ared with the vender of alcoholic beverages, because the
robber simply demands your money or your life, while the liquor seller
demands your money and your life; and there being more than half a
million of them, they seem to be determined to rule the remaining
faction of sixty millions with worse than a rod of iron, even proving
insolent and defiant to the last degree. Sitting supreme in our
national Congress and walking with a swing of conscious triumph up and
down our legislative halls, monarchs of all they survey, succeeding in
every effort made to muzzle ministers, bribe lawmakers, control
officers and business men of our country, and place the nation in
great peril. The traffic is an intolerable burden to the state, a
burden on every back, a blight on every industry, sapping the
heartblood out of all concerned. Think of $900,000,000 as a direct
annual drink bill, and an equal sum to cover the sad consequence.
Two-thirds of this amount is expended by laboring men at the sacrifice
of personal comforts and family necessities. Then why, O why, will not
a greater number of our male relatives assist in striking every saloon
until they are all crushed into hopeless flinders? and why will not a
greater number of our women unite with those who are making efforts to
raise up many who have fallen through and by the use of intoxicating
liquors, and in many ways assist our husbands, brothers, and fathers
in laying plans that will in the near future annihilate the demon rum?
Last, but not least, the liquor traffic is a deadly foe to the Church.
Well and truly did Charles Buxton say that "the struggle of the
Church, school, and the library all united against the beer shop and
the gin place is but one development of the war between Heaven and
Hades." The traffic paralyzes the pulpit, hardens human hearts,
alienates men and women from the Church of God, and in so doing rises
like a mountain in the path of Christian civilization, and we agree
with Rev. A. A. Phelps in saying: "It is a terrible fact, sad enough
to make angels weep, that the two hundred thousand grogshops of this
nation are doing more to damn the people than all the Churches are
doing to save them." Then, in conclusion, let us rally to the cause of
temperance and apply the prohibition as to the deadly upas tree of
intemperance, taking God and his word for our guide, adopting our
Creator's philosophy, imitating his example, and thereby build on
those basic principles th