Select Temperance Tracts

by American Tract Society

I would not apply these remarks in their unqualified severity to every professor of religion who supplies the distillery with materials, or who vends or uses wine or ardent spirits; for we shall find some of this description who really suppose that, instead of being condemned for such conduct in the Bible, they are rather supported by some parts of it: they not only find Christ converting water into wine at a marriage, and Paul directing Timothy to use a little wine for his health, but that, in one case, the Jews had liberty to convert a certain tithe into money, and bring it to Jerusalem and bestow it for what their soul lusted after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or strong drink, and they were to eat there before the Lord their God, and rejoice, they and their household. Deut. 14:26. But before any one settles down into a conclusion that this passage warrants the use of wine and ardent spirits, in our age and country, let him consider that there may have been, as there doubtless were, peculiar reasons, under the Levitical dispensation, for permitting the Jews to partake of what their soul desired before the Lord, which would not apply to mankind generally; as was the case in respect to several other things. But not to urge this point, I would say, further, that the fact that Judea was a wine country, that is, a country where the grape for the manufacture of wine was easily and abundantly raised, puts a different aspect upon this permission. In our country, the apple takes the place of the grape, and our cider is nearer equivalent to the wine of Judea; because there the apple does not flourish, and here, the grape cannot be extensively cultivated. To use wine in wine countries, therefore, is essentially the same thing as to use cider in cider countries; and it does not appear that the one, in such cases, is much more productive of intemperance than the other. The fact is, the wines used in countries where they are manufactured, contain but little more then half as much alcohol as most of the wine sold in this country, where, as a very respectable authority states, “for every gallon of pure wine which is sold, there is perhaps a pipe, or fifty times the quantity of that, which is adulterated, and in various manners sophisticated—the whole, without exception, the source of a thousand disorders, and in many instances an active poison, imperfectly disguised.”

But after all, I am not obliged, in this place, to prove that God has forbidden the use of wine, though led into this digression from the desire to correct a general misapprehension of the Scriptures on this subject; for the inquiry now relates to ardent spirits. And what shall we say concerning the permission, above pointed out, for the Jews to use strong drink? I say, it was merely a permission to use wine; for the strong drink several times mentioned in the Bible was, in fact, nothing more than a particular kind of wine, made of dates and various sorts of seeds and roots, and called strong drink, merely to distinguish it from the wine made from grapes. Nor is there any evidence that it was in fact any stronger, in its intoxicating qualities, than common wine. The truth is, ardent spirits were not known until many centuries after Christ: not until the art of distillation was discovered, which was not certainly earlier than the dark ages. Not a word, therefore, is said in the Bible concerning distilled spirits. All its powerful descriptions of drunkenness, and awful denunciations against it, were founded upon the abuse men made of wine. How much louder its notes of remonstrance and terror would have risen, had distillation thus early taught men how to concentrate the poison, may be imagined by the reader.

After these statements, I trust none of those whom I address will any longer resort to the Bible for proofs of a divine permission to manufacture or use ardent spirits. But do the principles of the Bible condemn such use and manufacture?

What do you think of the golden rule of doing unto others as we would they should do unto us? Should you suppose your neighbors were conducting towards you according to this rule, were they unnecessarily to pursue such a business, or to set such an example as would inevitably lead any of your children or friends into confirmed drunkenness? If not, then how can you, consistently with this rule, distil, use, or furnish materials for the manufacture of ardent spirits, when you thereby, directly or indirectly, render intemperate from two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand of your fellow-citizens, and every year also raise up new recruits enough to supply the dreadful ravages which death makes in this army? This you are certainly doing; for were your distilleries to stop, and you to stop drinking, few would become drunkards, from want of the means.

How would you like to have your neighbors one after another break down your fences, and turn their cattle into your corn-fields, cut down your fruit and ornamental trees, set your house or barn on fire, and threaten you with poverty and slavery? If you would not have your neighbor do thus to you, provided he had the power, then how can you, by preparing the food for intemperance, subject the property, the peace, the morality, the religion, and the liberties of your country to those dangers and fearful depredations which you are now inflicting upon her?

How would you like to have your neighbors, directly or indirectly, but unnecessarily, cause the premature death of every fortieth of your children and friends, and of one in three of those above the age of twenty? I know you would not that they should do thus to you, and yet your manufacture of spirits causes the premature death of five hundred of your fellow-citizens every week; in other words, about that number die every week through the intemperance produced by your distilleries.

Again, I ask the men whom I am addressing, how they reconcile their manufacture and sale of spirits with another command of the Bible? Woe unto him that giveth his neighbor drink, that puttest thy bottle to him, and makest him drunken also, that thou mayest look on their nakedness. True, this applies most emphatically to the retailer of spirits: but what could the retailer do if there were no distillery; and what could the distiller do if the farmer withheld the materials? All these men are engaged, directly or indirectly, in giving their neighbors drink; and though it may pass through many hands before it reaches all their mouths, yet where must the burden of the guilt rest, if not upon those who stand at the head of the series, and first convert the articles which God has given to nourish and sustain life into active poison for its destruction; and then, for the sake of a paltry pecuniary profit, send it round amongst their neighbors, accompanied with all the plagues that issued from the fabled Pandora’s box?

Finally, let me ask these men how the business of preparing ardent spirits for the community appears to them when they think most seriously of another world? In the hours of sober reflection, on the Sabbath, during seasons of devotion, when sickness overtakes you, and death seems near, or you stand by the dying-bed of some one of your family or neighbors; at such seasons can you look back upon this pursuit with pleasure? If conscience then tells you that this business ought to be given up, Oh remember, that conscience is an honest and faithful friend at such times, and that, as this pursuit then appears to you, so will it appear when you come actually to die. Test this business, I beseech you, by bringing it in imagination to the scrutiny of your dying hour. Whether it be lawful or unlawful, certain it is that it sends five hundred drunkards into eternity every week; and you have the express testimony of the Bible, that no drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God. As the Bible is true, then, are not the manufacturers of ardent spirits in our land the means of sending five hundred souls to hell every week? Tell me, my friends, how will this awful truth appear to you on the bed of death? And how does it appear when you look forward to the final judgment, and realize that you must meet there fifty or an hundred, or five hundred times five hundred drunkards, made such through your instrumentality, for one, or two, or ten years, and must there justify yourselves for this instrumentality, or go away with them into perdition, covered with their blood and followed by their execrations?

Oh, my friends, these are realities; and they are near. Do you begin to doubt whether you are in the path of duty? Listen, I beseech you, to the first whispers of the faithful monitor in your bosom.