Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1880-11-10
Temperance and the Churches.

We want-we must have-a public senti-
ment in Illinois that will uphold vigorous
temperance legislation. How are we to get
it Largely through the churches. They
are Gods appointed medium for reaching
the worlds disorders. They cannot afford
to look on, while outside reformers do the
work that belongs to them. They cannot
afford to allow any man zen pretext for
believing that he has outrun them in any
beneficent work. And, since slavery expired
at Appomattox no one form of evil to be
compared with intemperance confronts the
churches. How are they to build up a SEN
timent so high that legislation, planting its
guns upon it, will command the enemy?
1t will not be by "keeping to the gospel
and letting reforms alone" The treacher-
Gus folly of that policy we discovered in
the struggle with slavery. Thousands of
pulpits were keeping to the gospel with
out word on the brutality of selling men,
women and children to the highest bidder
And the iniquity throve and grew under the
caves of their sanctuaries. The gospel in
cludes reforms. 1t is keeping to it to pro-
mote them. And that must be done by ap-
plying it to them. A physician might as
well deliver lecture on the science of
therapeutics to patient writhing with the
gout family might as well quench fire
breaking out in the kitchen by keeping the
beds well made and the shelves well busted
as church expect to reach intemperance
by teaching the exceeding sinsulness of sim
They must make the temperance reform,
not exclusively, but as they do with mis-
sions, for example, a speciality. If we are
ever to see progress against the foremost
evil of the age, pastors must speak plainly
upon it. And not paragra. h OF sermon,
now and then,-a little spray thrown out
from the main current of their preaching,
but whole discourse, say three or four
times a year, solid with fact and argument
aud aglow with life and fire, pouring from
the preachers brain and heart like molten
matter from furnace, with his fears for
the imperiled and grief for the fallen, his
denunciations of the traffic, aud appeals for
rally of all good souls against it.
The children, too, in our Sabbath-schools
must be filled and fired with intelligent in
terest in the work. 1t is miserably INSULT
cient to warn them against drinking, them
selves. They must be no such negative
temperance characters, but positive, whole
souled upright and downright enthusiasts
for the good cause. They must be taught
to loathe the dramsellers business. DIR. Ar
mold, of Rugby school, never thought 1t
enough that boy should only love good. 1t
was not till he began to hate evil that the
doctor was content with him. Let the chill
dren know that it is crime against society
to recognize dram-selling as a respectable
trade-th mayor of Chicago to the contrary
Notwithstanding.
God calls the churches TO raise the public
sentiment Of temperance, because-viewed
at lsrge-they are themselves already raised.
There are many to sneer at this assertion.
There are, confessedly, many individual ex-
ceptions to be found. But every man of in
telligence and candor knows the assertion To
be true, Notwithstanding. The churches
have been the backbone of every efficient
temperance movement. And they always
will be. But they should now be more than
merely that l--Seiected.