In larger social matters this use of the Bible has been fully as striking. Human slavery felt secure within a scriptural fortress. Wilberforce and Clarkson in England, and Garrison and Phillips in America were compelled to reply to biblical arguments. Charles Sumner, at a meeting in Massachusetts, spent an entire evening in replying to a pro-slavery discussion based on Paul's letter to Philemon, arriving duly at the conviction that the only logical and religious result of the apostle's words to Philemon would be the freeing of slaves in the name of Christian brotherhood. So pieces of Mosaic legislation and scraps of Pauline regulation were used to conceal the Golden Rule and the law of fraternity. It is easy to observe here, too, that as men advance in ethical life this use of the Bible ceases. Doubtless in twenty years no one has heard the Bible quoted in behalf of slavery. Yet the biblical argument would serve quite as well for reinstating slavery as it did for continuing slavery. The argument dies not only because the moral consciousness of man lives, but also because the moral judgment of man perceives that the general principles of the Bible are utterly opposed to human slavery. The man who proposed to bring the bondage of men back into the social life of the world by means of the biblical argument would be deemed as much an anachronism as his method of debate. This same evil use of the Bible proceeds to-day among the opponents of the temperance reform. Our debate with the saloonist or brewer or wine maker never goes far ere we are told of biblical examples of drinking, as well as that Christ turned water into wine in his first miracle at Cana of Galilee. Saloon keepers have framed and have placed upon the walls of their alluring palaces Paul's advice to Timothy, "Take a little wine for thy stomach's sake, and thine often infirmities." They do not quote the verdict that wine is a mocker, with a bite like that of a serpent and a sting like that of an adder--the cause of woes and sorrows and redness of eyes; nor the pronouncement that no drunkard can inherit the Kingdom; nor the condemnation laid upon him that putteth the bottle to his neighbor's lips. Nor do they put forward the inevitable drift of Paul's law of charity which commands men to do naught that will make their brothers to offend. Nor yet do they heed the sure drift of the Bible's teaching as it comes to its crown in Christ himself. The man who would claim that Jesus would approve the modern traffic in intoxicating liquors would convict himself of amazing perversity and ignorance. There are increasing evidences that the Master of life is now finding an effective use for his whip of cords and that there is beginning a retreat greater than that of the ancient thieves and dove sellers. The time will come when men will marvel that an attempt was ever made to use the Bible as a foundation for the trade in alcoholics.