The Anaconda standard. [volume] (Anaconda, Mont.) 1889-1970, 1898-03-08
DRINK EVIL DISCUSSED
At the Meeting of the Butte Min
isterial Association.
BY THE REV. SHERMAN HILL
The Suppression of the Evil Depends
Upon Public Sentiment-Laws Are
Dead Letter if Not Backed
Up by 1t.

Hill, Shaeffer Glidden, Darrow, Rob-
ertson and Peterson present. Rev. Mr..
Healy of Anaconda also attended the
meeting. The subject of good citizen
ship and a paper on The Drink Evil
read by Rev. Sherman Hill of the
Christian church, were the matters dis
cussed The paper dealt principally
with the prohibitory laws, suggesting
their failure or success and their rela-
ton to public sentiment. MIR. Hill
spoke of the laws in Maine, Iowa and
Nebraska, and said that the chief thing
in the enforcement of law was public
sentiment without which law is dead
letter. One phase, he said WAS always
neglected in dealing with the liquor
evil, and that was public sentiment
and mans willingness or weakness in
yielding to temptation. The assertion
was made, in effect, that if the laws
were strictly enforced in Butte they
would be found sufficient
The paper, which aroused a great
deal of discussion, was in great part as
follows:
Il have thought for some time, and
as my observations broaden and my
investigations deepen 1 am more fully
and securely grounded in the thought
that the primary evil of internperance
quently not brought out as thoroughly
as it should have been; that the preva-
lence of this phase of the evil has not
been sufficiently noted; that suffi-
cient conviction of the depth OF the
primary evil does not prevail and that
the remedies of the evil as thus con-
sidered have not been sufficiently
pointed out and elaborated. With these
remarks / invite your attention to
foil .AI,o
of our topic: The primary VS.. the sec
ondary evil of intemperance-the prev
alence of the evil; its causes and its
remedies.
First, The Primary Evil of Intern
perance.-The question most naturally
and Immediately arises: What is the
primary evil of intemperance? To
which we reply: 1t is the wilful or
voluntary extinction of the reason. To
admit the doctrine of the average tenn
perance reformer, that the inebriate is
not so wilfully and voluntarily, is to
invalidate the genuineness of the re-
form of every inebriate and the Divine
statement: God will not suffer you to
be tempted above that ye are able to
bear
mot that the secondary evils are
not heinous and degrading and sinful
in the extreme and ought not to be
brought out in all their vileness, but
they should not be brought out at the
entire sacrifice of the former. But that
such has been our mode of action is
but matter of observation.
1T is almost wholly common for
those who agitate temperance reform
to speak eoquently of the bloated and
distorted countenance. to expatiate
upon the trembling wife, the squalid
children, the empty larder, the APP
proach of poverty and the cherries
home. They make special mention of
the immense amount of squandered
money and we moan in bitter sadness
over the awful recital Lectures with
out number are delivered wholly upon
the secondary evils of intemperance,
Celebrations of these phases of the evil;
national and local campaigns have
been carried on almost wholly upon
this theory our school and text book
instruction gives paramount promi-
hence to the secondary rather than the
primary evils of the monster.
This is all right, but it is not all
right We are far too much inclined to
give an overplus of attention to the
results of evil rather than to the evil
itself The monstrous evil of intem-
perance is an inward rather than an
outward evil a spiritual and mental
rather than an outward and physical
sim Whoever becomes Incorporate,
deliberately and involuntarily resigns
his rational nature, loses his Self-com-
mand, and thus prostitutes his moral
powers. He wilfully commits direct
sin against his divine and sacred ma
ture-the nature that enables him to
distinguish between right and wrong,
the nature that distinguishes him from
the brute.
1T is in this that the awful crime of
intemperance lies. All other phases
are as nothing compared to it. Nearly
all other evils flow from this 1t is de-
sired, whenever a man thus suicidal
| ~ sins against his divine nature,
that his monstrous crime be fully i'm
| pressed upon himself and the world.
| We should never fail to impress upon
men what a fearful thing it is for man
Gods offspring-to voluntarily re-
| nounce his reason and become a brute.
! If the drunkard could abandon his rea-
! son and retain his outward appearance,
/ we would be the losers. 1t is we'll for
/ us that he who abandons his station
among the images of God and becomes
| a brute that we can see in his outward
| appearance the marks of his fearful
| inward sin.
THAT the drunkard is poor is not SC
much a source of sorrow to the wife
| What brushes her heart is not their
/
! poverty, but that the husband is a
drunkard. In this respect the social
| and gambling evils are not to be COM
pared to the drink evil. Loathsome as
| the victim of the social evil may be
and dishonorable as the gambling fieno
may be, they have not voluntarily sur
rendered their reason. Both civil ano
sacred law recognize this difference
| All admit that the drunkard is void OF
| roo Son hat WIN would admit the same
| of the fornicator or gambler?
TO intemperance and its associa-
tions are to be traced almost every vic
tim of the social or gambling evil. Tht
| frequent prostitution of any nature
will render it unfit for its intended pur
| pose, hence is to be seen in the oft
| repeated sin of the drunkard the flood
gate to almost every conceivable sill
| and crime.
The three great evils ara not Away
! associated i'm the individual or institu
! n fpVr1faaf 5C MT a .