he seed of prohibition was planted in the soil of Divine truth.

Ever since God declared woe against the evils of mankind, the
batteries of the holy Bible have been trained upon the "wine that
gives its color in the cup," and the man who "giveth his neighbor
drink and maketh him drunken also."

It _will_ stop, because error cannot stand agitation. Whoever espouses
the cause of error must evade facts, falsify figures, libel logic,
tangle his tongue or pen with contradictions and wind up in confusion.

The able editor of the Courier Journal of Kentucky came to the defense
of this error, and with all his brilliancy and culture, he resorted to
personal abuse of temperance workers, _because he could not occupy a
higher plane in defense of the saloon_. He made up what he called an
"ominum gatherum," of "bigots," "hay-seed politicians," "fake
philosophers," "cranks," "scamps," "professional sharps," "mad caps of
destruction," "preachers who would sell corner lots in heaven," "a
riff-raff of moral idiots and red-nosed angels."

I could hardly believe my own eyes when I read this frantic phillipic
from one I had esteemed so highly for his intellect; one whose element
is up where eagles soar, and not down where baser birds feast upon
rotten spots in a world of beauty. Only a few days before I had read
his beautiful tribute to Lincoln, delivered at the unveiling in
Hodgenville, in which he said of the great emancipator: "He never lost
his balance or tore a passion to tatters," yet the finished orator who
paid the tribute, when he espouses the cause of error, flies into a
paroxysm of passion and tears the dignity of his own self-control into
shreds.

Knowing as I do the culture, refinement and polished manners of the
great journalist, I wondered what aggravating force could have so
unbalanced his mental scales and led him to so bitterly denounce
those, whose only offense is, trying to do what Lincoln did, abolish
an evil. If this resourceful writer were only converted to the truth
on this question, what an "ominum gatherum" he could make from the
work of the saloon curse.

The clergymen, called "canting, diabolical preachers," deserve more
respectful consideration from one who well knows their sincerity. They
are men of brains, heart and conscience; men who believe that
righteousness rather than revenue exalts a nation, and that sin, no
matter how much money invested in it, is a reproach to any people.
These ministers believ