TEETOTAL BLASPHEMIES.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR,']
SIR,—The " Temperance" fanatics ought to thank you— though, I fear, they will not—for your much-needed warning against the arrant nonsense by which they discredit their cause. But there are worse things even than nonsense. Do, Mr. Spectator, bestow a further word in season on those among them who, when the power of nonsense will no further go, like Mr. W. Sykes in a parallel difficulty, "try a little blasphemy." A few weeks since, a rev, gentleman in a Midland county is reported to have said : " It was to be regretted that Our Lord and His Apostles had done very little for the Temperance cause 1" In other words, our Lord and his Apostles are censured for omitting to do what the speaker in his superior wisdom perceived that they ought to have done. The words surely involve this, if they mean anything. Now, once grant that the Rev. Jones or Smith is wiser than the founders of Christianity, what becomes of Christianity itself P But this remarkable statement pales before one attributed to a well-known dignitary of the Church, who, if he is not belied, has publicly expressed his conviction that "the re- membrance of the Miracle of Cana must have added a bitterness to the pains of the Cross ?" In other words : Our Saviour had sin of His own upon His conscience when He came to die Need it be said that before this astonishing pronouncement, once accepted as true, every Article of the Christian Creed, save the first, must go down P So could there be no Atonement, no victory over death, no Resurrec- tion, nor any of the consequences thereof. All Christendom confesses that, except as sinless himself, he could not save.
The worthy speakers, no doubt, did not purpose to blas- pheme. But the words that their fanaticism prompted mean blasphemy or nothing. They that stand up to teach others should understand at least what their own words imply. Surely we may say to them, in Dr. Johnson's words :—" Sir, if you mean nothing, say nothing."—I am Sir, &c.,
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