Total Abstinence not Christian Te»perance. By Rev. E. S. Lowndea,
M.A. (J. H. and J. Parker.)—The reverend author has been exercised in mind by the spiritual arrogance of the teetotallers. It is certainly trying when a young man committed to prison for ten days for drunken- ness, and persuaded there to take the pledge, informs the clergy gene- rally on his release that he is not going to respect any of them any more who are not total abstainers, and a Manchester society places so great a value on the young man's testimony as to print and publish the letter in which he delivers it. Whereupon our author undertakes to prove that total abstinence is un-Christian, and unmanly, and unsafe ; un-Christian as being contrary to the practice of Christ, unmanly as showing an incapability of self-restraint, unsafe as leading to Manichasan ideas about the body, and such like heresy. He is all the more vigorous in his dialectics as he is preaching at a couple of neighbouring clergy- men, who have adopted the dangerous tenets of the teetotallers, one of whom is certainly provoking when-he suggests that decanters of wino or bottles of beer should be labelled " poisonous " where there are chil- dren. He certainly writes with a good deal of sound sense, even if now and then the arguments are slightly professional.
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