(335-339) ages’’ is that the person who eats meat clean in itself but thinking the matter to be wrong, thus defiling his own conscience by eating, would be damned—sent to an eternity of torture. But no such thought was in the Apostle’s mind nor could it be properly understood in his words. He there emphasized the fact that any person eating meat, however clean, but thinking it to be a sin, a crime, to eat it, would as a consequence be under condemnation for having violated his conscience, his judgment of the Lord’s will, and this would serve as a cloud to separate between himself and the Lord, who judges the heart and not merely the outward conduct. Such an alienation might ultimately lead to the loss of the great prize of our high calling, and thus into the great company, or possibly eventually into the seeond death. The Apostle explains why this condemnation would hold, saying, ‘‘because he eateth not of faith’’—not in harmony with his conscience—and whatsoever is not in harmony with faith and conscience is a sin. The principle here applied to the question of using or not using spirituous liquors would certainly be profitable to all of God’s people: the person who uses them believing them to be sinful is volating his conscience; the person who uses them knowing that another will be effected thereby unfavorably is violating the law of love, ‘‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’’ This mattcr becomes a very important one in our day, more than ever before, because today the question of conscience in the matter of using liquors is more pronounced than ever before. The following article, clipped from the Literary Digest, is translated from the French, and will, we trust, be both interesting and instructive to many in connection with this lesson: UNTO THE THIRD AND FOURTH GENERATION “One cannot be, with impunity, the son of a drunkard’ ’— so says Dr. A. Joffroy, a French physician, who writes on ‘‘Aleohol and Alcoholism’? in the Revue Scientifique (Paris, July 13). Dr. Joffroy’s article reads in places like an oldfashioned temperance tract, but it is in reality a pitiless scientifie statement of facts. Diseases, the author points out, are of two kinds, those that attack persons in normal health and those that touch only those who are predisposed to them. To create such morbid predispositions aleohol is eminently suited, and in this way it strikes down not only those who abuse it, but their descendants, often ceasing its ravages only when it has obliterated a whole family. We can quote here only a small part of what Dr. Joffroy says. First comes his division of diseases into the two eategories mentioned above. We read: ‘*¢In the case of some discases (searlet fever, small-pox, plague, ete.), the pathogenic agent produces the specific malady in every one exposed to contagion, whatever may have been his previous condition of health. But, on the other hand, there is a whole class of discases that attack only such as are predisposed. Of 100 infants fed in the same way, one or two will become abnormally fat, because, for example, the father had gout or the mother diabetes. . ZION’S WATCH TOWER ALLEGHENY, Pa. ‘« *But hereditary predisposition exists also with nervous diseases, and alcoholism is one of the most effective means of creating such predisposition, as well as developing it where it exists. To have cholera or rheumatism, for instance, one must have obese, nervous alcoholic parents. A man may be seized with shaking palsy, followmg some violent emotion, . but heredity must be present to facilitate the action, and alcoholism is generally found to be at the bottom of this heredity.’ ‘**In mental diseases,’ Dr. Joffroy goes on to say, ‘the role of heredity is greater still, We may almost say that predisposition is absolutely necessary for these.’ The author rejects the classification made by some authors who divide mental diseases into those of the normal and abnormal brain. The former, he thinks, do not exist, a diseased brain being always abnormal. Even poisons that act on the brain select those who are predisposed, and this is eminently true of alcohol itself. Predispositions (generally alcoholic) determine the special form of drunkenness and explain why wine makes one man gay, another sad, another quarrelsome. Likewise, hereditary predisposition explains why alcoholism results, with one man, in an uleer of the stomach, with another in cirrhosis of the liver, with others in paralysis of one or another set of nerves. The writer continues: ‘* On epilepsy the action of alcohol is quite clearly manifest; sometimes a subject plainly epileptic from infancy takes to drink at about 20, with the result that his attacks increase in violence at each excess; sometimes a man of thirty to forty years who has had only slight seizures in childhood begins to have the characteristic attacks, which disappear or lessen when he becomes abstinent. . . *¢ ¢In order that I may be clearly understood I will repeat the definition that I have given elsewhere of incipient degeneracy. ‘‘The totality of organic defects, of hereditary or acquired origin, which, by lessening organic resistance, create new morbid aptitudes and make causes pathogenic when of themselves they would be powerless to injure a normal organism.’ ‘<¢And I repeat again that, in the creation of these new morbid aptitudes, this hereditary predisposition, which dominates almost all pathology, alcoholism stands pre-eminent, doing more harm and counting more victims than tuberculosis. Alcoholism, in fact, not only affects the individual, but its effects are continued to his descendants. One cannot be, with impunity, the son of an alcoholic. Alegholism begins with the father and strikes down his children, and generally its action continues, until, in the fourth or fifth generation, it has destroyed the family. But before this final result is reached, the alcoholics and their descendants are, according to cireumstances, hurled into disease, madness or crime, filling our hospitals, asylums and jails, as I have already said. ‘¢ ¢Blind indeed are those who, ignorant of the dangers of alcohol, see in it only a source of revenue!’ ’’—Translation made for the Literary Digest. Vou. XXVIII ALLEGHENY, PA., NOVEMBER 15, 1907 No. 22 VIEWS FROM THE WATCH TOWER CURIOSITY A DANGEROUS SNARE Increasingly the evidences multiply which show the power of the fallen angels in the affairs of men. Wo call attention to the fact that curiosity is the ‘‘bait’’ which they generally use to entrap their victims. Apparently the human mind is so constituted that these ‘‘demons’’ cannot intrude upon it except with its consent: hence the resort to curiosity to gain the consent of the will to investigate. Then gradually the leading is onward into foolishness or perhaps to obsession. Mechanical toys which answer all kinds of questions are amongst these. They are of various designs, but all requiring personal manipulation, and all tending to establish relianee in and communication with the fallen angels who personate the dead and sometimes personate the Lord himself, and give religious counsel in the endeavor to bind to themselves the confidence of mankind. The more absurd the proposition the more likely wil] it be to arouse curiosity. It seems absurd to believe that a ‘‘ Ouija hoard’? can and does answer questions correctly. There is reason to doubt that the operator may have something to do with the movements, and each must try for himself, thus slightly coming under the power of these ‘‘wicked spirits.’’ (Eph. 6:12, margin.) The only safe plan is to have nothing whatever to do with ‘‘occult powers.’’ They are all ‘‘powers of darkness’’; for the holy angels do not thus com municate with man during this Gospel age, and as ‘‘the dead know not anything’’ (Eecl. 9:10) they cannot. Hence all such occult powers are of the lying spirits, with which men may have communion and fellowship only at their peril. To our surprise, all that we have written on this subject does not keep some of our readers aloof from these snares. We have heard recently of some who were ‘‘not afraid to operate a Ouija board.’’ The truth should and does give courage, but this is not the way to exercise it. Our Lord says, ‘*Fear God,’’—that is to say, ‘‘Fear to disobey and to offend God.’’ The Apostle says, ‘‘Let us fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest we should seem to come short of it.’? The Editor of this journal fears not what men or demons can do to him, so long as he abides in the loving favor of God; but he would fear to disobey the Lord in respect to having communication with these demons and their various ‘feurious’’ devices. It is well that we not only remember the promises of God; but let us also remember to be ‘‘obedient children.’’ ‘‘ AJ] things shall work together for good to them that love God—the called ones according to his purpose,’’? and the delusions of the end of this age will not be such as would deceive the very elect; but we shovld remember the other side also, namely, that such as would have the special watch-care and deliverance promised must ‘‘ abide under the shadow of the Almighty.’’ Of such, only, it is written, [4086]
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