Mississippi leader. (Jackson, Miss.) 1892-1895, 1894-08-07
they have sown in the fields of

we must lessen temptations to dissipa-
tion and waste.
High ideals of total abstinence pro-
jected on Sundays from the lips of
clergymen, when the saloon at every
corner tempts man to be a drunkard,
remind us of criminal folly of VOL
taire, who believed all men to be fools
and then put muskets in their hands to
shoot their fellows down.
Clergymen will tell you that a drink
is good in its place, and in the same
breath will splutter out blistering wrath
on drunkenness and the saloon keeper.
Is not this more ridiculous than Ju-
illus Caesar denying the existence Of God,
and then crawling on his belly to ap-
pease the wrath of the abstraction called
Nemesis?
Clergymen, who look as wise as Gedi-
pus interpreting the enigmatic false
hoods of the sphinx, preach this rot,
and like those cradled in oriental fable
land they believe this inherited lie.
Drink has no place in this world.
1t belongs to those who feed on the
things of perdition.
Strong drink is not good.
Beer is not a food, but poison.
Alcohol helps a weak man to be weak
er and sick man to be sicker
Science has demonstrated this fact
Will the churches believe science, or
will they continue to believe and preach
inherited falsehoods consecrated by the
religiosity of selfish desire and selfish
motive?
A perfect physical nature is perfect
physical health, perfect mental nature
is a normal brain, perfect moral ma
ture is perfect conscience, and per-
feet being is a spotless soul in sound
mind in a healthy body.
Alcohol, as proved by science and ex-
perience, is hostile to those three neces-
sary conditions of perfect being.
1t is opposed to tho four organic func-
tions of our physical nature-namely,
nutrition, growth, motion and repro
duction.
The instincts of the brute creation
confirm this idea.
Were it not for the Sainsons and
John the Baptists of total abstinence in
every generation and in every century
the world of men would be in physical
and intellectual-night long ago.
Are not the total abstaining men and
nations of the world and in every CEN
tury the survival of the fittest physical
ly, mentally and morally?
Without the use of alcohol the organ
ism of every human being born organ
ically sound is made to last from $50 to
200 years; hence without disease-and
alcohol causes three-fourths of all the
diseases of the world-man would be as
healthy and as happy as the careless
Arcadian before nymph or shepherdess
vexed his heart with q sigh.
Does not the history of Babylon, Per-
sia, Greece and Rome sustain this argu-
ment? Cyrus, Alexander and the Caesars
went down because strong drink went
up into their heads.
Look at the nations of the world to-
day, and what a melancholy vision,
what a terrible manifestation of the
penalty of broken law, do we behold!
We behold bodies dwarfed and dis
eased, minds enfeebled and perverted
and souls tainted with impurity and
gravid with the seeds of artificial pas
sion and moral depravity until, as South
cogently puts it, children are not so
much born into the world as damned
into it. -
If we have congenital criminals and
idiots and the morally depraved. how
could we expect otherwise?
The corner grocery saloon, by making
the mother a drinker, has given an alb
normal inheritance to the child, and
this same saloon becomes later in life
his abnormal environment and confirms
him in disease, in mental and moral de-
pravity.
We can cure the disease of inebriety,
but we cannot reform men in the pres
ence of the depraving environment Of
the saloon.
The churches advise men to keep away
from the saloon, but they cannot-no
more than the moth from the flame that
consumes it.
What is left for us, then, but to put
away the saloon?
The smile of Demetrius the brewer,
and Demetrius the saloon keeper, and
Demetrius the rum made politician, is
industriously cultivated, because it
stands for gold, and the wailings of the
poor commonwealth made poor, too, by
the saloon, fall upon frozen ears.
1t is this hypocrisy of the churches
that has made the infidel, and the in.
fidel is host, and his ranks are being
daily augmented.
There is no use in tinkering with this
evil
Such course would be only polish
ing pebbles and dimming diamonds.
We cannot compromise with the evil
There can be no reconciliation be-
tween righteousness and the existence
of the liquor traffic.
1t is light and darkness. and light
and darkness are impossible terms.