.•■J*' .»^-^ ^ .^ A NATION'S CURSE. E pennon PKCACHED IN WESTMINSTEB ABBEY, UPON THB OCCASION OP THE TWENTY-FIRST ANNIVERSARY FESTIVAL OP THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND TEMPERANCE SOCIETY, YEN. AECHDEACON FAEEAE, D.D., F.E.S., Canon of Westminster, Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen, And Rector of St. Margaret's. (SPECIALLY REVISED BY THE PREACHER.) FIFTIETH THOUSAND. lliondon : CHURCH OF ENGLAND TEMPERANCE PUBUCATION DEPOT. PALACE CHAMBERS, BRIDGE STREET, WESTMINSTER, S W. PRICE Id . or 6s. per 103 A NATION'S CUKSE. ^Behold, I set before you a blessing and a curse.^^ — DEUT.xi.26. T T is with deliberate purpose that I mean the sermon this ^ evening to be almost exclusively a plain statement of plain facts. I wish it to be an appeal, not to the imagina- tion, not to the emotions, but to the reason, to the sense of duty, to the conscience of Christians in a Christian land If I say one word that is not true, I am guilty ; if I con- sciously exaggerate a single argument, I am morally respon- sible; if I do so from ignorance, or from mistaken evidence, I hail any possible refutation of what I urge as a service to the sacred cause of truth. But, if the facts be facts, indis- putable and for the most part even undisputed, and then if they do not speak to you for themselves, I know nothing else that can or will. If they do not carry with them their own fire ; if they do not plead with you, clear as a voice from Sinai, in their barest and briefest reality, and spur you to seek redress — " If not the face of men, The sufferance of our s®uls, the times, abuse, If these be molives weak — break olT betimes, And every man home to his idle bed." Those who plead for Temperance reform are daily charged with exaggeration. Exaggeration is never right, never wise, even when moral indignation renders it excusable. 'But before you repeat that hackneyed and irrelevant charge, remember that there never was prophet or reformer yet, since time began, against whom the same charge has not been made. We have no need to exaggerate ; our cause is A NATION'S CURSE. 3 overwhelmingly strong in its moral appeal to unvarnished realities, and we have nothing to do but to set forth things as they are, till not only the serious and the earnest, but even the comfortable, even the callous, yes, even the care- less and the selfish — unless they are content to forego altogether the name of patriot, and the name of Christian — shall be compelled to note them for very shame. I. Begin, then, with the fact that the direct expenditure of the nation for intoxicating drinks is reckoned at ;£'i 3 6,000,000 a year, and the indirect, which we are forced to pay from the results of drunk&nness, at ^j^^i 00,000,000 more. Maintain, if you will, that alcohol is a harmless luxury; you still cannot deny that for the vast majority i^ is not a necessity. Whole races of men, the votaries of whole religions, do without it, and gain by its absence. From 20,000 prisoners in England it is cut off from the day of their imprisonment, and they are not the worse, but the stronger and the healthier from its withdrawal. There are some five million Total Abstainers in England, and the impartial statistics of insurance prove conclusively that longevity is increased by abstention from strong drink. The most magnificent feats of strength and endurance of which mankind has ever heard have been achieved without it. At the very best, tiien, it is a luxury. If it were not so, three Chancellors of the Exchequer would not have con- gratulated the nation on the diminution of revenue drawn from the sale of it ; nor would a speech from the throne have expressed satisfaction at this loss of income. Being, then, at the best a luxury, even if no harm came from it, I ask you seriously, whether we can, in these days, bear the exhaustion which arises from this terrible drain on our national resources? We live in anxious times. The pressure of life, the intensity of competition, both in the nation itself and with other nations, is very severe. Of late two daily newspapers have been filled with correspondence which proves the state of middle-class society. One has given ex- pression to the sorrows and struggles of thousand of clerks in our cities, and has told the dismal story of their hopeless and grinding poverty. The other has revealed with what 4 A NATION'S CURSE. agonies of misgiving thousands of parents contemplate the difficulty of starting their sons in the crowded race in life. Can there be the shadow of a doubt that the nation would be better prepared for the vast growth of its population, and that the conditions of average life would be less burdensome, if we abandoned a needless, and therefore a wasteful, ex- penditure ? Would not the position of England be more secure if that vast river of wasted gold were diverted into more fruitful channels? — if the 8i| millions of bushels of grain (as much as is produced in all Scotland) which are now mashed into deleterious drink, were turned into useful food? If the 69 thousands of acres of good land now devoted to hops were used for cereals? If England were relieved from the burden of supporting the mass of misery, crime, pauperism, and madness which drunkenness entails ? Even in this respect, as Sir Matthew Hale said two cen- turies ago, ^^ perinms liciiis^^ we are perishing by permitted things. A Cbinese tradition tells us that when, 4,000 years ago, their Emperor forbade the use of intoxicants, heaven rained gold for three days. Looking at the matter on grounds simply economical — considering only the fact that the work- ing classes drink, in grossly-adulterated beers and mad- dening spirits, as much as they pay in rent — considering that there is hardly a pauper in England who has not wasted on intoxicants enough to have secured him long ago a free- hold house and a good annuity — I say that if the curse of drink were thoroughly expelled it would rain gold in England not for three but for many days. 2. We have assumed hitherto that intoxicating drinks are nothing in the world but a harmless luxury ; but every man knows that they are not. The voice of science has laid k down unconditionally that all the young, and all who are in perfect health, do not need them, and are better without them. ^Many of the highest scientific authorities tell us further that even the moderate use t, on heaven's cherubim, horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow these horrid deeds in every eye That tears shall drown the wind ? " And if you are careless about all this misery ; if selfishness, and custom, and the gains of brewers and publicans, weigh with you against all this evidence; if you see no need to blush for all this national disgrace ; if it rouses in your heart no feeling as a patriot, as a Christian, or as a man ;— are you not at least afraid, lest, if we suffer these things to go on un- checked, a voice should at last cry " Arise ! " to the awful angel of retribution ; and lest, when he stands with drawn sword over a country so guilty and so apathetic, the cup of our iniquity and of our drunkenness being full, there should be none to say to him, " Put up thy sword within its sheath"? II. But if all that I have said admit of no possibility of refutation, how could I possibly urge any more effectual plea for an agency which, like our beloved Church of Eng- land Temperance Society, has, with such holy earnestness and such conspicuous moderation, been labouring now for twenty-one years to alleviate a nation's misery, to avert a nation's curse ? It needs special support. Help, I entreat you, with warm hearts and liberal hands, to avert the national catastrophe, which would be involved in the failure or exhaustion of a Society so noble and so indispensable I Let England, if not for very shame, yet at least" out of gratitude and in self-defence, provide the Society with the £^2^ 000 which are required. For if Temperance Societies have done nothing else, yet at least, in the words of Lord 14 A NATION'S CURSE, Shaftesbury, "but for them we should have been by this time plunged in such a flood of drunkenness, immorality, and crime, as would have rendered the whole country uninhabit- able." Will you then be callously supine, will you be im- morally acquiescent, about the fate of your country ? Your fathers did a thousand noble deeds to put down immorality and wrong ; to defend the cause of innocence, and to smite the hoary head of oppression. Your fathers, by the loveliest act in the long annals of EngHsh history, swept away the slave trade. With quiet perseverance, which would see no discouragement ; with dauntless courage, which v/ould quail before no opposition ; with illuminated insight, which pierced the sophistry of interested defenders ; with the true freedom which would not be shackled by unhallowed interests — they fought to the end that glorious battle ! Will you be unworthy of them? Will you do nothing to deliver England and all her dependencies from a deeper misery and a deadlier curse ? Yonder is the grave of Wilberforce ; there is the statue of Sir Fowell Buxton ; there is the monument of Granville Sharpe. Oh, that God would hear our prayers, and out of the gallant band of godly men who fought that battle *' Of those three hundred grant but three To make a new Thermopylae !" 12. Englishmen and Christians, if such facts do not stir you up, I ask, could they do so were tliey even in the thunder's mouth ? It is not in the thunder, it is by the still small voice of history and experience, that God speaks to the reason and to the conscience. It is not by the lightning-flash that He would have us read His will, but by the quiet light that shows all things in the slow history of their ripening. When He speaks in the thunder and the lightning, by the tornado and the earthquake, He speaks in retribution then. And what is retribution but the eternal law of consequences ? If you cannot see God's warnings against drink, if you cannot read in the existing , condition of things His displeasure and our shame, if you cannot see it in the marriage-tie broken and dishououred — in sons and dau«;hters ruined — in the peace of families laid waste — in th« A NATIOT^'S CURSE. 15 work of the Church hindered — in whole districts bb'ghted — in thousands and tens of thousands of souls destroyed : — If you cannot see it in the records of cringe, and murder, and outrage, and madness, and suicide; in the fathers wlio, in these very months, through drink, have slain their sous; and the sons who, through drink, have slain their fathers ; and the mothers, who, for drink, have sacrificed the lives of their little ones upon the breast — what will ever make you see it? ISIen of England, if these thinpjs do not wring your heart, and fire your zeal, what do you expect ? Can the letters glare more plainly on the palace wall of your power ? Are you waiting till there fall on England the same fate which, for their sins, has fallen in turn on Assyria, and Greece, and Rome, and Egypt, and Carthage, and Jerusalem, and Tyre ? They perished ; sooner or later all guilty nations perish, by sudden catastrophe, or by slow decay. *' The sword of heaven is not in haste to smite, Nor yet doth linger," but when it does smite, it is apt to smite once and smite no more. Will you be so complacent over your epigrams, and your vested interests and your Biblical criticism, when vengeance leaps at last upon the stage, and strikes sore strokes, and pity shall no longer avert the blow ? You are Christians ; yes, but see that you have not been admitted into a holier sanctuary only to commit a deeper sacrilege ! Why, had you been i^:;^^'c^v^ these very same arguments ought to be irresistible to you ! To millions of Pagans they have been so. The sobriety of China w^as due to Confucius, The sobriety of India and of Burmah are due to Buddhah. The sobriety of vast regions of Asia and Africa was due to Mahomet. In the day of judgment, shall not Confucians, shall not Buddhists, shall not Mohammedans, rise up in judgment against this generation and condemn it, for they abstained from strong drink at the bidding of Confucius, Buddhah, and Mahomet, and behold a greater than these is here ! Ah, if the voice of all these tempted, suffering, perishing miserable souls be nothing to you — if the voice of your country be nothing to you — yet, if you be Christians, hsten to the voice 1 6 A NATION^S CURSE. of Christ, pleading with you in the pathetic accents of myriads of the little ones that it is not His will, that it is utterly against His will, that His Cross and Passion should be thus rendered ot none eflect to multitudes for the very least of whom Christ died. **If thou torbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou say est. Behold, we knew it not " (when now, at any rate, you have no excuse for not knowing it), " doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it? and He that keepeth thy soul doth not He know it ? And shall not He render to every man according to his works ? " 7 hi only Church of England Temperance Journal published uoNi)ov, K O V ly *"Tf 'im i I'l'v. >