Obsequious air, enamour'd still This placed, with distance due between, That, caught ere they escape the blaze, To South we nought for haze descry; We tack, the full sail draws the wind, And look! what way the helmsman steers, True to its guiding force she veers! 'Tis thus when youth's gay dreams have fled, By Wisdom's precepts safely led, The soul o'er passion's billows rides, Communications may be addressed, POST PAID, "For the Editor of the Yorkshireman," at the Printer's, Pontefract; at Longman and Co.'s, London; John Baines and Co.'s. Leeds; and W. Alexander's, York. CHARLES ELCOCK, PRINTER, PONTEFRACT. THE YORKSHIREMAN, A RELIGIOUS AND LITERARY JOURNAL BY A FRIEND. PRO PATRIA. No. XXIX. FIFTH DAY, 19th NINTH MO. 1833. PRICE 4d. ART. I.-On Temperance and Temperance Societies. Continued from p. 33. It was proposed, in the former part of this argument, to draw the line between Intemperance and Abstinence, between the practice of the sensualist and that of the ascetic; and to shew in so doing, in what a right practice consists. We digressed a little from the subject, viewed in this light, for the sake of an imagined antediluvian sedateness and sobriety, contributing to long life; and the position was hazarded, that the abode of man on earth is now, rightly, made shorter by the circumstances of his existence-his spirit having become more active, and the purposes of life lying, in respect of time, in a smaller compass. It was asserted too, that moral stimulants are as well to be dreaded here as the physical, if we would maintain an equable circulation of the fluids and sound health.—And it might not be found difficult in this place, were the theme of that extent, to prove that these work the most extensive mischief in the finest of human frames-the sensitive, the capable, the susceptible. The heights and depths of life-an overweening youthful confidence and the acute feelings consequent on blasted hope, are but too little regarded when we reckon up the causes of disease and death. We censure and avoid the drunkard, but do we not shun also the broken in spirit?-Do we enter enough into the sorrows of the unfortunate (as they are lightly termed while we mention their case) do we attend enough to the preventive means applicable to their cure and rescue-preventive, if put in use before the cruel malady of the spirit has drawn on intemperance, or in other not less effectual ways undermined the pillars of the fabric? O that Charity, the disposition which suffereth long and is kind, which seeketh not its own, but believeth, hopeth, endureth all, were now as common as are pharisaical observances, and the determination to force a good practice upon others! But I dare not trust myself with the reflections that now arise-let us proceed. GLUTTONY is the frequent concomitant of intemperate drinking. Each vice has its forms of disease and modes of torture, which it is not worth while to separate, while we follow the debauchee, the victim of these and other not to be named excesses, plunging from stage to stage through a life full of the evil consequences of immoderate excite ment. The vigour of youth in a good constitution is not easily subdued. The horse of courage endures for years the spur of the thoughtless rider, ere he sinks to a jade, and is consigned to meaner hands, for a further term to be spent in unmixed suffering. So it is with the unhappy man but recently enslaved to sensual habits! To day, he has expended a portion of the animal life which, moderately used, might have sufficed for two days: tomorrow, feeling head ache and languor, he will dissipate his uneasiness by a smaller dose of the drink; wasting thus a portion of the third day's strength. This practice he may continue for a longer or a shorter time, according to the original strength with which he has been endowed. But the day comes, at length, when it is no longer possible for him to shun the pursuing enemy; and disease with suffering-positive suffering, becomes his habitual state. The stomach, that organ on the daily labour of which the due discharge of the functions of the others so much depend, is permanently weakened; the food, no longer subdued by the digestive process, ferments and corrupts there, and throws poison instead of a wholesome chyle into the blood: and if dropsy and jaundice supervene not, a pitiable state of debility or the fiery torments of gout suffice, without the aid of Philip's hired monitor, to remind him day by day that he is mortal. How melancholy, how dejected, how abject in the one case; how testy, how precipitate, how furious when crossed in the other! His own family and nearest friends, terrified at his violence, worn out with his follies, or disgusted with his impurities, desert himhe dies (no matter now whether suddenly or by inches) folorn and miserable. Viewing this event of an intemperate life, and considering the difficulty of shunning examples of excess, of refusing invitations, and resisting allurements, would it not be better at once to resolve with Daniel, that we will touch none of the king's luxuries; and, by making known in all companies our principle of self-denial, cut the knot at once with a sensual world? I am aware that a man may be placed, as the prophet Daniel then was, and the Apostle Paul afterwards, and as many others are now, in situations and circumstances in which it is highly expedient for them to keep under the body with all its appetites, and that by the strictest regimen, Either some great and good end offers daily a AND TEMPERANCE SOCIETIES. 67 sufficient inducement, a motive worthy of being freed from the very touch of inferior considerations, or important business and the necessity of close thinking demand that the head be preserved in a state of more than ordinary clearness. Again, to some, the commencement of weakness, arising from ill habits now abandoned, serves as a beacon to shew that the vessel must now be kept well off shore, to evite shipwreck. But, to apply the argument to the case of common life, to the man engaged in labour or thought in the ordinary way, and of the common standard, having also the common measure of bodily health to draw upon, is it expedient for him to take on him vows of abstinence, and inflict penalties on himself if he break them? Let it be considered as we go on that although, for the present, the condition be that he may do this, the time will soon come, should temperance societies become universal, when he must do it. Let but a majority of the people in a certain neighbourhood be once firmly bound to the rule of water-drinking (for in this the practice ends) they who would willingly use beer or wine, will now do it under some difficulty; while more and more, by the force of example come to refrain. But let it come to a very great, an overwhelming weight of numbers, no sober man will dare it: and the sot will now have to himself the christian privilege, of temperance in the use of every creature of God, without the power to avail himself of it! Or, the few who dare to dissent, will be stigmatized, morally persecuted, driven from society—and this for no immoral or unjust thing whatso ever. Such doings, of such a confederacy, may consist with Popish or Mahometan policy, but from Christian simplicity and sincerity they are remote enough. For what is more likely to promote superstition and intolerance, and to bring back the evils of an Antichristian rule among us, than a system of prohibitions and dispensations, affecting the every-day concerns of our lives? Fermented liquors are to be put down, as to their use by the common people—the rich, the luxurious (if they can get the physician to prescribe them for their health) and the adepts in the Rosicrusian mysteries, may continue the use (paying their dues to those entrusted with the secret) and laugh at the vulgar who abstain perforce! Other prohibitions and other dispensations will follow; and we may see, in due time, as many saints in our Calendar, and as many idle days under pretence of religion in our year, as in those bright times antecedent to the Reformation, in which the New Testament was locked up in Greek, and he who could read it passed for a Conjuror! It seems to me that the adherents of the Romish hierarchy could not now hope for a better occasion of restoring vows and religious orders-“Black, white and grey, with all their trumpery "—than this tendency, in persons professing the religion of Christ, to deprive themselves, by gratuitous obligations, not to touch-not to taste-not to handle-of the liberty they have in the Gospel. The command of the drink of the people will soon bring on that of their meat also. And along with general dispensations to get drunk on pilgrimages (in a neighbour island notorious enough) we may see, once more, the liberty bought with money of the priest, to eat veal as fish, when he has once said the words over it, as it goes down to the fire! Our clothes will follow next in the train of regulations (I perceive already a strong tendency in some, to drive the quaker back to his full antique costume) and the habits once prepared, the distribution into orders (if not into caste also) will become an easy matter. Much may be said, and said with much reason too, in vindication of those who from education and habit, (or say, from a measure of conscientious belief, however acquired) abstain from things which others consider lawful and use with a good conscience. But the present is quite another case: it is a proposal to abstain, where education and habit have taught us to use and enjoy-and this, if we have been sober persons, hitherto with a good conscience, and without having in any measure, cognizable by the church, abused our Gospel freedom. But, (reply the advocates of this system) we mean only spirituous liquors and this for the sake of your bodily health and your soul's welfare.' As for the latter I suppose it cannot be left safer than in the Redeemer's own keeping (2 Tim. i, 12.)-For my bodily health, I am well aware that it is preserved by temperance, and hurt by all excess. But what right, I ask, have these persons to force me to consult even my bodily welfare by observances in diet-since, to force I have shown it will come. I believe that spirituous liquors have been greatly abused: so much so, that, in the present state of society, it is well worth the pains of the sober to discourage their general consumption. But I also believe, that many have used this part of the Creator's gifts, in a way to cause no such reproach in their own bosoms, or among their neighbours, as to call for this public remedy on their account. The discouragement to the use, arising out of combinations which include a great majority of sober persons, (and such they will tell us they are) will not stop at spirits, but will extend itself to wine, to beer, to cider, to tea-to what drink not, when captious and unreasonable men have begun to proscribe its use? And proscribe they will, and put it down too if they choose, by the force of numbers in the way I have mentioned. It is even dreadful to contemplate the ultimate effect of such confederacies, carried on in an unchristian spirit, by mere force and prevalence of example without rule or reason, to give law to society on the subject. They may proceed to the entire extinction of certain branches of our trade, manufacture and commerce; the little required for the purposes of medicine only, excepted. They may be followed, and most probably will be, by a revulsion in the public opinion and will, which shall proclaim and sanction excess. Let him who doubts this refer to the change of manners, in the people of this island, which immediately followed the restoration of King Charles, after the long reign of forced sobriety in the Commonwealth. In what a situation, we, who desire only sobriety and the peaceable enjoyment of our practice in it, may then be placed, let the wise in heart, and they who can see the future from the present, judge! |