The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1884-05-27
Parker PiIIsburx,s Lecture

A very good sized audience assembled at
Young Mems Christian Association Hall last
evening to hear Mr.. Parker Pilsbury and
gave expression to their approval of the lecture
by frequent applause.
Mr.. PillsJury began by saying that temper
ance was called an old and hackneyed subject,
but he would at least try to have an original
title to his lecture SO he bad called it; "One
more side OF temperance-the under SIDE" He
called intemperance sin; a personal individ-
ual. absolute sin, TO be fepented of, and forsak.
en- as other Gins. So he had held slavery--not
the sin of the North or Sonth but of the pa-
ton. Not of States, nor towns, nor churches,
nor ministers. but of men and women, espec-
tally men who voted on and made, and execu-
ted the laws. Whoever voted for or in q slave
holding government was for a slave holder
Whoever supported church or minister, that
fellowshiped as "a Christian, or Christian
minister, slave-breeder, slave-trader or O
STAKEHOLDER, was himself responsible for slav-
ery-was morally, and so culpably, a slave
holder. And so our slavery was individual,
not organic sin-was personal, and so the sin of
somebody, and therefore absolute, not abstract
sin. And as such, the nation has never re-
pented, nobody has repented; our national
heart is not healed; our nationality is not re-
constructed; our union is not, may never be re-
stored.
So the world will never be rid of intemper.
auce, but by personal repentance and reforma-
ton. We are looking at the rumseller and I'll a
drunkard as the chief of sinners while We are
innocent. But drunkards are begotten and
and born; not entirely made, as most persons
seem to suppose long afterward
Man in has original constitution was made
for virtue; only virtue, made under law
which is to be kept, not violated. Suppose
there be no God, there is law, law to be kept,
with great reward, or violated with punish
ment; it may be. by the tooth of the worn
that never dies"
We seem to have lost all sight of differences
between right and wrong for their own sake.
A sensitive conscience is contraband in fapata-
cism; the more sensitive, the more divine, the
sooner 1t reaches the cross of Jesus, or the
gibbet of John Brown.
we had to take anti-slavery away from the
moralities of the church, as well as the politi-
cal parties; from the popular religion as well
as politics OF the day; and conduct it on its
own intrinsic merits; on the basis of jus-
tice, humanity and eternal right. And the
same must be done with the cause of temper
ance or it can never triumph. The Woman's
Temperance Union is doing this, SO far as the
government, the political parties, are con-
cerned. Now let those magnificent associa-
tions treat the religious sets in the same man
ner, and the cause is sure to triumph at no
distant day. Let education on the terrible
evils of intemperance go into all the schools,
from the kindergarten to the university; from
the Sunday School to the theological seminary;
and then will children, youth and age, learn
the way of temperance, purity and holiness
and millennial glory shall soon illumine ali
the habitable globe.