The Moderate Drinker's Pleas.

Beyond all question this is a terrible charge to bring against a class of men and women in a Christian community who are, for the most part, quiet, respectable and well-meaning; and it will be proper to examine their position and their defence somewhat narrowly. What is their justification for an indulgence which is purchased at the price of such cruel suffering to thousands of their fellows? Their pleas are mainly four:—1st, That science requires the use of alcohol; 2nd, That scripture justifies it; 3rd, That they like it; 4th, That if others acted as reasonably as the moderate drinker there would be no trouble, and if they don't, the fault is their own. The first two, I fear, are merely pretexts to cover the shameless nakedness of the other two; and No. 3 is really the key of the position. But let us examine each in turn.

That science, and even medical science, may require the aid of alcohol is no excuse for its habitual use, or for its promiscuous sale as a beverage. There are many dangerous explosives and deadly poisons of the highest service to science, but their sale is hedged in with the strictest precautions, lest the blessing should prove a curse by indiscriminate use. Let alcohol as "the most destructive agent of which we are aware "be guarded in the same way, and, when required in medicine, administered on a medical prescription. Such an employment of it, so far from being interfered with, will be rendered more efficacious, by its discontinuance as a beverage.