The spoil of the poor is in your houses. What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor ? saith the Lord God of Hosts.—Isaiah iii., 14, 15.

The ravages of strong drink are, in one sense, a very familiar subject; but in another they are to most of us a sealed book. There are certain great truths of which Coleridge speaks as "lying bedridden in the dormitories of the soul"—truths, that is, too obvious to be disputed, but grown powerless from neglect and want of exercise, and commanding on occasion a vague and abstract recognition instead of a constant and practical homage. Upon the aspect of the drink problem which even for the most thoughtless has almost the air of an axiomatic truth—I mean its magnitude and urgency—I shall have very little to say to-night and nothing that is new, and what 1 shall say will be entirely directed towards a more disregarded aspect of the question, namely, the responsibility of the individual Christian in the matter of this gigantic evil, and especially in relation to those who are less able to protect themselves than he is. My endeavour will be to galvanize into activity this belief in the enormity of the evil which in some souls is but a bedridden truth, and to convert it into a vital power for the guidance of conduct. I shall speak from the Christian standpoint, and as the subject is important and I do not wish to be misunderstood, I shall speak as plainly as possible.

Crime, Pauperism, Death.

A very brief summary of the kind of evidence obtainable must suffice for a reminder of the mischiefs wrought by strong drink. In England, Scotland, Ireland, America and in these colonies, judges have agreed in branding it from the bench as the most prolific source of crime, their estimates of the proportion to be ascribed to it varying from the 90 per cent. of Lord Coleridge, the late Chief Justice of England, and scores of others, to the two-thirds which is our own Chief Justice's estimate for this Colony. page 213 Inside the prisons this testimony has been confirmed by jailers and prison chaplains: "80 per cent. of the men who have passed through my hands would not have come there but for the drink," was the opinion recently expressed by the keeper of the Wellington Gaol. A similar tale is told by philanthropists and city missionaries of the wrecks and outcasts among whom they have worked. "Nine-tenths of our poverty, squalor, vice and crime spring from this poisonous tap-root," says General Booth. 99 per cent. was Dr. Guthrie's calculation of the proportion of destitute children who owed their destitution to drink; and Dr. Barnardo, who at first thought the statement a gross exaggeration, arrived at a minimum of 90 per cent., and became a total abstainer in consequence. In New Zealand a Benevolent Trustee of large experience in this City, and the head of a Charitable Institution in Chrisichurch, have both debited liquor with 90 per cent. of the cases that have come before them. This proportion gives us 1400 as the number of "neglected and criminal" children in our industrial schools at the end of 1893 through the drinking habits of their parents, and 150 as the number added by that cause in 1894. To anyone with a sense for the value of home life and the sacredness of childhood—in other words, for the worth of a human soul and its infinite aptitudes for good or for evil which are involuntarily shaped by early impressions and associations—statistics of this class tell a more tragic tale than any form of adult suffering. As to the death rate, the highest authority on inebriety in England, Dr. Norman Kerr, who took up the matter some years ago with the avowed object of upsetting the extravagant estimate which ascribed 60,000 deaths in the United Kingdom annually to this cause, came to the conclusion that 120,000—about four times the entire population of Wellington—was nearer the truth. Another high authority places the number as high as 200,000. In our own little Colony the number has been estimated at 1000. The data are somewhat uncertain, and I have not been able to check the calculation, but it does not appear to me excessive, and is less than half the English rate.^* Consider it for a moment—1000 deaths from drink every year in this sparsely populated country, 20 every week; 20 have gone since page 214 our last Sunday service; 20 more will go before the church bells ring again, or shall I say before the wine goes round again at the Christian's Sunday dinner ?

Labour's Worst Enemy.

On the economic aspect of the question a very few words must suffice. We spend, after deducting what goes to revenue, about £1,500,000 annually on drink; and probably another £1,000,000 to remedy the effects of this expenditure already described. For a country financially embarrassed the expenditure is doubly shocking. Putting moral considerations altogether aside, the traffic in strong drink is, economically speaking, the most wasteful of all industries, and the most damaging to the poorer classes. Of £l spent on clothes, the workmen employed get 16s.; if spent on shoes, they get 14s.; if spent on liquor, they get 6d. In addition to this the industry turns to waste grain that might otherwise have gone to fill the mouths of the hungry; £130,000 worth of grain was wasted in New Zealand last year in this way on brewing alone—our whisky we fortunately do not manufacture. Father Mathew realised the truth in Ireland in famine time, and hence he said: "The man or woman who drinks, drinks the food of the starving. Is not that man or woman a monster who drinks the food of the starving?" Professor Mayor, the distinguished Cambridge classic, realised it too, and turned teetotaller for no other reason.^* The traffic is thus a triple curse to the poor:—It puts temptations in their way which they are less able to resist than those in more comfortable surroundings; it absorbs capital which would otherwise give them twenty times as much in wages; it absorbs material which would otherwise give them food.

Some Expert Opinions.

To this bald summary let me add the statement of a distinguished physician (Sir William Gull) that "alcohol is the most destructive agent that we are aware of in this country" (i.e. England); and that of a distinguished Irish Judge (Baron Dowse) that " the quantity of alcohol consumed in a district is the measure of its degradation;" and these three opinions of high authorities as to the estimated or observed effects of its removal:—

(1)	General Booth : "Many of our social evils, which overshadow the page 215 land like so many upas trees, would dwindle away and die if they were not constantly watered with strong drink."
(2)	Mr. Joseph Chamberlain: "If I could destroy the desire for strong drink in the people of England, what changes should we see ? We should see our taxes removed by millions sterling ! We should see our gaols and workhouses empty! We should see more lives saved in twelve months than are consumed in a century of bitter and savage war."
(3)	And of a fairly successful attempt to exterminate the enemy, the Chief Justice of Kansas says: "Prohibition drove out the robber and despoiler of the poor. . . . . The State will most certainly maintain that law which, whatever it may be to the rich, is the salvation of the poor."

Who is Responsible ?

Such then being the evil, the question arises—What is the cause ? The answer is the strength of alcoholic temptation and the weakness of human nature; and the superficial observer is, therefore, apt to place the responsibility on the drink-seller who holds out the temptation, and the drunkard who succumbs. But this is like blaming the flame and the fuel for the fire. What we want to know is, who set the fire alight ? and who keeps it burning ? In other words, who permits and encourages the drink-seller to perform the function of tempter ? The State does this by giving the drinkseller leave to sell; but it does not do this for his own sake. For whose, then ? Not for the drunkard's, for the State disapproves of drunkards; not for the teetotaller's, for the teetotaller disapproves of drink; but for the sake of the moderate drinker, whose reasonable requirements the State desires to satisfy. It is on account of the moderate drinker that the liquor traffic is tolerated and licensed. And if there were no moderate drinkers? Then there would be no liquor traffic. And if there were no liquor traffic? Then that terrible catalogue of evils which I have merely glanced at would be swept away, that utopian prophecy of Mr. Cham berlain's would be realised, and more would have been achieved for human happiness and virtue than by the combined labours of statesmen and philanthropists for the last 100 years. If, then, we ask again—Who is ultimately responsible for the greatest scourge of modern civilization, who is responsible for the ruthless waste of human life and character, for the impoverishment and degradation of the poor, for the sorrows of the fatherless and the widow, the shivering and the starving ? Our answer can only be (unpleasant as it may be to say it):—Stand forth, O moderate drinker, for thou art the man !

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.

Timothy's Stomach.

Coming to the scriptural argument, we note that at the best the moderate drinker may find here a pretext for his indulgence; he cannot profess to find it enjoined as a duty. St. Paul's recommendation to Timothy is his great stand-by :—"Drink no longer water, but use a little wine for thy stomach's sake and thine often infirmities." It has been acutely pointed out that this can be no more binding upon us than St. Paul's direction to the same correspondent to fetch his cloak from Troas (2 Tim. IV., 13)—a task which I have not yet heard of the most conscientious drinker endeavouring to carry out. It is also worth observing that just three verses ahead of the words we are considering is one of those texts which less than forty years ago were being used to thwart the crusade for the freedom of the American slave. We recognise now that in so doing the worshippers of the letter were pressing the word of God into the service of the devil. Let the same class of worshippers beware lest they are rendering the devil a similar service now. They admit that the apostolic precepts with regard to slavery do not justify page 217 the institution in the changed conditions of our time; they are satisfied that if they had lived in the Southern States a generation ago they would not have sided with the slave-holders, or been "partakers in the blood of the prophets;" but they forget that it is always easy to wax heroic over the abuses of the past, and that it is only in defence of the abuses of the present that it is ever worth while to wrest the word of God. Vested interests, greed for gain, want of imagination, subservience to custom, prejudice, laziness, selfishness, indifference, and a deference to the letter of scripture, some times interested and hypocritical, sometimes sincere but narrow—these formed the alliance for the maintenance of American slavery. The crusaders in every land for the abolition of the more poisonous tyranny of the liquor traffic find precisely the same forces arrayed against them.

If, dismissing these considerations, we come to close quarters with the text, we at once perceive that the quality and strength of the wine prescribed for Timothy and the precise nature of his infirmities are not on record. But his complaint seems to have a very wide vogue among conscientious students of the scriptures whose health would otherwise appear to be sufficiently robust. And too often they seek to carry out the prescription by the consumption of liquors of a strength undreamed of in St. Paul's day, and with a disregard to the two elements in it which have an approach to definiteness—"a little wine for thy stomach's sake." The quantity is to be small, and sickness the occasion; "for thy stomach's sake" and not for thy palate's. If the prescription had been preserved for us. I should still have declined to accept St. Paul's authority in these days on a point of medical science; but the whole matter is fortunately left by him in so vague a position that the question of his medical inspiration does not arise,^* and we can only hand over the Timothys of our own age to the doctors to deal with. Much as we sympathise, we cannot treat their sad infirmities as an excuse for a general indulgence, or for putting stumbling-blocks before the people in violation of the whole spirit of St. Paul's teaching. And if our doctors, instead of pandering to their patients' tastes, will only take the trouble to make their alcoholic prescriptions as unpalatable as their other doses, I have little fear that the cult of Timothy will long maintain such proportions as to constitute a serious trouble to the profession or a serious danger to the State.

The Cana Miracle.

But in the Cana miracle it is claimed that we have the direct authority of Christ for the indulgence in strong drink. It is right for me to say that I do not make a fetish of the Bible, that the miracles are to me a wholly non-essential part of it, and that, as my reason compels me to reject them all, I have no especial difficulty here. Upon the general question I will merely make this passing observation, that the insistence upon miracles* by so many Christian teachers as being of the essence of the faith appears to me responsible for more of the scepticism of the day than all that the so-called "freethinkers" could by their own efforts have achieved. But I wish reverently to consider the supposed moral of this story of the wedding-feast from the point of view of those who prize it, if that be possible, as highly as the Sermon on the Mount. Christ, we are told, turned water into wine; therefore, we are justified in drinking wine to day. The inference is absurd. If there be any orthodox believer who has maintained that the manufacture or consumption of alcohol, in any strength or in any quantity, at any place or at any time, for any purpose or under any conditions, is in itself a wrong, to such a man this miracle is a conclusive answer. But so ridiculous a creature I have never yet met or seen, nor ever heard of except in the vain imaginings of hostile critics. Neither of alcohol nor of anything else could such a sweeping proposition be rationally maintained.^* It is all a matter of time, place, and circumstance. More particularly we may answer:—(1) If there was a power present to convert water into wine, there was also a power present to prevent consumption running to excess, even though renewed at the end of a feast. Even in these days we should raise no objection to alcoholic temptations if there were an omnipotent power at hand to ward off their evil effects. For the faithful, with the Master at hand, the sea of Galilee was as safe a place to walk on as the streets of Capernaum, but if in these days and without that help we have to travel over lake or ocean, we prefer a steamer's deck. Yet Peter's example might as well be quoted to us in the one case as the precedent of Cana in the other.^† (2) But the safe and solid answer is this:—Alcohol is admittedly the deadliest scourge of civilization to-day. Was it so in Christ's day ? Then the Good

^* "People imagine that the place which the Bible holds in the world, it owes to miracles. It owes it simply to the fact that it came out of a profounder depth of thought than any other book."—Emerson, quoted by Rev. Heber Newton, Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible, p. 54.

^† The substance of this argument I owe to Dr. Dawson Burns. Its weakness is that nothing was said or done at the feast to limit the application of the miracle in the manner suggested, and that in the absence of any such caution it would naturally be taken as sanctioning the general use of wine.

page 219 Shepherd made peace with the most ravenous enemy of his flock. Was it not so in Christ's day ? Then his attitude affords no argument for us. The former supposition is both blasphemous and historically false; the latter is the truth, and the inference satisfies both conscience and common sense, viz., that we are not discharged from our warfare against the greatest destroyer of our race because its Saviour did not sound the war-note while the enemy still slept.^*

The Spirit of the Gospel.

But what is this I say ? Did Christ not sound the war-note ? Let us turn from the anise and cummin of these doubtful disputations to the weightier matters of the scripture, and see what its teaching really is. The Gospel is not a code; the New Testament is not a Koran; Jesus is not a Mohammed. The Gospel does not prescribe for us what we are to touch, taste and handle, nor what we are to leave alone; looking beyond the letter of formal observances, it prescribes the spirit in which all things are to be done—"whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Never did Christ assume a tone of more terrible severity than when denouncing the formalism and pedantry of the Pharisees with their rigid attention to the letter, and their neglect of the spirit; and it was in replying to them that he laid down for all time the ideal of true religion :—"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." Well would it have been for the Christian Church and for the world if this simple creed had not been encumbered with a load of extraneous page 220 dogmas to be wrangled over too often with a sectarian bitterness and a quibbling refinement in which the Pharisees themselves were not seldom out-phariseed.

So many gods, so many creeds,
So many paths that wind and wind,
When just the art of being kind
Is all the sad world needs.

Doctrine has been defined as "the skin of truth set up and stuffed," but the definition is a good deal too complimentary for some of the metamorphoses which Christ's teaching has undergone at the hands of Christian Churches. The skin has been first turned inside out, and then, lest this disguise should be insufficient, it has been further ornamented into an absolutely irrecognisable mosaic by the profuse addition of patches from the skins of all manner of unclean beasts. Fortunately the process is being reversed in our time, and the Churches are rapidly retracing their steps to the Christ of the Gospels.

If I were to cite to you all the passages in which, by word or deed, Christ has illustrated his religious ideal, I should have to read through half the Gospels. For our present purpose an all-sufficient commentary upon it is the parable of the Good Samaritan which follows it in St. Luke's Gospel. By this parable the meaning of neighbour is extended to include all whom we are capable of influencing for good or ill. We are to deny ourselves and follow Christ in serving these. What clearer mandate could the Christian desire to determine his attitude to the great robber and destroyer of his race? Thousands, even in our small colony, are being robbed every year of property, happiness, character and life by this awful curse. Are we going to play the Levite and pass by on the other side? Whether wittingly or not, I fail to see how we can do so without denying Christ, nor how we can make terms with the robber when these words of his are ringing in our ears :—"Woe unto the world because of occasions of stumbling! For it must needs be that the occasions come; but woe to that man through whom the occasion cometh!" I do not know to whom this woe is more directly applicable than to the moderate drinker, whose well-regulated appetite necessitates the opening of sources of temptation in which the weak and the vicious must inevitably be consumed like moths in a flame, and to all who assist or countenance him in the indulgence of that appetite at so terrible a cost.

The greatest of Christ's followers did not fall away from his Master's teaching, and in the epistles of Paul we have the great ideas of Christ—the love of God, the love of man, and the sacrifice of self in their service—set forth in exactly Christ's spirit. Turn to the 8th and 13th chapters of 1 Cor., page 221 or to Rom. xiv., and consider how much of Christianity could have been constructed from them alone. Our responsibilities towards our neighbours are especially dealt with in those chapters—the oneness of man, the limits which our regard for others must put to the exercise of our own rights, the omnipotence of love. In two verses especially the particular subject we are now considering is touched with such preciseness that one wonders how the blindest can overlook it, or the most sophistical explain it away:—

Rom. xiv., 21—"It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor anything whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak."

1 Cor. viii-, 13—"Wherefore, if moat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend."

Profession and Practice.

Now of penance as penance the Christianity of Christ knows nothing, but self-denial for the sake of others is its very breath and being. Where- page 222 fore do those who enjoin self-denial for the sake of others, perform no such self-denial themselves ? Yet even so the question states too much, for my perplexity is heightened by the fact that many true-hearted Christians exercise in other respects a self-denial worthy of their high calling, but decline to make this tiny sacrifice—a sacrifice which would cost them so little, and which would be such a boon to the world. I should not attempt to pin any man to the letter of the two last texts I have quoted if they contained anything hyberbolical, or local, or isolated. St. Paul was a superb rhetorician, and his hyberboles are sometimes beyond me. And even with Christ himself the necessary allowance to be made for the more complicated conditions of modern life, or for the use of metaphor, or even for the misunderstandings of hearers and reporters, occasionally makes a literal application of his precepts impossible for us. But in these words of Paul I see nothing that is transitory, nothing that is impossible, nothing that is not of the very quintessence of Christianity and a simple application to a particular matter of Christ's express teaching, which must otherwise of itself have led us to the same conclusion. A German commentator sums up that 8th chapter (1 Cor.) thus:—"The strong sought the solution of the question from the standpoint of knowledge and its rights; the apostle finds it from the standpoint of love and its obligations." There surely you have the true spirit of Christ, and it is through that spirit, if I mistake not, that the only solution of this great liquor question is to be found.

Nor does the liquor question stand alone in this respect. All the other great problems of society are in precisely the same position. The Individualism which is only another name for selfishness, and which in defence of its own comforts misapplies to the spiritual world immoral catchwords about "the struggle for existence" and "the survival of the fittest" which have but a limited scope even in the world of nature; the Socialism which has for its leading idea of sacrifice the sacrifice of others, and seeks from the mere mechanics of State action a social millennium which must mainly depend upon a change in the spirit of the individual—these contending falsehoods and their respective broods of subsidiary quackeries really rest, for all their seeming difference, upon the same fundamental fallacy, which it was the mission of Mazzini, the most prophet-like figure in modern politics, to expose. They all take for their basis the rights instead of the duties of man. And they must all be sent back to Christ to be made clean.

A. E. Atkinson.

(To be continued.)