The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1885-10-30
TEMPERANCE.
THE NATIONAL ORGANIZATION.

preached by DR.. Cuyler from the text:
Judge this rather, that no man put a
stumbling block or an occasion to fall
in his brothers way from. xiv, 13).
We give the concluding portion of the
discourse, as follows:
In presenting to you this morning this great
question of abstinence from the bottle and
our duty as Christians to oppose the drinking
| usage, wish to say word, before close in
behalf of a noble institution, with which |
have been associated from the very hour of
its birth, the National Temperance Society
and Publication House. For twenty years /
have been identified with that most benev-
olent and eenefcent organization. 1t was my
llege to draft its constitution and to write the
first line it ever published, still circulating as
q little tract called "a Shot at the Deeanter"
| During the first eighteen years the preSi-
| DENTAL chair of this Organization was held by
| that prince of Christian philanthropy. Will
| lam E. Dodge. For the last two years the
/ chair has been occupied by the venerable eX-
president of WilliaIns College, DR. Mark Hop
klns, whose good gray head thousands of
| Americans learned to know and revere under
| the shadow OF old Greylock. At the late an
nual meeting OF the society, its members so
| urgently pressed your pastor to accept the
| Presidency OF the society that / have con
| scented to do SO for one year. with the under
| standing that there shall be no interference
/ with the prior claims of this church to NV
time and strengthened that shall be SO far
| renewed from active duty that no hindrance
| Shall be put IN my way to the fullest CARRYING
| out OF the work to VIII ch l stand pledged as
| your minister.
| "Now, what is the purpose and the
| province and the work of an organization
| that during twenty years has received and
expended about one million of dollars?
| answer that. while it is truly religious, it is
nno+in seeearan institution In our Board
| represented. Neither is 1t a political or par
/ tsan organization. We have, as a society no
sort of official connection with any political
| neutrality-suspicious., Democratic, or Prohibit
| ton. We never present any candidates for
| Office; we never issue what is called cam
paIgn document. Last year, during all the
| controversies involved i'll the choice of ma
| tonal rulers, every member of that society
was allowed to follow the dictates of per-
s0nal conscience as citizen. AS a proof of
| tbs, our late President, DR.. Mark Hopkins
| headed the Electoral ticket in the State of
| Massachusetts for one of the candidates. and
| another one of our officers earnestly sup
| ported still another Presidential candidate
| not as officers of our society, but as citizens
o. Massachusetts, citizens of New York,
| New Jersey, or any other common
/ wealth. L make this statement because
| know there has been, unhappily, an entirely
| false impression heretofore given in regard
| to that Association. Now, as our society is
| not denomlnational or political, what is its
character and purpose? In one word, it is an
educator. Its supreme purpose is to educate
| the popular mind, heart and conscience for
| the reformation of character, conduct and Gus
| toms. Its single motto is: educate, educate EDU-
| CATE EDUCATE. If you will go over to our
| publication rooms in Reade street, you will
find on those shelves thirteen hundred publi-
| cations; from q little leatiet up to volumes Of
| five hundred pages, discussing every phase of
| the MISUNDERSTANDING, social religious
and ciyil-aS far as it bears upon the general
| duties of citizens. Many of these are from
the pens of the ablest and best writer's on
both sides of the Atlantic. We have issued
| over six hundred millions of pages in the
shape of tracts and volumes. We have pub
| lished one hundred and thirty-three Sabbath
I school books some Of them, as | can testify,
of the very highest ahd best order. We circiI-
! late every month one hundred and thirty
thousand copies of Il paper for children. ii
you can help save the children, you are sure
| TO help save the country from the curse of
| strong drink
During the last year perhaps our best
| work has been among the freedmen Of the
South. We scatter arguments against the
dram-shop, of course, as the nursery of vice,
| the source of untold misery to the body and
| the death of the soul. But our chief end is to
| overthrow the drinking usageS of society
They endanger your child and mine; they
tempt and destroy our YOUTH they blast the
| home; they feed the dram-shop. The most
| effectual way to destroy dranl-shops is to
| draw away customers. The most effectual
| prOhbitCry law in the world is to write on
| every mans heart and conscience: 81 won't
drink Intoxicating liquors, and L won't buy
them, and won't touch them in any shape"
II nobody buys, who is fool enough to offer
it for sale? The reason why there are no
| grog-shopS In WeStbrOOk, Ireland, is that the
people of that town are not only practical alb.
| stainers, but vote every year that there shall
| no draln-Shop be opened among all that popu-
| latIon of forty-ttye hundred people, believe
IN laws for the restriction of rum-selling as q
public nuisance, and where it is practicable |
believe in laws for the suppression of that
public nuisance; but deeper down than any
| law written in any statute book lie the law of
| conscience and the law of reason; and we, as
| atsociety, aim to reach the cOnsciences of old
| and young, parents and children, to uproot
| the perilous and destructive customs of So
| Getty, to warn not only against the legaliZed
| dramrShOp as the slaughter-houSe of bodies
| and souls, but against the bottle within it and
| the bottle without it and the bottle wherever
we see it-even if it is on your table, my
! friend.
I'VE regard alcoholic drinks as an enemy of
| the body, deStruct We of health. We have Ia
bored for the introduction of elementary
books in the public schools, teaching the chill
dren the real nature of alcohol and its work
| ing; and through our diligent labors and the
| eioquence of faithful, godlY women that have
gone from this pulpit and others over the
| land, fifteen States in the Union have enacted
| that law introducing this elementary treatise
into the public schools. We regard alcoholic
| drinks as the enemy of the home, and there
fore circulate tracts and treatises In favor Of
| shutting the cup out of every household.
| We believe that if a total abstinence pledge,
| signed by every member of the family, could
| be hung during the coming week in every
| home in Brooklyn, from the most splendid
| mansion to the dingieSt tenement-house and
the most obscure alley attic, you might al
| most disband your police, you might lock up
| your jails you might keep millennium in adj
| vance. Who would know Brooklyn after such
a resurrection of purity and sobriety and
right as that, from its CLEARINGHOUSE of tempta-
| ton and of death?
my people, regard drink as the enemy of
/ the hnd love. The overthrow of negro
| slavery was unqueStionably the grandest
| achievement of the history of this Republic
| during this nineteenth century, but a tenfod
| greater curse than negro slavery is the curse
| of the bottle. 1t enslaves the brain, it tor
| lures the conscience, 1t robs the child, it
| breaks the mothers heart. it has power to
| cast body and soul into the pit. Therefore we
| aim to bring public sentiment up to the point
/ or forbiddng the open sale OF this public
| enemy and SuppreSSing every haunt of public
/ temptation. So liberal and catholic is our
! society that we are ready to join hands in
every feasible effort to do this, whether it be,
| in some States, to bring a question of license
| up as near to point of prohibition as pos
| sible, as stepping-stone, or, in other States,
/ such as Georgia, South Carolina anu Mary
| land to allow the citizens of every county to
| decide whether they will have an open dram
! shop or not.
| FINALLY, recognizing that no reform can be
| effective that does not reach the human heart,
| and no effort can be successful if it neglects
! the Gospel and the Holy Spirit, we have made
/ our society from the very inception. society
/ of Christian faith. Every meeting is deyo-
| tiOnal. From the day when. in the counting
| room of that great Christian merchant who
went up two years ago to render his ac-
| count the voice OF William E. Dodge offered
| the first prayer. to the close of the meeting
| the other night, when ministers of God stood on
/ that platform, this society has feared God and
| tried to keep His commandments. It bases its
principles on that Book. and teaches that it is
| good not to put stumbling block in the way
| of another. 1t teaches that the path of So
| briefly is the path of safety, the path of peace
| the path of conscience, that God approves.
| Zone hundred years ago Dr. Benjamin Rush
published the first treaties on the influence of
! ardent spirits upon mind and body. Fifty
| years ago the first National Convention was
| held and unfurled the salqtary principle of
| total abstinence. So that the reform, in its
| present organized shape. is about half a cen
| tury old. 1t has wrought great good Mis-
| takes have been made. folles have been COM
mitted, rash and silly things uttered, unwise
| expedients sometimes used by certain people
IN certain quarters. Is it not so with every
| good cause and every human effort for the
glory of God and the good Of men? look
back over it and see thousands Of homes
changed, thousands of hearts comforted,
thousands of stumblers rescued. thousands
of souls saved by it; ana on its bead-roil of
toilers | read from the revered name of Ly-
man Beecher, with his six sermons, over sixty
years ago, on TO the Theodore Frelinghuysens
and the John Coughs and the Wilfrie Law