The Monitor. [volume] (Woodstown, N.J.) 1884-1892, 1886-10-29


ilcge Of selling to children is denied you.
Here parents have a right TO say to You
Leave our son TO us until you have a right
to destroy him by law. Do not anticipate
that terrible moment when we can assert
for him no further right of protection
The father may say That will be 5000
enough for me, for his mother, for his sis
ter, for his friends, for the community, to
see him take the road to death. Give him
to us in his childhood at least. Let us have
a few hours of his youth, in which we can
enjoy his innocence to repay us i'll some
degree for the care and love we nave law
ished upon him.
Moral suasion. Yes. Let us use it. 1t
is a noble instrument for a noble work.
Don't be afraid to take the drunkard by
the hand; TO put YOU arm round him.
The power of a kindness that does not
shrink from him may save him. You will
remember that to cure a loathesome leper,
Jesus put his hand on the leper's head.
A most ineorrigible criminal, who was in
prison again as often as he got out of it,
was sent to a christian man to see if this
christian could do him any good. The
christian laid his hand gently on the crimi-
nails shoulder, and spoke with gentleness
words of courage. And when reclaimed
the criminal said it was that touch on the
shoulder that saved him. You will re-
member that it was the kindness of Jesse
Stratton that saved John b. Cough. And
that kindness has wrought wherever and
whatever Cough has wrought. You do
not what a great work you are doing by
the kindness that saves a drunkard. You
may be saving a Cough. Yon may be
saving one who although they do not much
here, are here fitted to do a sanity work
beyond the stars, a work whose ulster
makes the brightness of Coughs work but
dimmest shade. AT any rate you save God
a son, and you save a prodigal his Father.
You remembering Judgment scene as de-
pieted by Jesus. Inasmuch as we did it unto
one of the last of these; or did it not. Jesus
is hidden in every drunkard awaiting but
a touch of Christian kindness to be made
free. In the revealing of Himself there is
always with Jesus a hiding of Himself.
He, the Almighty God, hid Himself in
man, and man did not know Him, and unto
this day some do not know Him. They
say, "a good man." but do not know the
Almighty God. As verify as that Jesus
was on earth, is he in a sense in the heart
of the drunkard, fettered, imprisoned, dy-
ing. When you set the drunkard free, you
set Jesus free. Inasmuch as ye did it unto
one of the least of these. my brethren, ye did
it unto me. When Peter the hermit
stirred up all Europe with the strange en-
thusiasism of r~escuing the sepulchre of
Jesus from the hands of the infidel, he
made a wonderful history. And when the
christian people inaugurated the work Of
moral s~uasion, that sublime effort to set
the drunkard-imprisoned Christ free, they
made and are making sanity history. But
yet while we are freeing the Christ from
one den of drunkenness, we set up a man
and Empower him by laws to imprison
a hundred more. And so the sad Christ
is never wholly free. While with one hand
we are fr- eing him. with a hundred we are
imprisoning him. As long as you and |
take part in licensing the rum seller who is
enslavIng our brother. | do not see how
we can very consistently ask God to save cur
brother, or our ions, from drunkenness. 1t
is a good bit like praying God for daily
bread, and then spending the day as
a lazy loafer. When We open a saloon at
our door, and our son becomes a drunkard,
and we say. o God ave mercy. We are a
good bit like the boy who murdered his
father, and then asked the judge to have
mercy upon him because he was an orphan.
Moral suasion for the drunkard, prison
suasion for the drunkard-maker.
Legal suasion. Nearly all temperance
people are Prohibitionists. They believe
in the legal stamping out of the making
and selling of distilled damnation. But
how to do it? That is the question that
divides and weakens those who are at one
in regard to the thing sought to be accom-
plished. | will not attempt to solve this
now, but l will give you some hints to its
solution. What is party? 1t is organized
voters seeking a certain end. OF some
parties it might be said, 1t is an ingenious
organization by which a few men control a
multitude to the end of a trading in offices
and advancing themselves. But unless
party is organized about some great pria-
ciple, it is painted moral r~ottenness. Par
ty is scaffold, and sea fold that is not unto
building some noble ediicc is a mockery.
Now sit down and ask yourselves-not
what this party or that party has done
the past may be secure, and a most noble
achievement but what are they proposing
to accomplish now Have they any dis
~tinctive principle worth voting for, worth
fighting for, worth dying for? If they are
simply striving to get in power themselves
and keep one another on. of office, If they
exist simply for the loaves and fishes, then
the sooner the hot indignation of the people
wither them the better. When a party full
fills its mission. and cares only for the
offices, and because bidding FOR everybody's
vote is too cowardly to take upon it the
regeneration of a great principle, it is yet
supported by our %prejudices. And prejudice
is the sap sucker of moral questions. 1t