By James Stalker
There are three appetites, which inhere in the flesh of man-the appetite of hunger, the appetite of thirst, and the appetite of sex. Of the third of these I do not require to speak here, having treated it fully in the chapter on luxury; but the other two call for attention in the present chapter.
I. Appetite, being part of the apparatus of the human constitution, has, of course, an important part to play in the economy of life; and it is not its use, but its abuse, which is sinful.
Hunger is one of the sternest facts of human experience. The appetite asserts itself every day, and has to be satisfied. The time and strength of the great majority of the human species have to be expended in providing food for hungry mouths; and the task has to be discharged on pain of death. The daily lighting of the culinary fire, the varied labors of the farm, the trades of the miller, the baker and the cook, the transit of the products of different districts and different countries by means of the ship and the railway-train and other conveyances-these, and a hundred other operations, in which the services of millions of men and women are employed, are all concerned with satisfying the appetite of hunger.
In fact, hunger may, without much exaggeration, be called the mainspring of the whole machine of human existence; for what else is it that sets people every day in motion and makes them acquire the arts and crafts by which they earn their daily bread? The appetite of thirst is even more imperative and requires to be satisfied at least as often as that of hunger. Happily the means of satisfying this appetite are less costly, being liberally supplied by the bounty of Providence. Yet, in the complicated civilization of modern times, enormous and costly engineering operations have to be undertaken to supply water to large cities.
It is only what was to be expected, when we consider the loving Providence by which our life is arranged, that the satisfaction of the appetites is accompanied with pleasure. The honest discharge of daily work causes hunger to be felt at the right time, and, as the proverb says, hunger is the best sauce. It is when no work is done to produce hunger that much artificial seasoning of food is required to excite an appetite. It seems reasonable to believe that the satisfaction of the appetite of thirst is also intended to be accompanied with pleasure; but how far the simple means provided by nature may be manipulated with this in view, as food is rendered more palatable by cooking, is a question by no means easy to answer in every case.
At any rate, mankind, in all ages and in all continents, have made use of other substances besides water, such as the juice of the grape, to quench thirst, or they have fortified water with other ingredients to make the act of drinking minister to pleasure.
II. It is of the abuse of these functions I have to speak today. And, first, the abuse of eating is the sin of gluttony.
Savages, whose supply of food is meager and uncertain, fill themselves to repletion when they get a chance, disposing at a single meal of a quantity of food, which fills civilized onlookers with astonishment. The half-savage civilization of imperial Rome was distinguished by occasional carnivals of gluttony, the details of which, supplied by historians and satirists, inspire the modern reader with perplexity and disgust.
In the moral treatises of the Middle Ages very minute directions are given for avoiding gluttony, and it is manifest that this must have been a besetting sin of the monastic life. Inside the cloister there was too little variety to break the monotony of existence, and the dinner hour naturally became for many of the monks the most exciting of the day. They are warned, accordingly, against a number of sins which can be committed in eating-such as eating before the appointed hour, being too nice about the materials of food, indulging in too highly-spiced cookery, eating too much at a meal, and the like.
All these precepts need to be enforced on children still, and, no doubt, there are adults also who would be the better of hearing them repeated. But, on the whole, I should be inclined to say, gluttony is a sin, which the civilized man has outgrown; and there is not much need for referring to it in the pulpit.
Physicians may occasionally give their well-to-do patients a homily on a simpler life or exhort their poorer patients to substitute cheap but substantial articles of food for the unthrifty and innutritious diet they often make use of; but such peccadilloes hardly come within range of the dread artillery of the pulpit. It is a curious fact that a sin which was once an urgent topic in the teaching of morality should now be so rare that we can practically neglect it. Let us hope it is a sign that man is gradually leaving the beast behind and rising into habits worthy of himself.
III. Unfortunately, if this can be truly said of gluttony, it cannot be said of the corresponding sin of drunkenness. While man has been obviously acquiring control of himself as regards the appetite of hunger, he has apparently been losing it as regards the appetite of thirst. As we enter the twentieth century, the testimony of experts is that in the British Isles the consumption of alcohol per head of the population has increased during the century just finished by twenty-five per cent; the consumption of the deadlier kinds of intoxicants has been rapidly growing during the last decade in several of the countries of the Continent; and the introduction and sale of the very worst European spirits among native races in all quarters of the globe must be reckoned among the most disreputable features of the history of the nineteenth century.
Every single act of drunkenness is a sin. It is a defacement of the divine image, a temporary dethronement of the power within man, which ought to govern, and a casting of his crown of glory in the dust. Look at the drunken man-helpless, mindless, unclean-and say if he has not sinned against his own manhood and against the Creator of the same. One of the worst features of drunkenness is that a man, when he comes out of the intoxicated state, never believes that he has sunk so low as he really has; but, if he could see himself as others see him, he would have to confess how far he had fallen beneath the dignity of his being.
The sin of drunkenness is aggravated by this, that it leads to other sins. It deprives the intoxicated man of self-control, and so gives the beast within him free scope. What control has an intoxicated man over his own chastity? What control has he of his temper? He may strike a cruel or even a murderous blow without knowing what he is doing. There is not a week but the newspapers contain such incidents, which would, in any other circumstances, make the blood of readers run cold, but receive hardly passing notice because they arise from this cause.
The act of drunkenness grows by degrees into a habit, although the victim is generally unaware what is taking place and is still quite confident of his power to manage himself long after the fibre of the will is completely relaxed. The whole moral nature, indeed, is slowly destroyed. First to go is the virtue of truthfulness; for the slaves of this vice will say or do anything to obtain what they need to satisfy the appetite, and you cannot believe a word that a drunkard says. One after another all other fine qualities disappear; and these are sometimes very fine indeed; for the victims of this vice are frequently the most gifted in both head and heart.
Nothing is spared, until the end comes. It is said that sixty thousand die in this manner in these islands every year. What a procession of woe! Yet it is hardly noticed, it is so common. If it were the loss of a great war, it would sound, in notes of lamentation and woe, through the land in all the organs of public opinion, but it is only the nation's annual tribute to its favorite vice. What a hopeless procession it is, as it files into the eternal world; for these poor men and women are going to appear at the judgment-seat of Him who has said, 'No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of heaven.'
Only half the truth, however, is told when we thus try to realize the sin and the misery of drunkards themselves. The evil spreads on every hand. Perhaps there is no drunkard who does not infect others with his own vice, for it is a conspicuously social sin. Besides this, however, multitudes suffer from it through no fault of their own. The drunkard's home is a proverb for misery and hopelessness. His wife is kept in a state of never-ceasing suspense and fear, which no language can describe, and the more refined and sensitive she is the keener is her suffering. His children share the same feelings of humiliation and terror; and their health is often permanently injured, because the money which ought to be spent on their food and clothing is consumed on his vice.
There are tens of thousands of children in our land growing up without a fair chance on this account. For it is not only here and there, at wide intervals, that this evil is doing its destructive work-it is everywhere. There is hardly a family in the country into the circle of which the pain and disgrace have not penetrated.
In short, this is the national sin at the present time, and it is making our country the bye-word of the world and drawing into itself, like a chronic sore, the force which should be invigorating every part of the body politic. The money, for instance, which should be spent on food and clothing, lodging and furniture, and which should be making the business of the baker, the butcher, the grocer, the joiner and the mason to flourish, is poured into the insatiable throat of this appetite, doing nobody any good. The ordinary mind cannot in the least degree realize the sum thus squandered every year, though it is named in words. A short time ago we were all talking of Foreign Missions as the most remarkable feature of the Christianity of the nineteenth century; but how many have realized that the total sum spent on this object by all the Churches and missionary societies of Britain during the entire century is less than the sum spent in a single year on drink?
A large proportion of the crime of the country has been attributed to drink by our foremost judges; and to the same cause must be referred most of the outlay of the nation on the expensive establishments requisite for dealing with crime and poverty. Yet the wealth of the country is deeply involved in the drink traffic; and the conversion of so many businesses into companies has, of late, given many more of the moneyed class an interest in its extension. It was no figure of speech when one of our leading statesmen said, not long ago, that the country must either throttle the drink traffic or the drink traffic would throttle the country.
IV. The magnitude and difficulty of this problem are manifested by the numbers of the solutions attempted.
The newest is the founding of a society composed of those who pledge themselves not to take intoxicants except at meals, and not to treat. This proposal has been received with ridicule by both the press and the teetotal societies; but I conceive, there are multitudes to whom it might be beneficial. There is a great difference between taking drink as part of food and taking it by itself, and there can be no doubt that treating is one of the worst features of social life. A publican has told me that five or six working men will come into his shop on Saturday on their way home.
One of them treats the whole company, another does the same, and so on it goes, till all have treated all, and all are intoxicated. He told me, he could remember when the same practice prevailed among gentlemen at the luncheon bar; but in that class it had now, he said, entirely ceased-each asks and pays for what he himself requires, and then departs. And it was my informant's opinion that the same change among working men would make a world of difference.
It has often surprised me that no movement has been set on foot to change the intoxicating liquors, which are drunk. No one who has traveled much on the Continent can have failed to notice how rare it is to see an intoxicated person on the streets. Yet there is probably more drinking in Germany or France than in this country. The difference is due to the liquors consumed. If our working class confined their potations to something as light as German beer, and the wealthier classes theirs to light wines, there would hardly exist a drink problem. But it is by the strong and fiery intoxicants used by our population that the country is being ruined; and few are aware that it is within comparatively recent times that the use of these distilled spirits has become general.
In all probability the next great step of reform will be a curtailment of the traffic by the interposition of the legislature. There is, indeed, an old and much-worn proverb, which says that you cannot make people sober by act of parliament but we are going to try the experiment, and that on a large scale. On this the country has made up its mind. Politicians of all parties have been very shy of approaching this question; but it overtops all their reforms, and of this the public mind is becoming so convinced that they will not be able much longer to give it the go by. I hope the time is at hand when we shall see the rival parties competing with one another as to which is to be the executant of the will of the sovereign people; unless, indeed-which would be better still-God raise up a statesman of first-class power who will make this the absorbing object of his life.
There is truth, nevertheless, in the saying that you cannot make people sober by act of parliament. Merely to shut the door of the public house in the face of people who wish to go in is a very imperfect cure. How much better it would be if they did not want to go in, and consequently the door had to be shut from the inside. Why are people so eager to drink? There must be a vast, dull misery in their hearts to make them willing to sacrifice their means, their character and their hopes for the sake of securing a temporary oblivion of their condition. Everything that imparts to men and women self-respect, that makes home more attractive, that interests them in their work, that gives them a future and a hope, is an enemy to drunkenness; and such positive counteractives must be brought into operation, as well as measures of repression.
But by far the most powerful reform of recent times has been the temperance movement, which is said to number among its adherents, at the commencement of the new century, three millions of the population of the British Isles. These consider the crisis so acute and the temptations so abounding, that, for themselves and their families, they judge it safest and best to abstain altogether. But this movement is not, as is often insinuated, one for personal protection alone: it is inspired still more by a patriotic and humanitarian spirit.
Its adherents feel so keenly the disgrace of the country, the debasement of human nature, the suffering of families, the loss of immortal souls, that they are not satisfied with shielding themselves from attack, but have pledged themselves to attack and to overcome this evil; and they believe they can fight it best in temperance armour. Many of them would not admit that they are making any sacrifice, because they consider life to be healthier and happier without the use of alcohol. Others feel that there is a considerable sacrifice in having to act counter to the habits of the society to which they belong; but they are willing to accept any sacrifice rather than be neutral in a cause in which the welfare of man and the glory of God are so directly concerned.
As to each and all of these modes of avoiding and opposing drunkenness, it is for everyone to be fully persuaded in his own mind; but it will always be the duty of the pulpit to insist on four things, not as matters of opinion, but in the name of God-first, that drunkenness is a deadly sin; secondly, that no drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God; thirdly, that it is the vocation of Christians to use the most effective means for putting an end to everything that is dishonoring to God; and, fourthly, that the only perfect defense against drunkenness is a living, working and rejoicing religion; as the Apostle says, well knowing why he places the two states in opposition to each other-'Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be ye filled with the Spirit.'
