Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1891-03-02

ago had been fatal, for then he would
have gone directly to the bosom of his
Saviour But alas! poor old soul, she
has lived TO experience what Solomon
said, "a foolish son is a heaviness to
bis mother.
THE STRICKEN MOTHERS WOE.
OH what funeral it will be when
that boy is brought home dead And
how mother will sit there and say Els
this my boy that | used to fondle and
that | walked the floor with in the
night when he was sick? Is this the
boy that | held to the baptislnal font
for baptism? Is this the boy for whom
| toiled, until the blood burst from the
tips of my fingers, that he might have
a good start and a good home? Lord,
why hast thou let me live to see thisl
Can it be that these swollen hands are
the ones that used to wander over my
face when rocking him to sleep? Can
it be that this swollen brow is that [
once so rapturousIy kissed? Poor boy
how tired he does look | wonder who
struck him that blow across the tenn
pies? l wonder if he uttered dying
prayer? Wake up, my son: don't you
hear me? wake upl OH he can't hear
me Dead dead dead! % Absa-
lom, my son, my son, would God that
[ had died for thee, 0 Absalom, my
son, my sonr"
am not much of a mathematician,
and | cannot estimate it, but is there
any one here quick enough at figures
to estimate how many mothers there
are waiting for something to be done?
Az, there are many wives waiting for
domestic rescue. He promised some
thing different from that when, after
the long acquaintance and the careful
scrutiny of character, the hand and
the heart were offered and accepted.
What a he'll on earth woman lives in
who has a drunken husband! O Death,
how lovely thou art to her, and how
soft and warm thy skeleton hand! The
sepulcher at midnight in winter is @
kings drawing room compared with
that woman's home. 1t is not so much
the blow on the head that hurts as the
blow on the heart. The rum fiend
home and opened the door and stood
there and said: Il curse this dwelling
with an unrelenting curse. [ curse that
father into a maniac, L curse that
mother into a pauper. L curse those
sons into vagabOnds [ curse those
daughters into profigacy. Cursed be
bread tray and cradle Cursed be couch
and chair and family Bible, with record
of marriages and births and deaths.
Curse upon curse.
Oh, how many wives are there wait
ing to see if something cannot be done
to shake these frosts of the second
death off the orange blossoms! Yea,
God is waiting, the God who works
through human instrumentalities, wait
ing to see whether this nation is going
to overthrow this evil; and if it refuse
to do so God will wipe out the nation
as he did Phenicia, as he did Rome, as
he did Thebes, as he did Babylon.
Aye he is waiting to see what the
church of God will do. If the church
does not do its work then he will wipe
it out as he did the church of Ephesus,
church of Thyatira, church of Sardis.
The Protestant and Roman Catholic
churches today stand side by side with
an impotent look gazing on this evil,
which costs this country more than a
billion dollars a year to take care of
the 500, 900 paupers, and the 315, 900
criminals, and the 30, 900 idiots, and to
bury the IS, 900 drunkards ProtagOras
boosted that out OF the sixty years of
his life forty years he had spent in ruin
ing youth; but this evil may make the
more infamous boast that all its life it
has been running the bodies, minds and
souls of the human race.
UNFAITHFULNESS OF POLITICAL PAR
TIES.
Put on your spectacles and take a
candle and examine the platforms of
the two leading political parties of this
country, and see what they are doing
for the arrest of this evil and for the
overthrow of this abominatiOn. ResO-
buttons? Oh, yes, resolutions about
Mormonism! 1t is safe to attack that
organized nastiness two thousand miles
away. But not one resolution against
drunkenness, which would turn this
entire nation into one bestial Salt Lake
City. Resolutions against political cor
ruptiOn, but not one word about drunk
enness, which would rot this nation
from scalp to heel Resolutions about
protection against competition with
foreign industries, but not one word
about protection of family and church
and nation against the scalding blast
ing, all consuming, damning tariff of
strong drink put upon every financial,
individual spiritual, moral, national
interest
| look in another direction. The
church of God is the grandeest and
most glorious institution on earth.
What has it in solid phalanx accom-
plished for the overthrow of drunken
ness? Have its forces ever been mar
shaled? No, not in this direction.
Not long ago a great ecclesiastical court
assembled in New York, and resolu-
lions arraigning strong drink were of
fered, and clergymen with strong drink
on their tables and strong drink in
their cellars defeated the resolutions
by threatening speeches. They could
uOC O0iT 10 give vi tII6II own lIlSUS.
tell this audience what many of you
may never have thought of, that today
not in the millennium, but today-the
church holds the balance of power in
America; and if Christian people-the
men and the women who profess to
love the Lord Jesus Christ and to love
purity and to be the sworn enemies of
all uncleanness and debauchery and
sin-if all such would march side by
side and shoulder to shoulder this evil
would soon be overthrown. Think of
three hundred thousand churches and
Sunday schools in Christendom march
ing shoulder to shoulderi How very
short time it would take them to put
down this evil if all the churches of
God, transatlantic and cisatlantic, were
armed on this subject!
Young men of America, pass over
into the army Of teetolism. Whisky,
good to preserve corpses, ought never
to turn you into a corpse. Tens of
thousands of young men have been
dragged out of responsibility, and out
of purity, and out of good character,
and into darkness by this Internal St11ff