The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1885-05-01

OF their youth unless they know about 1t,
and how shall they learn without teacher,
and how shall they teach except they be
sent? This then, is the rationale of scien-
tific temperance instruction i'll the public
school.
Natures way of bringing order out of
chaos, is to steadily food darkness with
light, and we shall never get beyond this
method by any ~spasmodic pyrotechnics,
which no matter how popular for the time,
only serve to make the darkness more visi-
BILE when the artificial coruscations are
withdrawn. When | see our school boys
stunning their growth and drying up their
brains with smoke; when l discover that
their very cigars are soaked in alcohol and
liquors, and that the boys are baited with
beer and enticed into saloons by music,
games, and evil company; when | am told
of their degeneracy in scholarship, so that
the percentage of girls who graduate and
h a honors is steadily gaining on
that of the boys, it seems to me that | can
not wait until the schools of my country
focus their splendid light upon the problem
of prevention. 1t is a glorious thing to
go to the rescue of wicked and ruined
manhood with the lifeboat of reform, but
far better to build a lighthouse on the
sunken reef, warning the unskilled voyager
of his danger. In the light of ten years,
work as a teacher of total abstinence from
alcoholic poison I solemnly aver that had |
the power our system of education should
be so changed that the course of study for
every pupil, from the kindergarten fodder
to the high school graduate, should be
grounded where God grounds our very
being-on naturall law. They should know
physical being is the firm base of the whole
pyramid of character. According to law
is the method as it is the philosophic ex-
PLANTATION Of the universe so far as we can
spell it out. The blessed word ''health''
once literally meant ''holiness," and that
means simply evidences" This body
Of ours was meant to be the temple of the
Holy Spirit, but enemies have taken pos
session of it and dimmed or we'll nigh ex-
tinguished the Shekinah. The alcohol and
nicotine poisons, leagued with bad food,
unnatural dress. bad ventilation, and i'll
proportional exercise, are the demons that
hold the sacred citadel. Yet we call our
selves a science-loving people and think we
care to know Gods reason why. His laws
written in our members we pass lightly
over, that we may learn mans formula for
parsing a verb or constituting a foreign
quotation. Even the Saxons knew that
''every man has lain on his W trencher;"
that what we eat more than all other con-
tingencies determines what we are; but we
pass over these weightiest matters of the
changeless laws of hygiene hat we may
1.-THE the mint and cumin of grammatical
punctilio and mathematical accomplish
ment. Even when we study the natural
sciences we soar amid the stars. and ham,
mer the rocks or dissect flowers, but place
the study of II own more splendid organ
ism at the foot of the list instead of build
ing the whole edifice of education upon
this solid rock, upon which the gates of
hell shall not prevail. Our obloquy of
vision at this point is fatal to the logical
sequence of our entire scheme, and will be
the amazement of wiser and happier gen.
erationS. In the school of the future care
fully trained h%ygienists will be steady at
work studying the habits of the children
and teaching them, on scientific grounds,
how they may form those upon which
physical sanity is conditioned. Clothing
that imposes a ligature upon any organ or
member of the body will not be tolerated;
the eating of highly seasoned food con-
demned; the use of the hog as an article of
diet shown to be a relic of barbarism, and
the physical sin of using stimulants and
narcotics denounced with all the emphasis
of a ''Thus saith the Lord" For we shall
never get beyond that dictum of the Won
drous Hebrew nation. 1t will be quoted
when Aristotle is forgotten. For there is
One
In every age, by every CLINE adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord.
Him whom | worship as Christ you may
name the 'Great First Cause" if that
suits your genius better. We are both
thinking of the author of law, and the laws
are here, close to us as our heart-beats and
as constant. and one of them is this: Be
hind everything there is a thought, behind
every thought a thinker, and in the series
the first thinker must come first of all.
Another is that whatever is evoluted must
have been invoiuted first-in the light of
which principle the whole scheme of teach
ing natural law is profoundly and unchange-
ably religious. For religion is but to bind
again to Gods law that which had broken
away from it. So not less as a Christian
than as a patriot, do | advocate most earn
estly as the basis of our public school sys-
tenn the teaching of the natural Law Con-
corning the bodily habits of those who
come to be taught. The decalogue of
health, the ritual of the Holy Spirits most
sacred temple, must be learned in our pub
lie schools, or they are in the deepest
sense, what might be termed goddess. As
a beginning of this vital education, | would
teach on scientific grounds the unreasona-
bleness of using alcoholic drinks. By