The Highland weekly news. [volume] (Hillsborough [Hillsboro], Highland County, Ohio) 1853-1886, 1870-08-11
nc RevivaI .of Temperance.

Next to the revival of true religion we
need at this time in every city and village
of our land a Temperance ReviYal-and
we use the phrase to imply abstinence
from all inebriating drinks, accompanied
with honest work and influence to sup
press the sale and use of alchOholic liquors
as a beverage everywhere. There are
cheering signs of fsrch a revival. Some of
the cities and towns of Massachusetts are
moving. We hear of new Temperance So
cietiss formed in Worcester, Lowell, and
oth6r large places, where the friends of the
cause are buckliug on their armOr to fight
the moral battle after the fashion of thirty
or forty years ago. A clear ringing utter
ance goes out to the country from the Con-
gressional Temperance Society, giving the
people a new sensation, and contradicting
again the prOverb which hints that no good
thing can come out UtsNazateBh. It seems
as If many true and stauuch friends of the
cause who have been waiting for redemp-
ton from rum through the law, and inter
mittiug personal efforts the while, were
waking up to the consciousness OF a peril
which thfeatehs TO overWhelin the WhOis
cause. Law, social usagess moral efforts,
education aud public sentiment, are all in
danger. An INSCRIPTIONS business inter-
est, represented by a comparatively small,
but rich and influential, class of citizens,
seems about to be made guardian of the
public morals. God save the Common
wealth Of Massachusetts, or any other SOW
eriegn State, when the liquor interest die
tates its laws and controls its social Gus
toms. It is a case of lambs put into the
special charge of a wolf.
But the wolf can be bound. He is ugly
enough, to be sure, and has dreadful teeth,
and black mouth and an Unsuitable NAV,
and is cruel as the grave; but he can be held
in check, and made harmless. The forces
which control a Christian State are too
much for him. Any community which has
in it virtue enough to suppress theft, and
robbery, and to make the people generally
safe from the steel Of the assassin, OF the
blow ofthe pugilist, can also, just as ef-
fectually, shut up dram-shops, and sup
press intemperance. 1t will not be per
feet success in either case, until society
GOiies into a perfect state, which may be
long time yeti but it can be substantially y
accomplished in any county, town, or
neighborhOod in the land, in which the
people wish to be done. They are said in
the Fee-Jee Islands to eat baked missiOna-
ries, because the people esteem that sort
"
certainly be in demand for pies, when the
public taste favOr5 that kind of delicacy.
The blubber of the whale, the walruAand
the seal, will be equally grateful to the
plate Of Greeulanders and AlaskaEs, III
all places the people are law unto them
selves. They are so in Salt Lake City, in
Richmond, in New York, in Boston, and
Chicago. The 20, 900 signers to a petition
in the Iast=naihed city for the suppression
of dram-shOps, if those, twenty thousand
names represent character and standing
in that community, will tell with great
power upon the temperance question. Let
the personal example, and expressed opin-
ions of the people in any place he pre-
vaiingly in favor Ofthe use ofintOGicating
liquors as a drink, and there Is no power
on earth which can exclHdB hquor from
that place. Let the public sentiment be
as decidedly the other way, and there is
no power on earth which can introduce it.
There Uan, therefOrsj bB 10 way to fid
ourselves Of the uuSpeakable evils OF
liquor-driuking, but 10 educate the COM
munity up to Temperatures as 2 personal, a
social and political virtue. Just as We
stately employ means to maintain the
standard of popular education, voting mill
ions of money, printing millions of pages
aud sustaining thOiisailds OF sghOOls annu-
ally: so t1ust We Use truth and sentiment
facts and figures, by tongue and pen, IN
the pulpit on the platform, by the press
appealing tO-the reason, the Judgment
the conscience, the interests, the hopes and
fears of men; until the public mind has be-
come saturated, wholly penetrated and
impressed with the principles Of temper
anCe.
In this way tHg demon can be cast out
Sin always dies hard, and never harder
than when appetite clamOrs in its behalf
but it will yield when truth engages it il
earnest. To create and maintain pub
lie sentiment which shall Danish alcohol
ic drinks from all public shops and saloons
and from the tables and homes of the peO
pie, will be found to be no holiday spOtt
But to do this is our mission. Let every
one arise and build, and begin over ERains
his own house, Boston congregational
Gf