The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1907-05-05

them, know the cruel power of that
temptation.
! By some such deft manipulation in
our legislatures, our whiskey monopo-
ly would hoodwink the public, COM
promise the teachers, enIrench high IL
cense and jeopardiZe the safety of the
nation by tampering with our child
ren's curriculum.
| Up in Dakota they pay ten dollars
for every gray VOLTS head, because
they endanger the stock, but we lay
traps for our children when we IL
cense saloons and without temperance
instruction keep them ignorant of the
death trap set for their unwary feet.
| The church recognizes the ruin
wrought by the drink traffic. The
I Sabbath schools have always stood
nominally for temperance, and the
rank and file of our ministers advocate
j it. They know that hundreds of bar
rels OF rum so out in the hold of ev-
cry ship that carries missionary TO
undo his work. and to bring worse
curse than heathenism to the islands
of the sea.
A recent Seattle paper says: There
was constant stream of beer flowing
across the wharves all day yesterday.
/ 1t came in kegs, barrels, cases, by the
train load, express wagons, brewery
drays, bound for the Philippines.
This will be the largest consignment
of beer ever exported from this port.
The minister does warn his flock,
J concerning the direct results of the
drink habit-the perpetuation of in
sanity and imbecility, poverty and
misery, crimes innumerable and I'M
mentionable, blasting the hopes of
this life-and of the life to come. But
they cant all talk freely to their con-
they can't all talk freely to their con-
gregations. There are other questions
than temperance-we can not let 1t
monopolize our attention, they say.
There are all grades of opinion in
our church. We cannot compel our
| individual view
| Reforms are the growth of years,
not the result of an hours frenzy.
| These talks on temperance might
! interfere with the governments bust
ness-the only business in which our
republic deigns to engage. They may
| hamper the schemes of our religious
polititions in advancing party meas
ures. For our public is always the
/ light house with a mirror ready to re-
i fleet an aroused public opinion, and
that wouldn't suit the man in the front
pew, perhaps, who pulls the official
wires or pays the biggest bank notes
into the church treasury-and to Of
| fend these would be to offend the
brethren who have quite enough to
do, to pay their quota of expense and
the minister thus loses caste or influ-
! ence which could be used for good in
other ways.
Then such long, tiresome temper
| ance sermons. One cry of mad dog,
would stir the people to a frenzy of
excitement, but hundred thousand
drunkards can go to their graves ev-
cry year; a hundred thousand young
men come on to offer themselves
horrid sacrifice to this minotour of our
civilization-and they go to sleep, or
stay away, or raise a hue and cry be.
cause it is SO hard upon the nerves
, They pay for their sermons and they
want good comfortable ones-"like
parmacetti the sovereign remedy for a
bruise.
And SO day and night the deadly
traffic goes on across continents and
across seas. We, who carry the BAN
ner of Jesus Christ are too inert, or
too pre-occupied, to sound warn
ing, or to call a halt. Much of our
strength is spent in deciding whether
we shall have prohibition or local op-
ton for our watchword, whether 1t
should be high license or low license
when it should be no license at all.
Whether We had better encourage or
close our church doors against the
women who go around lecturing upon
the subject, when it's the only thing
you have left us to do, in most of our
States.
If our laws protected our homes and
our children, there would be neither
need nor desire on our part to take
the public platform. And so far as
women's ability to legislate is con-
cerned, we have always been modest
about that, but we can pluck up cour-
age when we contemplate the mutt
tude of senseless. compromising, inef-
fectual, unenforced temperance laws
on docket
But whatever ''our views" upon this
uldltST. We can all agree I1al the
children must be instructed in scien-
tific temperance for their own person
al safety, and as church members we
can exert our influence in upholding
the minister and all the church work
ers in the stand they take for temper
ance.
Our Sabbath Schools have special
temperance lesson in every quarter,
with an alternate lesson as a loophole
for escape. But should there be an al
tentative? Would one lesson in three
months be the monopoly so dreaded.
Do not both old and young need to
read and think upon this serious prob
lem OF our civilization? No newspaper
should ever be able to publish truth
fully that Only one church observed
Temperance Sunday" as we read in
one of our city papers recently.
While reforms are not wrought in
the frenzy of an hour, we need not
for that reason daily interminably or
legislate idiotically. We must find a
way to teach TEMPERANCE without