The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1893-11-23
w. @. Z. u. COLUMN.
MRS. w. B. KING, Press supt
FOR GOD AND HOME AND NATIVE LAND.

VINO WILL ROLL THE STONE AWAY
The boulder of the saloon lies right in
the path of progress, lies over against
the fairest things and best we know,
and it entombs the hope and happi
ness of sixty-fiye million of people. 1t
rests against the door of every home.
No home in all this fair land is free.
No mother knows when her boy leaves
the freside, whether he will come back
untainted and unframed. 1t may be
the walk to business, to the postotice,
or the social call; it may be on his
way to the house of God, that, alas,
the pitfall throws its alluring, enticing
glamour across his way. In order to
recruit the saloon and support it, it
must rob from seventy-five to eighty
thousand homes annually. The sa-
loon is the boulder resting hard against
the financial prosperity of the country.
Eight hundred thousand dollars for
paupers; forty million dollars for
crime, courts and jails; two hundred
and twenty-five million dollars waste
in industrial power; one hundred mil
lion dollars for the insane; nine hum
dred million dollars for the drink. Add
these and you have only the approx
mate cost of the mighty load which
the nation has legalized and is try
ing to carry.
And yet, good men are telling US to
lift this stone by prayer. They gath
or in its presence and sing gospel
hymns, reassure each other as to the
promises of God, and believe that by
some rare miracle of grace God will,
at last, lift the awful shadow from our
hearts and homes.
Business is business don't you
know? And it pays; this saloon bust
ness is pathway of blood, and tears,
and sorrow and crime, but it pays; a
cents worth of good Bourbon to a
glass of water will sell for ten cents,
and smoky, reeky, damp, dark by
way OF a room, that i city mission So
ciety couldn't afford to pay one hun
dred dollars per month, will rent for
two hundred and fifty dollars by sa-
looh. No, business men are not going
to roll away the stone.
But somebody goes back and says
"Why not, then, rely upon Gods pow
er entirely? Sing, pray, write, preach
and nothing other?" "Why not just
pray?' Is there anything to succeed
the moral grandeur of the Woman's
Crusade of twenty years ago ago?
How it spread from the old Hillsborc
church, outward, throughout Ohio and
it's adjacent states! In what passion
of fear, anxiety, doubt, tears, entreaty
beneath the pitiless rain. in the mud
on the street, in the snow, and unshel.
tered by aught save the blasts of that
cold, belated spring. those wives and
mothers knelt and prayed. They
prayed and prayed and stormed the
sullen face of heaven with prayers
The cry was importunate, "Who will
roll us away the stone?'
The legislature said, mot I.
would would not be reelected" The
newspaper said "Not I, for it would be
unpopular" The politician said "No'
I, for it would pull down my party
The church said, 'It is not in me"
So at last it was the women who
said it was the whisper of the small
still voice, Rise, we must, and work.
This is just what the Woman's Chris
tan Temperance Union has been do.
ing. We have been attempting the
most impossible and making it the
actual. We have learned to wait, to be
patient, to ask much and receive little
Have been criticised, we are human
we differ sometimes as to methods, bu,
around one supreme, yielded and un
yielding idea, we have gathered
watched, worked, planned, and never
tired in crying to the heart of man, the
conscience of the church, the powers
of the state to God in heaven, "Whc
will roll away this stone.'