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Stimulants and Narcotics
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on the Communion table as a symbol of the Saviour’s blood. The
sacramental service is designed to be soul-refreshing and life-giving.
There is to be connected with it nothing that could minister to evil.
In the light of what the Scriptures, nature, and reason teach
concerning the use of intoxicants, how can Christians engage in the
raising of hops for beer making, or in the manufacture of wine or
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cider for the market? If they love their neighbor as themselves, how
can they help to place in his way that which will be a snare to him?
Often intemperance begins in the home. By the use of rich,
unhealthful food the digestive organs are weakened, and a desire
is created for food that is still more stimulating. Thus the appetite
is educated to crave continually something stronger. The demand
for stimulants becomes more frequent and more difficult to resist.
The system becomes more or less filled with poison, and the more
debilitated it becomes, the greater is the desire for these things. One
step in the wrong direction prepares the way for another. Many
who would not be guilty of placing on their table wine or liquor of
any kind will load their table with food which creates such a thirst
for strong drink that to resist the temptation is almost impossible.
Wrong habits of eating and drinking destroy the health and prepare
the way for drunkenness.
There would soon be little necessity for temperance crusades if
in the youth who form and fashion society, right principles in regard
to temperance could be implanted. Let parents begin a crusade
against intemperance at their own firesides, in the principles they
teach their children to follow from infancy, and they may hope for
success.
There is work for mothers in helping their children to form cor-
rect habits and pure tastes. Educate the appetite; teach the children
to abhor stimulants. Bring your children up to have moral stamina
to resist the evil that surrounds them. Teach them that they are not to
be swayed by others, that they are not to yield to strong influences,
but to influence others for good.
Great efforts are made to put down intemperance; but there is
much effort that is not directed to the right point. The advocates
of temperance reform should be awake to the evils resulting from
the use of unwholesome food, condiments, tea, and coffee. We bid
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all temperance workers Godspeed; but we invite them to look more