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Stimulants and Narcotics
227
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? How can they engage in the
manufacture of wine or cider for the market? If they love their
neighbors as themselves, how can they help to place in their way
that which will be a snare to them?
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 stimulating. Thus the appetite is educated to
crave something still 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 will load their table with food
that 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 campaigns
if right principles in regard to temperance could be implanted in the
youth who form and fashion society. Let parents conduct a campaign
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 evil influences,
however strong, 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 wish
temperance workers the best of success; but we invite them to look
more deeply into the causes of the evil they war against and to be
sure they are consistent in reform.