[517] Prov. xxvi. 14.
[518] Prov. xxiv. 34.
[519] Prov. xix. 24.
[520] Prov. xxvi. 15.
[521] Prov. xxvi. 13.
[522] Prov. xxii. 13.
[523] Prov. xxvi. 16.
[524] Prov. xv. 19.
[525] Prov. xx. 13.
[526] Prov. xix. 15.
[527] Prov. xii. 27.
[528] Prov. xvi. 26.
[529] Prov. xxi. 25.
[530] Prov. xviii. 9.
[531] Prov. xii. 11.
[532] Prov. xxviii. 19.
[533] Prov. xiv. 4.
[534] Prov. xxviii. 19.
[535] Prov. xxiv. 30-34.
[536] Prov. xxvii. 23-27.
[537] Prov. xiii. 4.
[538] Prov. xxi. 5.
[539] Prov. xxi. 20.
[540] Prov. xxii. 29.
[541] Prov. xii. 24.
[542] Prov. xii. 27.
[543] Prov. xxxi. 27.
"He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man: He that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich." PROV. xxi. 17.
The Septuagint translation has an interesting addition to the proverb in xii. 11. After "He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread, but he that followeth after vain persons is void of understanding," it adds, "He who is sweet in pastimes of wine-drinking shall leave dishonour in his strongholds." Drinking is the natural opposite of hard and honest work. When the love of it takes possession of a man he is sure to become a useless and unproductive member of society. A drunken people are in the end an incapable people; their wealth declines, their industries pass over to soberer rivals, their qualities of brain and muscle gradually disappear. This is partly owing to the deterioration of mind and body which results from the excessive use of stimulants; but it is still more due to a wider cause: drinking in all its branches is indulged in as a pleasure. Why do we not admit it? why do we always try to present it in another light, saying that it is for health's sake, by a doctor's orders; or for work's sake, by a proved necessity? Is it not that we are secretly conscious of taking the drink because we like it? We know it is a self-indulgence, and we are a little ashamed of it; and as self-indulgence is always fatal in the long run to all the habits and activities which men very properly honour, we should dearly like to screen it under a decent pretext which might preserve our self-respect. We know quite well that "he that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man; he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich."[544] Drinking is after all only a pronounced symptom of a large vice--self-indulgence.
A great step is taken when we have learnt to quietly and candidly face this fact: we drink, as a society, as a nation,--each of us drinks in public or in private,--simply because it is pleasant. It is a habit governed by one supreme and absolute law--_we like it_. We know quite well that alcohol is not a food; that is proved by the most irrefragable scientific evidence; and if in alcoholic drinks there are certain nutritive elements, we could if we chose secure the benefit of them without any admixture of alcohol. We know that in many cases the alcohol is actually deleterious, that it produces specific and very terrible diseases, that it lowers the tone of the whole system and makes us liable to all kinds of secondary troubles. We may urge that alcohol is a medicine, and a useful medicine; but it is not as a medicine we use it. If a doctor prescribes castor-oil, or quinine, we throw aside the medicine on the first opportunity, often before it has done its work. Alcohol is the only medicine which we continue to take for a lifetime because the doctor prescribed it for a month. Would it not be better then to clear our minds of cant, and to set the whole matter on its right basis? Intoxicants are drunk as a form, as the most universal form, of self-indulgence. In some mysterious way, for some mysterious reasons which we cannot fathom, they gratify an instinctive appetite, they are naturally and generally attractive, they exercise a spell over the physical system. If the taste is, as some people say, acquired, it was acquired by mankind in prehistoric times, and is part of our inherited constitution as men. For instance, Mr. Gaule, a police-court missionary in Birmingham, relates a recent experience, one out of many in his fourteen years of labour. A young married woman, twenty-eight years of age, died a shocking death from drinking. Up to the age of twenty-six she had been a teetotaller, and did not know what the taste of drink was. She was a leading member of the Gospel Temperance Mission, and sang the solos at the meetings. Then she was taken ill, the doctor ordered brandy, and it proved like the first taste of blood to a tame tiger. She could never again be kept from it, and at last it killed her. The craving there must have been in the very blood.