A lecture on the harmony of teetotalism, with the divine word : as expressed in the authorized version of the Bible (with answers to several objectors) / abridged from the works of Dr. Lees, and printed for general circulation.

  • Frederic Richard Lees
Date:
[between 1850 and 1859]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A lecture on the harmony of teetotalism, with the divine word : as expressed in the authorized version of the Bible (with answers to several objectors) / abridged from the works of Dr. Lees, and printed for general circulation. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    'Ll iniquity—escapes from the cities of file plain and their fiery plagues, only to be stung by that wine which is a mocker, and the poison whereof is more mortal than ‘ the cruel venom of asps.5 As Moses5 words elsewhere suggest, ‘the wine of Sodom5 was given him to drink ; and he reaps the fearful penalty of guilt and pollution. Hence¬ forth the name of the patriarch is blotted out from the page of history! Well remarks Dr. Haweis on this sad passage : “No man this side heaven is safe from presumptuous sins, or above praying to be kept from them.55 And what, I ask, can be more presumptuous than first to in¬ troduce into our system a narcotic agent that physically tends ‘ to steal away our brain5—and then to ask God to ‘deliver us from temptation5? A third instance of intemperance is found amongst the Priests. If the command of abstinence had a real adaptation to the sin of Nadab - and Abihu,—and we must assume that it had,—then we perceive another proof of the deceptiveness of wine, in the fact that it seduced the Priests into intemperance, even amidst sacred things and in the season of their deliverance in the wilderness. Tho the sons of Aaron, the High Priest, they perished fearfully for their sacrilege! The Church rightly teaches that these and similar instances,— in which Priest, and Prophet, and Patriarch, and Prince, are numbered amongst the victims of wine,—are given to warn us of danger. * If the highest station, the Divinest gifts, the most virtuous character, the longest experience, and even the signs of the Divine Presence in Tabernacle and Temple,—are no absolute safeguard where ‘the mocker5 is drank,—how palpable the inference—“ Where they fell, how much more are we in danger !55 Their history is as a beacon, or lighthouse;—not inviting the approach of vessels sailing on the Ocean of Life, but warning them of the dangerous and hidden rock on which so many ‘ goodly ships5 have gone to wreck, and telling them to keep far out at sea ! The Bible history also supplies the most striking examples of the* corrupting influence of strong-drink on the Jewish Church and Natioji. The Hebrews had been sojourners in Egypt;—but in the land where once they had enjoyed privileges, they now experienced oppression. The dynasty under which Joseph and his people had risen to favor had passed away, and jealousy of their numbers and power now impelled the Egyptians to the adoption of a cruel policy towards the; children of Israel. Still there is no ground for supposing that, they were' excluded, as slaves, from the use*of the ordinary diet of the country.. They seem to have enjoyed sufficiently the delicate fruits and1 produce * “Now of those which take occasion of carnality and evil life, by heariffio- and reading in God’s book, what God had suffered, even in thone men prai Sed in the scriptures—as Noah, so drunk with wine that in his sleep he f la_y] uncovered,—The just man, Lot, in like manner drunken—Abraham, besides with Sara his wife had also carnal company with Agar,—the Patriarch Jacob had to bis wives two sisters at one time,—the Prophet Dauid, and King Solomon his son, had many wives and concubines,—which things we see are now repugnant to all public honesty. These and such like in God’s hook, good people, are not written that we should do the lika. ...We ou^ht to learn by them this profitable lesson, that if so godly men as they w ere which otherwise felt inwardly God’s holy spirit, did so grievously fall, how much more ought we then, miserable wretches, which have no feeling of God within us at all, continually to fear that we also be overcome and drowned in. sin.55—Ilomilies. ete. Part I. 1623. A.D. 1756. The Priests. Lev. x. The Church’s inference. Irifluetice of intemperance on the Jewish church and nation.