Liquor
Liquor
Good Morning
A Christian view of liquor is well reported by J.Frank Norris in the following discourse. He was a young man who had been accepted to pastor a very influential church. For, perhaps, the first time in his life, he was “somebody” –but there was a problem. A committee was promoting liquor in the community, and some of the men in leadership of that committee were members of his church. He had to make a decision.
The following is an excerpt of the words of J. Frank Norris’:
What surgings of soul! What conflicts I had. One voice said, “Now you are the pastor of a great city church, and don’t stir up a row over this liquor question. These men are men of wealth and prestige, bankers and capitalists and you will make a fool of yourself to say anything about it – besides you can’t do anything about it.” But another voice said, ‘You, the pastor of a great church – will you permit officials and deacons to remain on your official board who are personally responsible before the world for this liquor convention? Have you forgotten the rivers of tears that liquor caused your own sainted mother? Have you forgotten how it wrapped its slimy coil around one of the best, and one of the most brilliant men who ever drew the breath of life and wrecked him? Have you forgotten that liquor knows no race, no color, no wealth, no poverty?”
I was brought up when a small boy on the editorial writings of Henry W. Grady, and I recall how he said: “My friends, don’t trust it. It is powerful, aggressive and universal in its attacks. Tonight it enters an humble home to strike the roses from a woman’s cheeks, and tomorrow it challenges this republic in the halls of Congress. “Today it strikes the crust from the lips of a starving child, and tomorrow levies the tribute from the government itself. There is no cottage humble enough to escape it – no palace strong enough to shut it out… “It is the mortal enemy of peace and order. The despoiler of men, the terror of women, the cloud that shadows the face of children, the demon that has dug more graves and sent more souls unshriven to judgment than all the pestilences that have wasted life since God sent the plagues to Egypt, and all the wars since Joshua stood before Jericho… “It can profit no man by its return. It can uplift no industry, revive no interests, remedy no wrong… It comes to destroy, and it shall profit mainly by the ruin of your sons and mine. It comes to mislead human souls and crush human hearts under its rumbling wheels.”
“It comes to bring gray-haired mothers down in sorrow to their graves. It comes to turn the wife’s love into despair, and her pride into shame. It comes to still the laughter on the lips of little children, and to stifle all the music of the home and fill it with silence and desolation. It comes to ruin your body and mind, to wreck your home.”
My decision was made; I acted promptly. I called a meeting of the deacons in the old church – just had one small office in the corner – and that meeting was held just before the morning service. I held that paper in my hand, with their names on the Liquor Committee, and I never shall forget my experience, my feelings. I had come to the do-and-dare decision. It was life and death. God was good to a young preacher that morning.
I knew then for the first time a little something of what Daniel must have felt when he stood before Belshazzar and read the handwriting on the wall. I knew then something of what Peter must have felt when he stood before the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, and said, “We ought to obey God rather than men.’’ I knew something of what the Apostle Paul must have felt as he stood before the Roman Courts, and even Caesar himself. I was entering into a new world.”
Pastor