ship decks was not poluted by nauseating tobacco fumes from the lips of some of
this select company. We ate glad, however that there is a place where there is no tobacco
smoke, for it is written, "And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that
defileth." Only he that overcometh shall dwell therein.
"Mary,
the Mother of Washington."
The above is
the inscription carved on the monument erected a few years ago at Fredericksburg,
Virginia, to the memory of General Washington's Mother. Here Mary Ball Washington was
buried more than a hundred years ago, and, although this marble shaft, fifty feet high
shall henceforth mark the place of her interment, she needs not this material emblem to
render illustrious her name or to perpetuate her memory. Like another Mary, the mother of
a nobler son, her name has been immortalized and her memory made sacred in the name and by
the life of George Washington, "the father of his country," who, like the noble
son that he was, gave all the glory of his illustrious career to his mother, saying,
"All I am I owe to my mother."
What greater
honor has been, or could be, conferred upon any woman in this country? To have been the
mother of Washington, and to have him truthfully say, "All I am I owe to my
mother," if not a greater honor, it is, at least, as great as to have been Washington
himself. To be the noble mothers of nobler sons or daughters should be the aspiration of
the mothers in our homes to-day. One of the greatest needs of the times is mothers in our
homes—mothers, of whom it may be said, as it was said by a distinguished foreigner of
Mary, the mother of Washington: "If such are the matrons of America, she may well
boast of her illustrious sons."
Give us
better fathers and mothers in this country and we shall have better sons and daughters,
and the generations to come will have increasinlgy better citizens.
Four
Lines of Temperance Work.
"Mental
suasion for the man who thinks, Moral suasion for the man who drinks, Legal suasion for
the drunkard maker, Prison suasion for the statute breaker."
As shown in
the above rhyme, there are four classes of persons to deal with in the destruction of the
rum curse, and it clearly indicates the proper method of dealing with each class.
There is
a class of persons including thoughtful young people and many older persons that are not
fully informed and aroused as to the evils of rum who, though they have little or nothing
to do with it themselves, yet they need instruction, or "mental suasion," that
they may see the evil and both avoid and oppose it. A second class are already en-  |
tangled in the meshes of the evil and, though they may have some conception of
their danger, they are, in a greater or less degree, under the dominion of an appetite
which, if not soon checked, will become their master. They need "moral suasion,"
or encouragement, to rally the forces of manhood still in them and to break the fetters by
which they are being securely bound—to assert their manhood and resist to the death
the power of this increasing appetite, a thing which many of them will not be able to do
as long as the object of its craving is in their reach. A third class are engaged in
pandering to the appetite which they have already created in the second class and in
seeking to foster a like appetite in the first class, for the money there is in it. Their
business is to make and to gratify drunkards that they themselves may grow rich at the
expense of their helpless victims. They are proof against either mental or moral suasion,
being largely destitute of mentality or morality, and the only possible way to reach them
and stop their destructive business is by "legal suasion," or the mandates of
law. The fact is, they are criminals, and must be restrained by law rather than influenced
by persuasion.
There is a
third class who do not even care for law and will not be restrained by it.
They have
become incorrigible and are no longer fit to live in society. The only way to restrain
them is to deprive them of their liberty by incarceration. They need "prison
suasion."
These four
classes exist, and must be taken into consideration, together with the proper method of
dealing with each, in any well-planned and well-directed scheme for the removal of this
great evil. What is needed is light for the first class, love for the second class, law
for the third class and imprisonment for the fourth. And, until temperance workers can
agree to make a concerted movement on all four of these lines, we see but little hope of
real and permanent success in the effort to destroy the works of the devil of rum.
Therefore
let light be scattered by means of systematic temperance instruction in our homes and our
schools and by the general circulation of temperance literature, and let these be
supplemented by a strong and mighty voice from the pulpit and the platform; let
sympathetic hearts and hands take hold of the drunkard, lift him up out of the gutter and
implant within him, the thought and the hope that he may yet be a man; let the law
everywhere prohibit the drunkard-maker's business; let the violaters of the law be
imprisoned, as other criminals, and the next generation will be a sober generation, and
breweries, distileries and saloons will be things of the past.
But to
accomplish this result the move |
must be made on all four of these lines at the same time. The four armies, so to
speak, must simultaneously move from the four points of the compass and close in on the
enemy until he is captured or slain in the center. To move on part of these lines and not
on all is to leave a place for the enemy's escape. To advocate mental or moral suasion, or
both, and oppose or neglect legal and prison suasion, or either of them, or vice versa,
is to defeat our own efforts and to insure victory to the enemy.
Let the
temperance workers, then, by all possible means, give light or information on the subject
to the masses, sympathy and a helping hand of encouragement to the drunkard; let the
government prohibit the importation, the manufacture and the sale of all intoxicants for
beverage purposes, and let the executivies of government enforce the prohibition by the
imprisonment of its violators, and the whisky foe will soon be conquered.
Editorial Notes.
Rev. S. M.
Crom of the Rock River conference made this office a pleasant call Saturday the 9th inst.,
and spent the Sunday in the city.
Rev. J. H.
Spall of Allison, Kansas, has moved to Broken Bow, Nebraska, and wishes any United
Brethren who may be in that region to write him.
Copies of
the printed minutes of the Pennsylvania and of the Virginia conferences have come to our
desk the past week and we are under obligation to those who placed them there.
Word from
Rev. A. Rust of Farmland, Ind., received the 12th inst. says that Sister Rust has been
sick for the last ten days, her suffering being intense, but she was a little better at
the time of the writing.
Rev. R. V.
Gilbert, the pastor, writes that he has $1,000 on subscription to build a church at
Adrian, Michigan. We trust that our brethren in the North Ohio conference will rally to
Brother Gilbert's support in this enterprise.
We have an
article for publication on "What the Holy Spirit Can Do for Me," but the writer
failed to sign his name. If he will tell us who he is we will publish the article. The
name of the writer may have been sent us on some other slip, but, if so, the two have been
separated and we cannot now get them together.
We
publish in this issue the obituary of Rev. J. M. Kabrich, one of the aged and most
prominent members of the White River conference, who died on the 6th of April, but the
news of his death did not reach us until last week's paper had gone to press. Thus has
passed away another of earth's noblemen, but he has left behind, to bless those who knew
him, a life record unusually clean and worthy of imitation. |
