Excerpt from The Social and Political Relations of Drunkenness: Two Lectures

Gentlemen,

I Publish these Lectures to famish a correct and complete statement of what I said on a recent occasion, and I dedicate them very gratefully and very cordially to you.

In doing this I beg leave to commend the great cause I advocated to your keeping. I shall say nothing to you of the past, more than to thank you warmly for your sympathy for me when insulted, of the future I will say something by way of caution and counsel. You are entering upon life at an epoch which, in the opinion of many, will be signalized by a conflict of principles. While science is penetrating into the domain of dogmatic theology, and unsettling creeds, outspoken atheism openly attacks the principles of religion, and the more mischievous infidelity of a widely-spread pharisaical hypocrisy is undermining the practice of it. Between these two, - freedom, faith, religion, morals, are endangered, and therewith all that is dear to man. One side or the other you must take, for principles will be applied to practice, no matter whether they be good or evil, - by yourselves as individuals, - by the social whole of which you will constitute a part. I have long ago concluded, that the highest and truest development of Christianity will be attained when we unite Christian science with the principles of the Christian faith. And this is the living idea of these lectures. All the science of the era, of whatever kind, is Christian: Christian in its origin, in its tendencies, in its free communication to men, in its beneficial uses. But the science of human nature which I specially commend to your notice in these Lectures is above all and emphatically Christian, for it applies all human knowledge to the elevation of mans whole nature. It is in truth a genuine Christian philosophy, and is carefully to be distinguished from mere speculative systems, whether they be new or old.

When a similar conflict of opinion took place in the last century, the University of Edinburgh rallied round the tricolor flag of religion, science, and common sense, - the flag of the Scottish philosophy. It sided neither with the modern Sadducee nor the modern Pharisee, but following the example of our Divine Master, maintained the doctrines of life and immortality, and the weightier matters of the law - Justice, Judgment, and Truth. Let us again raise the Scottish tricolor, and if any of you yearn for a deeper spiritual life than mere philosophy affords, it will be an encouragement to you, as you pursue your scientific culture, to remember that all truth is a revelation from God, and that even now in the present age, as in days of old, if you but enter into real and close communion with Him, He will reveal his truths to you.

It will be seen that, at the conclusion of my Second Lecture, I spoke specially of the social relations of medicine as a science and an art. I wish to explain here that it was of the science specially and its effects that I spoke, and not of the medical profession specially. That has not attained to the ideal, it is but a body of men with like failings as other men, neither better nor (I hope) worse than any other body of professional men. Selfish ends are pursued in it as in other professions, and petty jealousies and quarrels, with all their poor results, arise in it as in others. Yet it cannot be charged with great crimes, it has no religious wars nor bloody persecutions to answer for, it has never humbled itself willingly to the Baals of modern society, nor sold its freedom for a mess of pottage.

Gentlemen, recent events amongst you in connection with these Lectures have shewn that there exists a sympathy, although latent, amongst the Students of the several Faculties of the University of Edinburgh. Permit me to express a hope that in the interests of religion, science, and