Isaiah 28:1 - Homilies By R. Tuck

The woe of the drunkard.

On this subject there is grave danger of saying extravagant, unqualified, and unreasonable things. The abstract rightness or wrongness of using strong drinks must be decided by the individual judgment. Enough now to say that no man with the spirit of a patriot, much less with the spirit of a Christian—who is his brother's keeper,—can observe the growth of drinking habits in modern society without serious alarm; no mothers without grave anxiety for their sons; no wives without deep concern for their husbands and themselves. The common speech about drink too often leaves the impression that the evil of it lies in the drink itself, and so tends to take our minds from the much more serious fact that the evil of drink lies in us, and in its relation to us—in feebleness of will, and lack of self-restraint and self-control.

I. WHEREIN LIES THE PERIL OF STRONG DRINK ? Precisely in its strength, in its raging. " Strong drink is raging." There is produced by it an elevation and excitement that are beyond nature; according to the differences of men's dispositions, it is either an elevation, or a raging of folly or of violence. Our peril lies in yielding to the unnatural or the unnecessary.

1. The unnatural . Every man is in duty bound to develop all his faculties up to the limit of their capacity. But every man is in duty bound also not to develop some to the neglect of others; and not to excite any to a degree beyond his full and perfect self-control. So far as he does he ceases to be a true man; a foreign power has taken the place of his central will, and he is, in fact, a man possessed and ruled by an evil force, by a devil. This may be illustrated by showing

2. It is unnecessary ; for it satisfies no demand of the true manhood; only the demands of a depraved, disordered, and diseased taste. The best that can be said of it is that it may be a medicine. It is now well established that it is not a necessary food.

II. WHO AMONG US LIE EXPOSED TO THE TEMPTATIONS OF STRONG DRINK ? This may be answered with great plainness, simplicity, and practical force.

1. Those who are born into a heritage of drinking tendencies.

2. Those who have some ability in song or entertaining, and so are enticed into company and treated for the sake of the pleasure they give (compare the case of the poet Burns).

3. Those who have idle time which can be spent in inns and hotels.

4. Those who have great business energy and enterprise without the restraining influence of high moral principle.

5. Those who, having little pleasure in intelligent occupations, seek excitement in the indulgence of bodily passion.

6. Those who have unhappy or uncomfortable homes.

7. Those whose daily work takes them to houses where they are treated to drink. All are in special peril at holiday or convivial seasons, and in times of convalescence from disease, or of family trouble. No one of us can venture to say, amidst the enticements of modern social life, "I shall never fall. I shall never be a drunkard." He neither knows himself, nor the subtlety of the evil, who speaks so confidently. Our power to stand lies in our laying hold of One who is stronger than ourselves, and keeping Up the prayer, " Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." Every day and everywhere, with our eyes on God, we should be saying, "Hold thou us up, and we shall be safe."—R.T.