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that in the case of the habitual moderate use of al
cohol these cells become more or less seriously im
paired, while ill the case of the so-called “excess
ive” use of it some cells go into permanent degen
eracy and finally become totally destroyed; that
■when a cell becomes w T holly destroyed no power can
be invoked to replace it by a normal cell. It is
gone forever! If that is not a serious statement,
then tell us what a serious statement is. I confess
that before men begin to tinker legislatively with
the liquor problem it would be well for them to
learn a thing or two about what alcohol does to the
brain.
Now one cannot go on impairing the brain cells
continuously* like that without finally and seriously
impairing the mental faculties which reside in the
cells. At this point we cross over the line from the
physiology to the psychology of this question to deal
with the action of alcohol upon the mental facul
ties.
Dr. Charles Richet, of France, one of the best
authorities in the world on the psychological action
of alcohol, says in substance what other authorities
confirm, that alcohol taken continuously in
Very small doses depresses the higher faculties
such as the judgment, conscience, reflection and
will, and by as much as the controlling faculties be
come depressed, the lower or animal faculties run
riot in the man’s body, so that under the contin
uous habit of drink, he comes to act more and more
under his impulses and less and less under his judg
ment, conscience and will.
The nature of alcohol unbalancing the guiding
faculties of the man and unduly awakening his emo
tional nature accounts for the fact that there are
more moderate drinkers in the penal institutions of
this country who have committed crime under the
impulse of liquor than there are of habitual drunk
ards who have committed offenses while drunk. In
the State of Massachusetts there are 24,000 men in
• its penal institutions who have committed crime un
der the influence of liquor, 4,000 of the 24,000 are
registered as habitual drunkards, while 20,000 are
registered as moderate drinkers. How does a mod
erate drinker commit a crime while not drunk?
Here is the picture: A man takes a drink of his
favorite beverage in the morning of a day and starts
down town for his place of business. On his way
down he discovers something wrong on the dividing
line of his property and that of his neighbor. Ordi
narily he would give it no thought, much less say a
word about it, but now with his imagination in
flated, he magnifies the little thing out of due pro
portions. It appears to him to be a great offense.
With depressed judgment he does not reason prop
erly about it, with a weakened will-power he loses
self-control, and with an over-excited emotional na
ture he has got to say something about it, and so
speaks out a bad word which calls for another bad
word from his neighbor, when they get into a war
of words which leads to a personal encounter with
his neighbor, for which he is tried and sentenced
to a term in the penitentiary. Was he drunk? No,
sir, but he had been drinking, and on the impulse of
the moment he committed a crime.
Now who pays the taxes to support these penal
institutions in behalf of moderate drinkers? You
and I, but I pay my tax for such purpose under
protest. Why under protest? Because I do not
believe in moderate drinking. Why do I not believe
in moderate drinking? Because it is outright and
downright unscientific. The advanced scholarship
of the world today proclaims total abstinence as
the only temperance. Just here is where the battle
is raging today. The opposing forces are insisting
that moderate drinking is all right, and only the
“excess” is wrong. The brewers are putting for
ward beer as a temperance drink. They are all unit
ing in demanding a reformation of the saloon in the
interest of beer, wine and moderation. Thousands
upon thousands of good men are being caught in this
trap, and unless otherwise enlightened will be de
ceived into voting for license and regulation as op
posed to prohibition on the supposition that the
moderate use of the “stuff” is all right, and prohi
bition is all wrong. The root of the evil does not
lie exclusively in the abuses connected with the sa
loon —but primarily in the nature of alcohol sold
over its counter,
The Golden Age for May 28, 1908.
Moral Tone Impaired.
The first faculty which Shows depression under
the moderate and continued use of alcohol is the
spiritual faculty. This is for the reason that this
faculty is the most highly organized and sensitive
of all the faculties of the human mind, according to
a well established principle that the latest faculty
produced in the evolution of mind is the first to suf
fer impairment by any narcotic drug.
Let me illustrate: Place the blade of a jack-knife
and the blade of a razor side by side, then draw a
file evenly and impartially across the two edges
and yon will find that the razor edge being the keen
est and most sensitive will be the first to be impaired
arid will be most seriously injured. The spiritual
faculty has the razor edge and consequently is the
first to be impaired by alcohol Us a narcotic irri
tant drug.
What is the spiritual faculty ? It is the open win
dow through which a man is able to see God, ap
prehend Him, understand Him, love, fear, and wor
ship Him, and the open door through which God
can enter his soul and make him a child of heaven.
Alcohol it is that first of all pulls the blinds of that
window and shuts the door of hope. The drinking
man -sees God in more and more distorted views,
understands Him less and less, feels less his account
ability to his Maker, cares less for his eternal fu
ture, thinks more about time and things of sense,
and as he goes on drinking and increasing the drink
he turns away from God —his back toward heaven
and goes out and down, slipping, stumbling, falling,
sliding, pitching at last into the pit itself! There
is a scientific reason why the drunkard is shut out
of heaven. There may be other reasons, but there
is certainly a scientific one. For by as much as the
spiritual faculty becomes a closed door by so much
does it become difficult for God to gain entrance
into his soul and life, and he who shuts God out of
his soul shuts the door of heaven against himself,
and he who shuts himself out of heaven shuts him
self up in that other place. The blunting of this
faculty at once lowers the whole moral tone of the
man, and the entire family of faculties is carried
down proportionately. The man is less fitted to
serve himself, his family, his business, his country.
Multiply this man into one hundred or five hun
dred drinking men in the same community and you
will have lowered the moral, social, domestic and
political life of the whole community. They will
hold a balance of power; they will set the pace for
others to follow; they will establish low moral
standards; will begin to call evil good, and good
evil; will apologize for social drinking customs, for
breaches of virtue, for corruption in politics, for
violations of law, and, finally will demand less strin
gent legislation on the liquor question to suit the
habits and appetites of the drinker; while on the
other hand, they will denounce total abstinence and
prohibition as double and twisted cranks, fanatics,
freaks, extremists, and impracticable men.
Ministers Must Not Keep Silent.
Alcohol thus defeats the message of the minister
and the mission of the church in saving lost men.
This being true, the first man of all men to denounce
the drink habit and traffic is the minister of the gos
pel. No man called of God to preach the gospel has
any right to tolerate the liquor traffic, apologize for
it, or be indifferent toward it, nor toward the
social drinking customs of the day. He is logically
obliged to damn the drink that damns the man;
more than that, he must damn the saloon that sells
the drink that damns the man; more than that,
he must damn the law that legalizes the saloon to
sell the drink that damns the man; even more than
that, he must damn the vote that makes the law
that legalizes the saloon to sell the drink that damns
the man. He has no option, he must defend the
purposes of God in saving lost men. And that is
preaching the gospel.
The same logic makes it the duty of the church
to lead the forces of citizenship in the effort to
overthrow the saloon.
The permanent Committee on Temperance of the
Presbyterian Church, U. S. A., put itself on record
in the following statement endorsed by the General
Assembly in 1906: “The church that is not at war
with the saloon is untrue to Jesus Christ.” Then
• • • •
gave as a reason, in substance, that it is the mis-
sion of the church to save lost men; it is the na
ture of the saloon through its sale of liquor to damn
lost men. The two do not work together. They are
unchangeably at war with each other.
The time has been when a man could support the
preaching of the gospel with his money and then
go out and drink his beer, wine or toddy, and vote
the ticket “wet” on the principle of regulation,
and do it logically. When was that? About 50
years ago and more when it was generally supposed
that alcohol was a food, a stimulant and a tonic, but
he cannot do it today. Why not? Because alcohol
is not a food, nor a stimulant, nor a tonic. It is a
narcotic poison which likes the brain the best and
which first of all blunts the spiritual vision of tne
man who uses it defeating the purposes of God and
the mission of ihe church in saving lost men. The
time has come for every man who has professed the
name of Christ to give up his drink and to vote
the ticket “dry.”
Traffic Cannot Be Regulated.
Just because it is the nature of alcohol to unbal
ance men’s minds and lead to the commitment of
crimes and to their spiritual degradation, the traf
fic can never be regulated so as to prevent harm
being done. In other words, you cannot regulate
the nature of a thing out of that thing. You can
regulate food values acording to quantity. You
can regulate the sale of good eggs so that too many
may not be sold to one man, resulting in preventing
a possible accident. But you cannot regulate the
sale of bad eggs so as to make them safe or decent
to sell over any counter.
Fifty years ago alcohol was supposedly the good
egg; then we called it a food. Then we began the
policy of regulating its sale to prevent abuse which
was good logic in those days; but in the light of
modern science, alcohol is the bad egg. You can
no more regulate the badness out of alcohol and
make it safe to be sold over a counter for bever
age purposes than you can regulate the chicken
quality out of a bad egg and make it a decent arti
cle for commercial purposes.
All regulation schemes like taxation date back to
the time, about fifty years ago, when we were call
ing alcohol a liquid food, and when it was quite
proper for us to regulate it as a food value. But
now in the light of the later science, alcohol not
being a food but a narcotic, protoplasmic, brain
poison, a decent respect for intelligence and honesty
requires us to level our legislation up to date and
dispose of alcohol as we do of other like drugs. Li
cense as a legislative principle is therefore wrong,
scientifically wrong, therefore morally wrong, and
what is scientifically and morally wrong cannot be
made politically right or expedient. A vote there
fore for license is SIN spelled in capital letters,
the same as though it were a case of cocaine. The
Board of Bishops of the Methodist Church, North,
pronounced it so nearly tw T enty-five years ago. On
the other hand, prohibition as a legislative principle
is right, scientifically right, morally right, therefore
politically and eternally right.
The Mission Girl.
(Continued from Page 2.)
sofa, upholstered in dark blue velvet, in one corner,
piled high with rainbow pillows of silk. A copy of
Watts’ famous picture of “Una and the Red Cross
Knight” adorned the mantel. The spiritual beau
ties of this masterpiece, it has been said, reflect the
inner soul life of the great mystic. Certainly,
there was a deathless charm about the faces of the
Knight and Una, in which the animals they rode
and the landscape back of them, shared. It was
Art; Art at its best; Art with an immortal message.
Sylvia sat down in a wicker rocking chair and
picked up a new magazine from the center table.
“Why should I care for Reece Redmond’s
opinion?” she said to herself in the silence, as she
turned the leaves of her magazine. “He is only
one man.”
But she soon discovered that she could not read,
and, turning the gas down, she raised one of the
side windows, and kneeling in the moonlight, she
gave herself up to the continuation of the dream
which the violin had interpreted, but had not
finished.
(To be Continued.)
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