e dying Sir Walter Scott gave to his son-in-law, Lockhart: "Be a good
man." And if you want to know how, there is but one perfect and supreme
example,--the life of Him who not only did no evil but went about doing
good.

Now take that thought of fighting evil with good and apply it to our
world and to ourselves.

Here are monstrous evils and vices in society. Let intemperance be the
type of them all, because so many of the others are its children.
Drunkenness ruins more homes and wrecks more lives than war. How shall
we oppose it? I do not say that we shall not pass resolutions and make
laws against it. But I do say that we can never really conquer the evil
in this way. I hold with Phillips Brooks that "all prohibitory measures
are negative. That they have their uses no one can doubt. That they have
their limits is just as clear."

The stronghold of intemperance lies in the vacancy and despair of men's
minds. The way to attack it is to make the sober life beautiful and
happy and full of interest. Teach your boys how to work, how to read,
how to play, you fathers, before you send them to college, if you want
to guard them against the temptations of strong drink and the many
shames and sorrows that go with it. Make the life of your community
cheerful and pleasant and interesting, you reformers, provide men with
recreation which will not harm them, if you want to take away the power
of the gilded saloon and the grimy boozing-ken. Parks and play-grounds,
libraries and music-rooms, clean homes and cheerful churches,--these
are the efficient foes of intemperance. And the same thing is true of
gambling and lubricity and all the other vices which drag men down by
the lower side of their nature because the higher side has nothing to
cling to, nothing to sustain it and hold it up.

What are you going to do, my brother-men, for this higher side of human
life? What contribution are you going to make of your strength, your
time, your influence, your money, your self, to make a cleaner, fuller,
happier, larger, nobler life possible for some of your fellow-men? I do
not ask how you are going to do it. You may do it in business, in the
law, in medicine, in the ministry, in teaching, in literature. But this
is the question: What are you going to give personally to make the human
life of the place where you do your work, purer, stronger, brighter,
better, and more worth living? That will be your best part in the
warfare against vice