The Washington Baptist Association, to the Churches we represent, sendeth Christian salutation.DEAR BRETHREN --
The age in which we live is emphatically an age of wonders; and none of the benevolent and reforming institutions of the day wear more of the divine impress than that of the Temperance cause. It addresses itself to the understanding of every good man with irresistible claims. We hail it with heart felt gratitude to God, and transporting anticipations, as it regards the interest of mankind. It promises to sweep from the social hemisphere, that dark and portentous cloud, which has long brooded over the nation, and annually disgorged its fire-brands, arrows and death, on more than thirty thousand of our fellow citizens.
Who can but rejoice at the pleasing prospect before us? A scene of intemperance, with all its numberless and nameless kindred woes, giving way to a scene of temperance, with all its kindred blessings. Oh! Brethren! So fraught with glory -- so full of promise is this sublime reformation, that we find no language adequate to the expression of the excellence and grandeur. And shall any of us remain listless and inactive, and not engage heart and hand in this bloodless, or rather blood-saving war? Surely not. We think no discipline of the blessed Jesus, can remain an idle and indifferent spectator to the awful ravages of the unrelenting tyrant; nor can he see his dearest friends, and even his brethren fall victims to the deadly disease, when the grand secret of the remedy is clearly revealed. "Touch not, taste not, handle not," is the only remedy, and this is sovereign. Let us, then, wage a holy and exterminating war upon the unhallowed thing, until not a pulpit belonging to our denomination shall send forth the pestiferous effluvia, nor the respiration of a a solitary professing Christian proclaim to the bystander that he is wedded to alcohol. ============== [From Washington Baptist Association Minutes, 1830, p. 7. Taken from a microfilm copy at The SBTS Library, Louisville, KY. Transcribed and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
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