Lectures on temperance

Preface

The Temperance Reform long since engaged sufficient learning and talent in its advocacy to rescue it from contempt. This vast agitation, which for more than a third of a century has stirred the mind and the heart of society, has evolved a literature of its own, which is more than respectable. Yet of the tens of thousands of speeches, sermons, addresses and lectures ; the editorial reports and prize essays ; the papers, tracts, pamphlets and volumes which this prolonged and arduous discussion has elicited, there are no productions on this subject which are marked with so much learning, eloquence and wisdom, as these eleven Lectures by President Xott.

The mature fruits of the orator, who, at the age of thirty, pronounced a discourse on the death of Hamilton, which has made him famous for eloquence ever 1 since — the wise and efficient President, ever since that year (1804), of Union College — the beloved and honored preceptor of fifty -three successive classes of collegians, and now a patriarch hardly less of Temperance than of education ; the mature fruits, of so gifted, so experienced, so profound, so sagacious an intellect ; the vivacity and fervor of the author's style ; the beautiful, truth-seeking spirit which marks his investigations, his tireless patience of research, his unfailing charity and candor to all opponents, his devout deference to the teachings of the Holy Scriptures, and last, but not least, his own great personal renown ; these circumstances unite to concentrate upon these Lectures a degree of interest and attention which is commanded by no other volume on this vast social reform ; a social reform, let it be added, which, more than all others combined, eniv PKEFACE.

grosses the thoughts and the feelings, the hopes and the fears, of this generation of men.

Often as we had read these Lectures before, and always with admiration, instruction and delight, we rise from the more careful and critical perusal which is necessary to those who examine the proof sheets for the press, impressed with a deeper sense of their extraordinary merit, and a larger appreciation of their power for good over the minds of i ttliers. Our own experience would lead us to urge even veteran friends of Temperance — with whom it is a common mi-take, that to them no more reading on the subject is necessary — to study anew a volume which, beyond any other ever published, either in America or Great Britain, further towards exhausting and placing on an impregnable basis, the arguments in favor of Total Abstinence from all intoxicating liquors.

Intemperance is not an evil of modern origin; nor is it the wise and good of this age alone who have addressed themselves to its cure. The physical and moral degradation with which it has cursed the world is painfully foreshadowed in the cases of Noah and Lot, as recorded in the Scriptures ; and the same solemn problem is speculated upon in the Republic of Plato. In the fourteenth chapter of the third book of that immortal work, and which the Bcholars of every age have ranked among the master-pieces of human wisdom, will be found the following sentence : " W e say, then, that they must alistn'in from drunkenness ."

Such is one of the maxims which have been familiar in all ages. But it was reserved for our own age to discover and promulgate the momentous truth which had escaped all previous sages and philosophers, that "to abstain from drunkenness," and yet to continue to drink, is for society at large a simple impossibility. That to abstain from drunkenness, men must abstain from drink, that is, intoxicating drink'. These doctrines of Total Abstinence (the legislative prohibitions of the traffic, which follow as a

al sequence, the author has not pretended to discuss)

are the great themes of these Lectures by President Nott.

iling himself of the labors of all who had written and spoken befow him, he has reduced all existing learning on the Bubjecl to a system, and with such clearness, beauty

and power, that there is no other one volume in the whole

PREFACE. V

range of Temperance literature of such permanent and standard authority. And if Temperance, as here taught, will not raise man from earth to heaven, as Socrates claimed for his philosophy, it is no small matter — nay, in a nation with half a million of drunkards, it is a very great matter — if it will raise him from the gutter of the streets, and bring him within the influences of the house of prayer ; and if, without being religion, it may thus be used to subserve the sublime and awful interests of religion, it should assuredly be urged upon the profound and attentive consideration of the pious and the good the country over.

We say, "the pious and the good.'' For it is not to be disguised, that notwithstanding all the mighty things which have been done in the way of public enlightenment on this important subject, there are not only whole classes of society, otherwise well read and intelligent, who have either forgotten or else never known the fundamental principles of Temperance, but there are very many profound Christians, many ministers of the gospel, who continue so far strangers to the ethics and the philosophy of the Temperance reform, that their own personal habits are still quoted against the suppression of the liquor traffic, and even the practice of Total Abstinence.

Besides, a new generation has grown up even in Temperance families, to whom these important and vital truths have never been seriously and systematically addressed.

The Prussians have a maxim, that whatever you would have appear in the life of a nation, you must put in its schools. The trustees of district schools, the teachers of Sabbath schools, and other guardians of the young, should be appealed to to put one or more copies of this volume in every school library in the land.

The value of this volume is much enhanced by an able and elaborate introduction by Taylor Lewis, LL. D., Professor of the Greek Language and Literature in Union College — a man who is equally eminent as an acute, original thinker, and for his profound acquisition in classical and biblical learning.

Professor Lewis has expressed especial admiration for the chart of Bible texts, in connection with wines, to be found in the appendix to the volume, and for which chart alone an eminent divine has said he would pay ten times

VI PREFACE.

the price of the whole work, rather than not have it in his possession.

E. C. Pelavan,Es(|., the distinguished President of the New-York State Temperance Society, has written a letter, in which lie speaks in such terms as these of the Lectures of Dr. Nott :

44 It is my belief that, in the proportion that this work is circulated ami read, the cause of Temperance will advance and be perpetuated.

" I would urge all ministers of the gospel, all professing Christians, all heads of families, all organized Temperance societies, all instructors in institutions of learning, from the common school up to the university, to take immediate steps to give universal circulation to this work, called, by one of our most learned and benevolent citizens, ' the book

OF BOOKS ON TEMPERANCE. 1

,l Let me urge all, in every state, county, town, village and hamlet, whether on the shores of the Atlantic or of the Pacific, or the intervening space between the two (who desire the cause of Temperance to advance), to flood the publishers with orders. A million of copies of these Lectures should be sold in this nation. If the work is successful in the English language, it will be published in the German and other languages, so that our fellow citizens from all nations and of all languages can have the benefit of the great and important truths contained in this volume."

Such is the estimation in which this work is justly held by the most eminent philanthropists of our country. The publishers have undertaken to present it to the public in a form that must be attractive, and at a price to bring it within the reach of all, and to make it convenient for associations of the friends of the cause to give it a wide circulation. It ought to find a ready entrance into every house in this and other lands.

Introduction

The following Lectures produced a very marked effect at the time they were delivered, and few works, it may fairly be believed, have done more to place the cause of temperance on elevated, rational and Scriptural grounds. The entire absence of what some are pleased to call fanaticism, or of anything that could by any possibility be brought under that odious and much abused name, the transparent candor, the cogency as well as clearness of argument, the patience of examination, the deference to the Scriptures, and at the same time that spirit of fairness which would oppose their being wrested even to serve what might be deemed the best interests of humanity, — add to these the learning, without pedantry, the science, without pretence, the calm, sound reasoning, without the imposing show of argumentation, and we have the leading characteristics that must be conceded to the work by every intelligent and fair minded reader, whatever may be his opinion on the final merits of the questions that have called it forth. If we allude to the noble style of the writer, — that easy and vigorous command of language which marked his earliest widely spread productions, rendered still more attrac-

X INTRODUCTION.

the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend* 11 "My brother! " Here is the soul of the argument, worth ten thousand rules, per se. My brother ! my weak brother ! my poor, vicious, lost, ruined brothers! brothers to me in Adam, and who may yet be brothers to me in Christ! I will abstain, for their sakes,from anything, from everything whose use in me might peril their souls, or even tempt to ways destructive of the poor measure of earthly good they might otherwise enjoy in this stage of discipline and probation. Logically, it may be summed in a sentence: May there be circumstances in which the higher Christian morality, the true transcendental ethics, would require a man to abstain from "meat" for the sake of others, how much stronger the argument now to abstain from intoxicating drinks on this principle alone, without any perplexing, ever irresolvable logomachies about "rights" or wrongs per se. Translate the Apostles' language, not the words simply, into a modern vocabulary, put the soul of the language into the corresponding thoughts that come out of the modern social condition, and we have the argument, a fortiori and a fortissimo , for entire abstinence from all those substances, whether old or new, whether simple or combined, that are now producing such appalling desolation in our modern world.

This argument is perfect. It needs no logical formulas ; for the sane mind, the sound mind, the spiritual mind, bows down before it upon the first simple presentment of its two premises, Christian love and a ruined humanity. He who is truly tern-

INTRODUCTION. XI

perate, truly sober, truly tfw^pwv, whether in the New Testament or classical usage of that beautiful word, acknowledges at once its conclusive power. Even on the lower scale of a purely secular ethics, and for minds that will ascend to no higher region, it is unanswerable. What need then, it may be said, of anything more? Why should not temperance men be satisfied with it, instead of trying to show more specific prohibitions, or looking for more literal condemnations of specific acts or substances, per se? Why not be content with the noble moral argument whose immutable spirit is the same for all ages, and capable of prompt and conclusive application to the prevalent vice or vices of any age ? They are satisfied with it, we answer, at least all reasonable friends of temperance, all who wish to place the temperance cause upon its highest ground, all who would make it a matter of principle, as the New Testament does, instead of such a mere arbitrary asceticism or superstition as is taught in the Koran. They are satisfied with this positive, clear, unanswerable, Scriptural argument for total abstinence from certain things in certain well ascertained conditions of society and the world. They are content, we say; but it is their adversaries who are not satisfied. These are the men who are for pressing the Bible into specific rules, regulative of the outward thing instead of the inward principle. They are the men who strive hard to extract from the Scriptures, not so much specific condemnations as specific commendations of what is known to be evil. They are the per se logicians.

Xll INTRODUCTION.

They would make out a rights per se 9 very much like the sin per se of others who would seem to be on the opposite extreme, and yet do actually harmonize with them in the spirit and principle of their reasoning.

Such is the condition into which perversity of feeling, rather than any logical demand of the intellect, brings the reasoning on this question, and hence the necessity, on the other side, of the second Scriptural argument, or the one we have styled the defensive. It is to wrest this weapon from their hands. It is to show that while the higher moral reasoning needs not the aid of specific denunciations of particular substances, as evil in themselves, or irrespective of their moral effects, so neither, on the other hand, must the adversary be allowed, without resistance, to maintain that any such substance is a good in itself^ or declared in Scripture to be such, in any sense that would not allow or even demand a total abstinence from it in a given social state.

The temperance advocate takes issue on this ground. He denies that wine, the intoxicating wine of almost universal modern use, is pronounced a blessing in the Scriptures, and that, therefore, abstinence from it, total abstinence, is either a contempt or a denial of a good gift of God.

Such is substantially the position taken by Dr. Nott in these Lectures. The per se ultraists on both sides are avoided. It is a calm, dignified, learned, and we think, in the main, successful argument, to show that the Bible condemns the use of certain

INTRODUCTION. XU1

substances, not per se, not from any qualities requiring the aid of science to ascertain them as such, not from ay known or unknown chemical measure of alcohol, but because, according to the knowledge of the day, they were intoxicating, and therefore had an immoral influence. The physical or scientific causes may have been, in that age, very imperfectly known, as they are now very imperfectly known. But such a view does not detract at all from the reverence due to the real inspiration. It does not at all diminish — to a right thinking mind it even enhances — the moral power. There may have been, on the part of these inspired men, ignorance, even error, as to the nature of substances they approve, as well as of substanceh they condemn. The Infinite in knowledge might have made a supernatural advance in their science, but it would still, as science, have been imperfect) still the vehicle of error, still therefore the ground of cavil. It would have removed no real difficulty; it might, it probably would, have created others still greater. But they had a higher mission. They were inspired to denounce a specific psychological or moral state supposed to be produced by certain causes. The state was known; the causation was imperfectly understood, even as it is yet imperfectly understood ; for when we say imperfectly, it is simply saying there is something more, and still something more, and that indefinitely, to be discovered about it. Liebig is farther on, but, in one sense, he is no nearer the perfect end of these things, even of these physical things, than Solomon, the wisest of Jewish

XIV INTRODUCTION.

naturalists. The bare statement of the thought is sufficient to show that an exact scientific revelation of the chemical components productive of such a psychological or moral state, would be at variance with the whole known manner in which the Infinite has chosen to- communicate with the finite mind. It might be maintained, moreover — we say it with all reverent reserve of any a priori speculations as to the reasons or modes of the Divine teaching — that such a scientific method of revelation would have defeated the great end for which a revelation is made, and is alone worthy to be made. If would have had a tendency to increase that which is now the great evil of our fallen condition, — to make the physical predominant to the obscuration of the moral, — to give power and knowledge, especially natural knowledge, a higher place in our souls than grace and goodness. Even in the ethical region, it would have given prominence to the ascetic, and the aesthetic, instead of the higher spiritual. It would have had a tendency to make men content with the letter, and thus, perhaps, as has often been exemplified in our wayward human history, have led them to every kind of device to substitute a false and carnal for a true and spiritual obedience. It would, in short, have led the mind to rest in facts, the exact knowledge of which varies with the ever changing science of different ages, instead of that moral fact which was as perfect and as clear to Jeremiah as it is now to Faraday. The moral fact in this ca the state of soul we

call intoxication. The ancients knew it as well as

INTRODUCTION. XV

we, although our experimental evidence is so much more abundant. Holy men of old were inspired to denounce this evil. The Inspiring power used their thoughts, their language, their knowledge, as the medium through which to give the denunciation clearness, force and impressiveness. It was the outward knowledge of their day, perfect as to the effect, or thing denounced, imperfect as to the causation. The same Divine power filled them with a vehement feeling against this state denounced. Under the influence of this feeling thus imbreathed, this thought thus divinely given, and under the special guidance, too, of the eternal wisdom whence it came, they used the language of their day in the condemnation of substances best known as the producers of the psycological condition which was the real, the unchangeable evil per se. It was intoxication ; not intoxication to excess, but intoxication in any degree; intoxication sought as intoxication simply, be it more or less. It was the act of a person in health using certain substances, not as medical remedies (more or less imperfectly known as the antidotes to an already deranged condition of the system), not for any nutritive, strengthening or restorative qualities, but solely for producing that evil state called intoxication, evil, not as excess, but in any, even the least or incipient degrees, — evil in effect, evil in motive, evil per se. It was the act of a person in health deranging his spiritual nature and putting it in a false state, disturbing the organs or faculties of thought, imparting an unnatural impulse to the passions, quickening the

XVI INTRODUCTION.

e^pogj or excitable part of our nature, not in the wayits Maker designed it, as an auxiliary to the rational and moral action, but for its own pleasurable emotion; thus, in a word, running the risk of giving the sensual the predominance over the spiritual powers of our being. This was intoxication ; a spiritual fact. A Hebrew prophet, we repeat, could know it as well as the most scientific of modern chemists or modern anatomists. It was evil — evil altogether; that which was sought, that which was desired for the purpose of producing it, that substance in which this, as a known or supposed effect, was the chief ingredient of value — that was evil also. It was evil, not so much from any chemical constitution, but because it was so sought and for such an end. Now to denounce the state without bringing in the supposed cause — the substance that quickened the evil motive, and was in turn called into demand by it — would have been beating the air. Intoxication was evil, and so were things that would intoxicate, especially as sought for that purpose. In speaking of it, therefore, as a thing wrong — always wrong as thus desired — he must use the language best understood by the men of his age, and which might be taken as the representative of the same unchanging truth amid all the changing science of after ages.

Here is the ground for the argument brought out in these Lectures. Wine is commended in some places as a blessing. This cannot be for any intoxicating effect, even in the slightest degree, but for the

INTRODUCTION. XV11

good it does, its known effects as healthful, pleasant, nutritive, restorative, non-intoxicating. It might be used to excess, as bread or honey might be eaten in excess, but such was not, such could not be, the common tendency of anything thus declared to be a blessing. Even a tendency to excess, simply as excess, must make a thing an evil (if such tendency belongs to the very essential working instead of being a mere accident, as in bread and honey and other substances commonly regarded as innocent) ; but in the thing denounced, there is clearly an evil distinct from that of excess, as will be seen in its proper place. So the good substance, the good wine, might become changed ; it might be suffered to get into a perverted state, and in this changed state produce intoxication; but such was not, could not have been the state on which the benediction w r as pronounced. Neither could such have been any usual condition of the thing commended, for then it would not have been ranked with those other substances, " corn and oil," which, whilst they agree with it in its nutritive, healthful, in a word, blessed properties, would not have so wholly differed from it in this peculiarly and essentially evil effect.

And so, again, wine (sometimes under this generic name and sometimes under others) is condemned, not as something merely which might be used in excess ; for there are other undisputed blessings that might also be thus used in excess, but which are not thus condemned in terms of evil attached to the very substances themselves. This is a distinction which

XVlll INTRODUCTION.

is deemed to be one of much importance. A man might eat to excess, and gluttony is condemned, but bread is never called a "mocker;" no man is ever denounced for putting the loaf to his neighbor's mouth. One might cloy himself with honey; such excess, as excess, might be reproached as sensuality ; but honey, though so sweet and tempting, is nowhere spoken of as something which it was dangerous for a man even to look upon, as an evil thing whose very nature it was to bite like a serpent and sting like an adder. These substances are nowhere spoken of in terms of severe condemnation, directed immediately against the things themselves, and wuthout the accompaniment of any qualifying terms connected with such mere excess.

But there is a wine thus spoken of, condemned* for an evil which is not merely that of excess. It must have been a substance known or supposed to produce intoxication ; that unnatural thing which is evil in every degree. It was different from the healthful and nutritive substance ; and the grand moral distinction was, that it was sought for a different purpose. It might not always be perfectly easy to draw the physical line between them, in consequence of the tendency of the healthful to degenerate into the injurious and the intoxicating. It may be a long time yet before science settles exactly where that line is, if she ever does exactly settle it. In modern as well as in ancient times, practical moral results furnish better rules than any chemical tests. It was not anciently, as it is not even now, a question of alcohol as determined

INTRODUCTION. XIX

by grains, but a higher question, a question of intoxication, as an admitted evil state. The wine that did not intoxicate, and was not used to intoxicate, or sought to intoxicate, was good ; a, blessing was in it. The wine that did intoxicate, and was sought for that purpose, was bad; it was pronounced a woe and a curse.

Such is the moral truth, the moral statement. Now in what language is this revealed to us in the Bible ? It is answered : in a peculiar language, growing out of the peculiar nature of the subject matter. The good and the evil substances are both entitled logically to the generic name of wine, from the obvious fact of their common unadulterated origin in the juice of the grape. Such, then, would occasionally be the name given to both, especially when precision of terms is unnecessary from the fact that the context clearly shows which effect, as characteristic of the respective kinds, was chiefly in view. Still, if there was a wide difference in such effects, marked* by almost invariable characteristics, — if one produced only evil, whilst the other was in the main productive of good, — if they were sought for directly different purposes, the one for its intoxicating, the other for its nutritive and restoring qualities, — if the one was regarded by the virtuous as best, in its pure, unchanged state, whilst the other, as is the law of all things evil, kept ever calling for an increase of the characteristic evil quality, and so became continually more and more deleterious in its effects, — then there would arise, in time, an adaptation of

XX INTRODUCTION.

language mare specific in its terms, growing wider in its distinctive differences, and aiming to describe these two substances by their varying fruits, rather than by that generic union of origin which is the common ground of naming in the infancy or first stages of human speech. And such, on opening the Bible, we find to be actually the case. Such is the law of naming and derivation. The history of the thing, the rising and divergency of the evil appears in the words to which it gives rise ; it is seen in the more sparing use of the old generalization and the more frequent employment of specific or descriptive epithets. The state of the Hebrew language corresponds well with what w T e would, a priori, expect it to be on such a theory. Both kinds of wines are occasionally described by the same generic appellation, yayin; but in other and numerous cases, each gets to itself its own peculiar name, more closely associated with its peculiar good or evil (that is, its nutritive or intoxicating effect), and the opposite purposes for which they are respectively sought ; so that when the one is mentioned, there is no need of any qualifying language to show the reason either of the benediction or of the condemnation.

All need of dwelling farther on this, then, is saved by the admirable manner in which the whole subject is presented in the chart of texts to be found in the appendix. If the reader has any candor, the effect upon his mind must be most striking. The general term is yayin; the name almost always used with approbation, aaid sometimes with blessing, is

INTRODUCTION. Xxi

tirosh, or the new unintoxicating wine or juice of the grape. There is, in fact, but one exception, Hosea, iv., 1, and there it will be seen, that in reference to the main, w r e may say, the only point in this argument, or the matter of intoxication, it is only a seeming exception. Let the reader look carefully at the context, and he must see, from the connection of tirosh with the other indulgences there mentioned, that it is simply the excessive or surfeiting enjoyments there condemned, rather than any directly intoxicating or immediate soul changing quality, which is the evil element in the species elsewhere so unequivocally reprobated.

Other descriptive names are used for the good wine, but this is predominant — so predominant we say, and so marked in the context for its innocent, non-intoxicating qualities, that any one who would cite these benedictions of tirosh as real commendations of the intoxicating drink sought by the ancient drunkards, shows himself greatly wanting both in Bible knowledge, and a proper reverence for the Holy Scriptures. If any one is disposed to go still farther, and quote them in defence of the vile compounds of modern times, we will not attempt to characterize either his learning or morality.

The reader will notice in this synoptical chart some other terms of the later Hebrew, used for the same purpose as tirosh, but they are mostly descriptive, and expressive of a mild, innocent, non-intoxicating state of the vinous fluid. For the evil or intoxicating wine, the most common word is yayin.

XX11 INTRODUCTION.

Why should it take to itself so frequently this old name, thus driving the better and the unchanged substance to the use of a new and more descriptive epithet? The reason will be seen by a little careful attention to the usual course of things. In this world evil predominates. Language, like all things else, shares in the human degeneracy. Words follow the stream of the human depravity. It is thus that the evil thing usurps the generic or family title. On this account, in cases where yayin is employed of the innocent beverage, or the simple unintoxicating juice of the grape, it is usually accompanied by such a context as leaves no doubt of its meaning.