Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-06-28
the cigarette habit should be fought and the
White Gross enthroned
OF A MOVABLE FEAST.

NOT A MOVABLE FEAST.
Because some do not wish to teach the les
son let us not make it movable feast which
turns out an immovble fast SO often through
the teachers total abstinence from it, Those
who least desire to give their scholars this in
struction are doubtless those who most need to
learn about temperance themselves, Then let
us make 1t as easy as possible for them TO
gravltate toward rather than climb up to the
temperance lesson by making it SO fixed that
all the Sunday school papers shall find it to
their interest to furnish first rate lessons.
This lesson regularly taught with the best
lesson helps furnished by expert writer's, will
educate the public sentiment that shall banlsh
the wine cup from society; separate the Gov
eminent from the liquor crime and give us
prohibition with the officer behind the ordi-
nance, the law ehforcer back of the law. 1t
will stir up the church to demand the down.
fall of rum upon the Congo; enlarge its heart
and pocket toward the blessed cause of foreign
missions and do more to hasten the universal
reign of Christ than any other one thing that
this convention can orda1n. .
With the majesty of Gods BOOK and the dlg-
nifty of the church militant what a power
these lessons will become! They Will Dring
THE MASSES AND THE CLASSES
nearer together The masses say our churches
are not practical; that we are not in touch
with the every day sins and sorrows of human
ity but we know better and we will prove 1t by
keeping step with the reforms that Christ's
church alone makes possible. But other IN
terests will ask for special Sundays" Thev
may do so but surely will not claim to outrank
or measure up to this overmastering issue. The
recipe for cooking hare Is here In point: First
catch your hare and you must catch your boy
with the saloon snatching ior MN on every
his brain free from the cobwebs OF alcohol
and nicotine or you will seek IN vain
to keep him within sound Of the good lessons
of the Sunday school concerning foreign mis-
sions, kindness to animals and the unfoldment
of 1.-The Christian year" Self-preservation is
the first law of nature; if the saloon steals away
your boy, where Is the Sunday school? First
catch your hare.
Itis not enough that the lesson is indicated
and may be taught. In providing for nothing
beyond this; IL failing to provide specific appli-
cations of Scripture truth. we leave the young
and untaught at the mercy of every teachers
whim, or ignorance, or want of training instead
of putting upon the teacher himself the
is hardly less important - attractive
methods of presenting what he knows.
If you give us four temperace lessons in year
that hinders nobody from bringing in the sub
ject as often as he will. No denomination-if
such there be-unfriendly to these lessons, need
give them a temperance Interpretation. Our
forefathers did not, and surely
NO CHURCH CAN OBJECT
to Scripture passages, and if its Sunday school
publishers prefer to furnish more general
commentary on the text they can do so. En-
gland need not put the words Temperance
Lessons" at the head of her thirteenth Sunday
selections, but Judge by the temperance news
now coming TO us, the Mother Country will not
be far behind. The United States are ready,
Canada is ready-let the Americans head the
advance, they are used to the setting of Key
notes. Falter who must. follow who dare!
Once the scientific teaching now required in
public sch6ol would have been worthless for
DR.. Austie, with his dictum, "alcohol food"
was its chief teacher and moderation was its
verdict. Now. after an added generation of
experiment, Dr. Benjamin Ward Richardson is
chief, and total abstinence the only safety is the
conclusion.
The development of Biblical teaching has
been along parallel lines. Fifty years ago the
clergy taught that alcoholic drinks were "a
good creature of good to be received with
thanksgiving" and proved their sincerity at
ordination dinners and pastoral visitations.
To-day the gospel precept "Be temperate IN all
things" means to the Church of Christ, be
moderate in the use of all things good and
totally abstain from all things harmful, OF
which alcoholic drinks are chief"
Total abstinence is in the Bible. 1t lives by
implication in every letter of the Golden Rule;
it stands by explication in the Pauline doctrine
that declares at is good neither to eat meat
nor drink wine nor anything whereby thy
brother is offended. 1t is thereby the whole
philosophy of the gospel and the whole trend
of the sermon on the mount.
CHILD's ANSWER.
In one of our work meetings the question
was asked by Miss Anna Gordon in her speech,
hundred little folks were present and many
hands were raised. "You may answer" said
Miss Gordon, turning to pale-faced boy of II
whereupon he said IN voice full OF pathos,
SALOONS are bad for our village because they
spoil the home" We learned later that he and
his mother were kicked out into snowdrift
the night before by his father when drunk.
Two years ago had to speak before COM
mittee of the United States Senate on behalf
of our white ribboners' petition for prohbitory
law. Louis Schade, attorney for the Brewers
Congress. spoke Also and based his argument
on vested interests" claiming that the Gov
ernment was in duty bound to protect these.
When my time came to answer pleaded for
the holy motherhood of America, who have
gone down into the valley of unutterable pain
and in the shadow Of death with the dew of
eternity upon their foreheads; have passed the
sacred but terrible ordeal that gives to Ameri-
ca her sons. By as much as the home is better
than distller's vat and the mothers heart
more precious than brewers cask; by that
much is the temperance reform bound to be
victorious.
And SO am not thinking wholly of this
blessed throng with its kind hearts. These
faces fade from view and behold the children
in ten thousand homes: the little soldiers newly
mustered in the army of temptation and sin; the
boys to whom hard hands hold out mugs of
beer and poison cigarettes and greasy packs of
cards. I see them shared and trapped by
the iegalized temptations of the streets.
But these have been to Sunday school, where
sacred standards are set up, where life is
my class ZIP 1900 and ever so few" they would
have learned. perchance, a theory concerning
the species of sheep on which grew the horns at
the blowing of which Jericho fell down or an
HYPOTHESIS relative to the ingredients of Esau's
mess of pottage and they would most assuredly
have been taught to bound the map of Syria.
Should they come now, and if had class who
are forever ION the wing" I'd try to teach them
to bound the map of character.
WOMAN IN THE VAN.
NV comrades in Christ's Holy War, It is
woman who have given the costliest hostages
to fortune; out into the battle Of life they have
sent their best beloved, with snares that have
been legalized. and set along the streets. Be-
yond the arms that have held them long their
boys have gone forever.
At Pompeii we saw among the moulds of
human figures found beneath the ruins
a little child that his mother had tried to save,
but there he lay just beyond her reach, and for
centuries her poor prostrated form had been
there with stretched out al ms and fingers still
showing her agony by their futile curves-for
the child was just beyond her power to grasp.
How often see them as study the pitiful
nayements of our towns and cities-mothers
lender and true. whose sons forevermore are
lust beyond their reach.
But not beyond yours perhaps; not beyond the
united efforts of the Church of Christ. In
Edinboro one of those old eight or ten-story
houses had fallen, and in the ruins the occu-
pants were buried. When the workmen who
mad wrought earnestly and long ceased their
efforts, believing that all were lost, they heard
a feeble voice calling: "Heave away, there; not
dead yeti" 1t is buried under the degradation
of centuries; poor old humanity, with its pain
and passion and the infinite pathos of its earth
ly estate, but as the Christian worker bends to
his heavenly task of rescue, evermore comes
the cry from childhood's lips: "Heave away,
there; we're not deadp'
Fireworks! Fireworks!