.s strange partnerships in the past, -HHFfy’.vears ago the pulpits of the Southern States of America were resounding with heated denounciations of the “cursed Abolitionists” who sought to overthrow the “divine institution” of slavery. Then as now, Doctors of Divinity brought Holy Writ to prove that the reformers were fanatical outcasts seeking to subvert the laws both of God and man.

Men of culture and blameness life were in alliance with the ruffians of the slave-pens, the Degrees of the plantations, to uphold an institution now universally condemned in every civilised land. ' It may be thought

strange that the Bible, the revelation of God’s will, the recognised guide to a godly life, should bo so worded as to lend itself in the hands of clever, earnest and well-meaning men to the support of the most opposite views of matters on which we might expect it perfectly unraistakeable proriouncoment.

Professor Salmond affords a notable instance. He finds nowhere in the Scriptures that the use of intoxicants (short of drunkenness) is condemned. Therefore it is wrong to legislate against it. But we find him, in his now notorious pamphlet, approving of anti-gambling legislation because gambling is immoral. Where does ho find direct Scriptural warrant for destroying the trade of the bookmaker whilst retaining that of the publican? The fact of course is that the Bible was never intended for a cut and dried code of regulations for every phase of life presented throughout the ages by varied civilisations and changing social conditions. Its intelligent study affords the finest groundwork for character and establishes general pi inciples of conduct that will never bo out of date, but for the application of principle to the questions of the day wo have to trust to conscience as the arbiter with our faculties of ol>servation and reasoning powers as advocates pro and con. Jho more the people use these faculties and powers the stronger will the verdict of conscience be against the continuance of the liquor trade.*