Saint Mary's beacon. [volume] (Leonard Town, Md.) 1867-1983, 1894-06-07

such witnesses, the accused must
plead guilty.
"God," says the inspired writer,
sshath made man perfect, but they
have sought out many inventions. !"
And we question il ever there has
entered the perverted mind of man
. device 20 destructive to human
happiness, 30 annihilatiye to do
mestic felicity ~ the distillation Of
intoxicating drinks, Of inebriating
beverage.
Sobsiety, "the strength of the
SOUL" commends itself to all right
thinking minds. 1t conduces to
the vigorous department of youth
and TO healthful longevity. 1t prof
fers it's blessings to all the citizens
Of free and liberty-loving country,
but oh ! is it not appalling to think
that in this the nineteenth century
civilization and in
The land Of the free
And the home Of the brave"
that boasts of such an universal,
civil, political and religious liberty,
there should abound such general
immoral servitude as the servitude
to the passion for drink? I say
immoral, because immortality 10 seek.
ing to subvert sobsiety).
A cyclone Of insobriety is demon
alizing and Notwithstanding the
youths Of our. fair land in every
station. Intemperance, like an ir-
resistible avalanche, is depopulat-
ing this, the foremost country Of
the globe, from one extremity to
the other, and annually consigning
to drunkard's graves and to eternal
perdition ten thousand, IL not one
hundred thousand, that might have
gone to their "long home" as heirs
of eternal life.
The whole country 10 honey.
cczabed with saloons, those para
sites that thrive upon the deterio-
rated morality Of communities;
those switch-tenders of the devil
that switch our promising youths
from the paths Of virtue, that lead
to life eternal, or to the side tracks
OF progressive degeneration, that
lead to eternal death. Pari passu
with whose prosperous career in any
locality is its moral standard low
cred and the morality of its citizens
declined.
From the snow-capped attitudes
Of New England to the orange.
scented plains Of the great South
ern gulf, and from the shores of our
great country that are washed by
the Atlantic to those that are laved
by the Pacific, the drink habit pre-
walls. and the liquor-traffic is wag-
ing q. warfare against God, home
and humanity, whose magnitude and
fearfully far-reaching tendency are
shocking in the extreme to contem-
plate.
II is at war against God. in that
it degrades man, who was created
in the image Of God, gifted with in
telligence, and designed to occupy
the highest rank among the works
Of Creative genius, to or below the
level Of the brutes that have no nm.
derstanding and the beasts that per-
ish. 1t transforms man that was
made little lower than the angels,
and crowned With glory and honor,
into q human fend, with all the
moral instincts of his nature ster.
ilized and all the animal proclivi-
tives Of his being developed and ex-
cited to the fullest extent of their
activity. The philosopher says,
"The powers of the mind are rea-
son and passion, and when the lat
ter is preserved in subsection to the
former, virtue is prevalent" which
presupposes that reason was given
that the passions might be con-
trolled and virtue prevail. But the
liquor traffic. comes in and entirely
reserses this order of things, for the
natural tendsncEof intemperance,
1.-THE promising-dH-spring Of the liz
quor-trafic,) 40 render reason
dormant and the passions dominant.