We know of nothing higher than the word of God, and he whose fine feelings are shocked by Bible language, would find heaven not sufficiently æsthetic. May not such be said to count the blood of the covenant an unholy thing? When the destroyer is abroad, we shall be safe who hide behind the blood. We rejoice in the blood of sprinkling, when we believe there is wrath for the sinner. The giving God the lie, when He declares He will punish His enemies, fits the mouth of him who is too refined to speak of the precious blood of Jesus.
XXXVIII. “DO MEN GATHER GRAPES OF THORNS?”
This question was asked by a man who knew more than any one else, and he knew very well what the answer would be. We should suspect a man of insanity who looked for grapes on a thorn bush. And yet we see numbers of both men and women looking for happiness and comfort in the Public House, and judging from their appearance afterwards, we feel sure they went for grapes and found festering thorns!
It was our duty, some time ago, to be part of a deputation to support a memorial to the Magistrates at what is called “The Brewster Sessions.” There was a number of Ministers and others who represent the Temperance movement, with some ladies like-minded, and we took our places in the same court where the publicans and their friends were. Some of these had come to transfer licenses, others to seek to have in-beershops, and power to sell other kinds of drink. The Magistrates, however, refused both of the applications for new licenses, nor did we wonder, when we saw those who were waiting to be punished or pardoned, as the case might be.
In the gallery were a number of the friends of those who were waiting to have their names called upon, and then to appear in the dock. Besides these, were the usual loafers, many of whom have found, or will find work for the police, after going to seek grapes where thorns grow: and then
others, like the writer, who were on the lookout for a profitable way to spend an hour or two. It was a most instructive time, and one wonders how it is that long-headed Englishmen can, after seeing the results of visiting the publichouse, ever be persuaded that grapes are to be got there without trouble.
The mistake many good people make is looking on drinking as a failing, and not as a crime. It must be a sin for any one to make himself eligible for doing all sorts of mischief and wrong, as men do who take, as they say, “a sup of drink.” It is this sup of drink that gives them the impetus towards cruelty and lust, and we must insist upon it that for a man to prepare himself for wickedness is a sin against himself and his God. If this be so, the social element in drinking makes it all the more dangerous. Men and women drink often because it is considered a kind and hospitable thing to offer it, and an ungenerous and churlish thing to refuse it. What is this but calling a thorn a vine?
While we were in the court, several cases came before the Magistrates—“Drunk and Disorderly,” varied by obscenity and quarrelling. One woman told the Bench that she had been teetotal for five and a half years, till she came into the town to pay a debt, and then she had a glass, “and it will be twenty years before I have any more.” “Ah!” said “His Worship,”
“Listen to no Friend that wants you to take Drink.”
Another poor wretch was “Drunk and Incapable.” She told the Magistrates that she had come to get a situation, that her box was at the station. She had evidently seen better days. The Chairman said how sorry he was to see