Grappling with the Monster; Or, the Curse and the Cure of Strong DrinkArthur, T. S. (Timothy Shay)
Religion
Grappling with the Monster; Or, the Curse and the Cure of Strong Drink
Arthur, T. S. (Timothy Shay)
Temperance
was sung. At its close, a man rose from his seat and entered his protest
against the singing of that hymn any more. It is not true, he said, that
the man whom God has converted feels any proneness to wander. He had had
the grace of God in his soul for--we don't remember how many years--and
he could testify that the desire to wander from God's commandments had
been wholly removed. He, therefore, repeated his protest against the use
of a hymn containing a sentiment so dishonorable to a truly saved
Christian. As he sat down, a very young man arose and added the weight
of his testimony to the assertion of his older Christian brother. He
also, in answer to prayer, as he confidently asserted, had attained unto
that higher life which is not only free from sin, but from even the
desire to wander from the ways of holiness.
As we looked into and read the faces of these two men, we sighed for
what we saw therein, and pitied them for the peril in which they stood.
But our greater concern was for the poor, weak, almost helpless ones we
saw around us, and for the effect of this delusive error which had been
so needlessly thrown into their minds. If any of them should rest in
the belief that they, too, had, by the grace of God, been wholly set
free from the bondage of sin; that the appetite for drink and the lust
of all evil had been extinguished, and their proneness to wander from
God taken away in simple answer to prayer, then would their danger, we
felt, be so imminent as to leave but little room for hope of their
standing in the new life. A stumbling-block had been laid in their way
over which they must almost surely fall.
We are writing for the help and safety of men for whom there is but
little or no hope of rescue from the depths of evil and sensuality into
which they have fallen, except in a truly religious life; not a life of
mere faith, and sentiment and fancied holiness, but of earnest conflict
and daily right living. A life in which not only intemperance is to be
shunned, as a sin against God, but every impure and evil desire of the
heart, and every thought and purpose of wrong to the neighbor. And,
believing as we do, that God's grace and power can only be given to
those who will take it as active subjects--not mere passive
recipients--and by using it as if it were their own, avail themselves of
its purifying and regenerating influence, we can do no less than
question and reject any doctrine that even seems to give a different
impression, as delusive and exceedingly dangerous.
To make Gospel temperance the true power of God unto the salvation of
intemperate men, we must have in it, and with it, the Gospel of
conflict with evil, the Gospel of daily right living, the Gospel of love
to the neighbor and the Gospel of common sense. And these are coming
more and more into the work, which is widening and increasing, and every
year adding thousands upon thousands to the number of those who are
saved from the curse of drink.
CHAPTER XV.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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