Persia. In Egypt its origin is credited to Isis or Osiris. Pompeii had a statue of Bacchus. The Bible contains fifty-eight references to drunkenness. It closed the career of Alexander the Great and many of the high and low in ancient Greece and Rome. "But the drunkenness of the ancient was wine, beer, or cider drunkenness. The accredited inventor of distillation died in 1106 A. D., hence whisky and other distilled liquors were not responsible for the intemperance of the olden times." This statement is followed by these facts on the effect of wine drinking in France: "At the beginning of the present war, France abolished absinth, but left her wine and brandy and other liquors. Here is a poster issued in 1916 by the French Society Against Alcoholism, the honorary president of which is M. Raymond Poincaré, the president of France: "L'ALARME Noah Became a Husbandman [Société Française d'Action Contre Alcoolisme; Honorary President, M. Raymond Poincaré.] "To French Women and French Young People: "1. Alcohol is as formidable an enemy to you as Germany. "2. It has cost France since 1870 in men and money more than the present war. "3. Alcohol pleases the taste, but, a veritable poison, it destroys the body. "4. Drinkers grow old early. They lose half their normal life, and are easy prey to numerous weaknesses and maladies. "5. The 'little glasses' of parents are transformed into hereditary weaknesses in their descendants. France has today about 200,000 insane, twice as many consumptives, to say nothing of the victims of gout, scrofula, rickets, premature degeneracy, and the majority of criminals. "6. Alcoholism reduces Our productivity two thirds, increases the cost of living and misery. "7. Like the criminal kaiser, alcoholism decimates and ruins France to the great joy of Germany. Mothers, young people, husbands, fight alcoholism and remember the glorious wounded and dead for the country. "8. You will thus accomplish a great task, equaling that of our heroic soldiers." Then follow facts and figures relative to the effects of the same curse in Switzerland and Italy, all showing most clearly and undeniably that wherever light wines and beers abound there drunkenness also abounds. Mr. Vance Thompson, the wellknown journalist, is quoted in this connection as saying in a recent book: "The greater part of my life I have lived in wine countries. Always one remembers the best of life; the dirty and tragic parts slip out of mind. . And so with the wine lands. Go to the real facts of life, banish the haze of poetic fancy, and what you see is not the cannikin-clinking merriment of comic opera, but a sadder, drearier way of life. "I am speaking of lands where the grapes grow, where wine is 'natural, pure, and cheap.' It is there at its best. The alcohol, always a poison, is, in its least harmful form, concealed in the beneficent juice of the grape- hidden in suavity and perfume. And what it does to the race of men, dwellers in sunlight, you know, for you have shuddered at these crippled and distorted generations, with their beggars and idiots, bearing one and all-to the eye of the physiologist - the stigmata of alcoholic penalties. "No drunkenness in southern Europe'? "He who makes that statement speaks out of deep ignorance. He has never dwelt in the villages of Provence or wandered over the wide roads of Italy. You do not, I admit, see so wild and manifest a drunkenness as in the harsh, northern, spirit-drinking lands, but the southern drinker, making up in quantity what was wanting in the alcoholic strength of his beverage, reaches the same stage of physical impairment, begets the same poisoned offspring, dies in the same kind of alcoholic dissolution to use the technical phrase. His moral corruption, as his physical degeneration, is slower in its progress, but statistics might be piled hospital-high to show it reaches the same end."- Congressional Record for June 27, 1917, p. 4743. Our nation has entered upon a great war. Prohibition has been urged, and to some extent adopted, as a war measure. Let us hope that it will be made unlim(Concluded on page 127) A By A. G. DANIELLS THEOCRACY is a form of government in which all the affairs of men, whether temporal or spiritual, civil or religious, are united under the control of God. The government of Israel was a true theocracy. It was really a government of God. When doing their duty, the kings of Israel ruled the people according to the directions of God. But the kings did not always do their duty. Many of them rejected the counsel of the Lord. This was carried to such an extent by Zedekiah that God said to him: "Thou, profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end, thus saith the Lord God; Remove the diadem, and take off the crown: this shall not be the same: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high. I will overturn, overturn, overturn, it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him." Eze. 21:25-27. In fulfilment of this sentence, the kingdom of Israel was subsequently overturned three times - once by MedoPersia, once by Grecia, and once by Rome. Soon after the third overturning, the theocracy of Israel was removed from the earth, and, according to the sentence of God, "It shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him." He "whose right it is," and to whom that kingdom will be restored, is the Lord Jesus Christ. Of him we read: "He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end." Luke 1:32, 33. When Christ was on earth, he declared to Pilate that his kingdom was not of this world. John 18:36. He further declared that the time when he would sit upon the throne of his kingdom would be at his coming. Matt. 25:31, 32. "Therefore while this world stands, a true theocracy can never be in it again. From the death of Christ until now, every theory of ar earthly theocracy has been a false theory And from now on until the end of the world, every such theory will be a false theory. Yet such was the theory of the bishops of the fourth century." And it was this theory that led to the establishment of the Papacy. Augustine's Dangerous Theory Augustine, one of the Fathers of the Catholic Church, reasoned thus: "It is indeed better that men should be brought to serve God by instruction than by fear of punishment, "It was by Augustine, then, that a theory is proposed and founded, which . . . conned the germ of that whole system of spiral despotism, of intolerance and persecun, which ended in the tribunals of the quisition." Id., p. 217. Yes, the theory that advocates law, mpulsion, punishment in matters of region, contains the germ of spiritual destism, of religious intolerance and cruel rsecution. The Papacy was that they fully developed. The man who holds at theory will invade the rights of his llows. The church that holds that they will usurp authority over the state, d use the civil power as an instrument persecution. This has been done by men claiming be Protestant reformers, and by prossed Protestant churches. The uel deeds of Calvin and ranmer, and the dark chapters in e history of me Scotch tans, and the English Church are the natural and awful results of this theory. Augustine's Theory Adopted by Calvin The theory of counteracting evil and of making Christians by enforcing laws. and inflicting penalties, propounded by Augustine and now advocated by the Evangelical Alliance and other religiopolitical organizations of America, found a large place in the heart of John Calvin. One of his apologists says: "He allowed to the church a greater authority than any other Reformer. Here, again, the influence of Augustine is seen. He says, 'The church is our mother.' . . . Outside of the church there is no salvation. . . . In this scheme he had in mind the Israelites. He aimed at a theocracy."- Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, art. "Calvin." Calvin "aimed at a theocracy," and he succeeded in establishing one, and the account of its working and its influence in various countries forms one of the darkest chapters in the history of modern times. Geneva was his home, riving in that city in 1536, Calvin found and the seat of his operations. On ar the people emerging from a violent conflict between papists and Prot- Calvin's Theocracy "Ge Calvin formed a "church court," which had "full authority to maintain discipline." "On Nov. 20, 1541, at a popular meeting, the scheme he drew up was ratified. This provided for a consistory composed of six city ministers and twelve elders,- one of the latter to be a syndic, and their president, which met every Thursday, and put under church discipline, without respect of persons, every species of evil-doers."- Id., art. "Calvin." This was a government after Calvin's own heart. It was the theocracy which he aimed to establish. The church controlled the state, and Calvin controlled the church. It is not surprising that historians have called Geneva the "Rome of Protestantism," and Calvin a "prophet king." "His system of church polity was essentially theocratic;. it assumed was also under the discipline of the char and he asserted that the right of exercis this discipline was vested exclusively in consistory, or body of preachers and eld . . . Nor was it only in religious mat that Calvin busied himself; nothing was different to him that concerned the well and good order of the state or the advant of its citizens. His work, as has been ju said, "embraced everything;" he was sulted on every affair, great and small, came before the council,-on questions law, police, economy, trade, and manufactu no less than on questions of doctrine church polity."- Encyclopedia Britannica, "Calvin." The government established by Cal and over which he exercised almost solute control, bore such a striking semblance in form to the Jewish 1 ocracy that Wylie, speaking of Gene says: "Calvin took the Jewish theocracy as model when he set to work to frame, or ra to complete, the Genevan republic. What see on the banks of the Leman is a theocr . . . The government exercised a presi and paternal guardianship over all inter and causes, civil and spiritual. Geneva this respect, was a reproduction of the Testament state of society."—" History Protestantism," book 10, p. 284. Yes, Calvin's government exercise "paternal guardianship over all inter and causes, civil and spiritual.” It in fered with the private affairs of the p ple to such an extent that it became tolerable. On one occasion the per arose in rebellion and banished Cal from Geneva. At the end of two ye he returned with a firm determina! to persevere in his course to the e every member Those who spoke against Calvin's relig or doctrines were severely punish Ameaux, who declared that Calvin's ligion was "deceit and tyranny," compelled "to walk through the stre bareheaded, carrying a lighted can and to make confession of his fault his knees."- Id., book 17, p. 310. Gruet, on a charge of infidelity, v condemned and beheaded. Jero Hermes Bolsec was imprisoned, : finally banished, on the same groun Michael Servetus was persecuted a Up to the early part of the sixteenth ntury there was little liberty in Eupe,- little liberty, civil or religious. e state and the church had formed an holy alliance against the liberties of en. For freedom of conscience, freem of opinion, men were condemned the Inquisition to die; and as when rist was condemned by the Jewish urch and turned over to the Roman ocurator to be crucified, so the church ndemned men and women for their inions, and called upon the state to flict punishment. In almost every untry of Europe fires were lighted to rn "heretics," and multitudes of marrs preferred death to the surrender of eir rights of private opinion, and libty to worship God according to their nsciences. The great battle between ith and tyranny was on, and thousands men had to choose between oppreson and death. They contended for the ith, refusing to give up the eternal inciples of righteousness. God is truth d will prevail. Martin Luther, John Calvin, and John aox thundered the truths of the Bible t over Europe, giving men back their bles, and so the people rose to conid for truth and liberty. They set their faces toward the sunrise, and strug gled for the light of a great day. Old Calvin in his lecture-room in Geneva, showed men a vision of an infinite, eternal, and unchangeable God, the sovereign of the universe; and having seen this magnificent vision of the Almighty, the people no longer feared man, priest, pope, or emperor. They saw in these but gilded worms of the dust, wearing gay garments of assumed authority and power over human souls. Luther burned the Pope's bull, and brave hearts all over Europe who had seen and felt the power of God, defied the Pope, the priests, bishops, and all the mad hosts of clergy of the Roman Church. They had set out to win liberty, and would stop at no hardship in quest of this unspeakable boon. To make a long, a very long, and terrible, but glorious story, short, they won liberty in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and the British Isles, and we are the heritors of the splendid legacy they left to following generations. The reason we have absolute freedom of conscience in America today is because our fathers fought, bled, and died for truth, and for her imperial daughter, Liberty.- Presbyterian of the South. June 30. 1915. |