News and citizen. [volume] (Morrisville, Vt. ;) 1881-current, 1891-05-14
THE WAY OUT.
Poverty and Vice VIII Be Wiped Out
When the Saloon Goes.

Poverty and Vice Will BE wiped Oat
When the Saloon Goes.
A popular Brooklyn divine preached
an earnest and eloquent sermon recently
| ON Darkest Brooklyn and the Way
| Out" The preacher argued that all pro-
posed methods of alleviating the destltu-
ton, degradation and sin OF New YORK
| and Brooklyn, other than that OF plant
ing the gospel seed among the seeming
masses of polluted humanity to be found
in certain districts of these cities, would
prove unaxailing. 1t seemed as II the
speaker failed to realize fully what IS
undoubtedly true, that the prime source
of the poverty and wickedness Of our
great cities is to be found IN the whisky
bottle and the beer mug. The dark por-
| tons of Brooklyn are made the haunts
of cheerless gloom by the deadly shaoow
of the brewery and distillery. Gospel
missionary work will not of itself de-
molish these awful desolaters of the
homes of America, or prevent their own
ers from continuing to build up their
own fortunes by thedegradation of their
customers.
We have no disposition to deny the
literal truth of the above quoted remark.
1t cannot be too strongly asserted that
| the gospel of Christ is the only leaven
which can raise humanity. What we
object to is the idea which may seem to
hold that the gospel is matter of preach
ing only.
God does not promise to do for US
and in fact does not do for us-any-
thing that we can do for ourselves. If
the Christian people of this nation per-
! sist in their refusal to take a positive
and aggressive stand against the great
est evil that abounds in it they may rest
assured that God will never step in and
| abolish the saloons without their help,
nor will he prevent men from going into
the saloons so long as they are allowed
to stand open.
At least nine-tenths of city mission
workers are unqualifiedly in favor of
prohibition. These men and women, who
face the problem every day, know the
power of Christ to cleanse the heart and
give victory over sin, but they know
also. by bitter experience, the power of
| the saloon to draw men away from
Christ and to destroy the very noblest
| characters. The man who thinks that the
gospel should be left to do the whole
work of reform, unaided by wise and
earnest efforts to remove temptation and
to improve the conditions and surround
ings in which the masses live, should
Just get down into the gospel work for
while, and he will soon learn how heavi-
ly the gospel is handicapped by these
outward conditions and surroundings.
1t will not be long before such a man, if
he is thoroughly in earnest, will come
out full fiedged prohibitionist in spite
| of himself.
Let the church put on the whole arnor
of God-she will need it-and go forth
| to destroy the works of the devil by
every means that she can lawfully use to
accomplish that end. Let this be done
in Brooklyn. and light will soon begin to
| penetrate its darkness; men now sitting
in the valley of the shadow of moral
death will be brought into a moro hope
| full condition and Il better experience,
and the church itself will be made purer
and stronger by the conAict.-Pioneer.