The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1913-08-07
THE PEOPLES FORUM.
Gospel Temperance A Law.
the Editor of The Republican.

The Church should inscribe temper
ance on her banner, because it is a
Christian virtue. She has been the
light of all that is elevating and en-
nObling in the history of the world in
the past The old world and the effete
forms of heather civilization have
crumbled before the light of God S own
bright sunshine, and today there is no
influence upon which the State leans
with so much confidence and so much
assurance as upon the Church of Christ.
Take the legislation of our land and
of all christian lands, and the earliest
intimations of their legislation was to
be found centuries before there was
Lycurgus or Scion. / know it is com
mon to regard this legislation as the
outgrowth of the limitations from
friend of the world in this worlds past
history.
know that as we look up the stream
of time there is in the fading distance
a form family seen of a Scion to whom
the credit is given; but we forget that
Moses was centuries before Scion. As
we look we see also family discerned
against the receding sky, the form of
the great historian. Herodtus. vet
Moses was was thousand years before
Heroditus. We are apt to forget that
these peoples buiIded upon the intima-
tons that God gave in the early time of
His approved of virtue and His disap-
prevail of vice.
If there are statues in the archives of
Maryland, or Virginia; of New York or
Ohio, or any other state that subserve
the best interests of society and of the
state, they are founded upon the old
decalogue that God gave unto His an
cient people.
If there is vice in our midst that more
than any other thing saps the founda-
tons of national life; then, to be con-
sistent, should not the church lend
helping hand to dethrone it?
If the church earnestly guards with
her PRAYERS, if she stands there in
sympathy, if she asks God to perpetuate
the work of the laborers she has sent
out into the nations of the earth, ought
she not to guard herself very jealously
from any thing that may approach its
own vine and fig tree and which like the
worm at the root. may seek for its
destruction.
The Church inscrlbes temperance upon
its banner because everywhere she is a
friend of virtue. and the opponent of
crime. Last year the liquor traffic cost
every man, woman and child IN America
S55 apiece. That was the per capita
cost in money value. That does not
take into account the misery it caused,
the crime provoked, the manhood de-
stroyed, the characters debauched and
the homes robbed of love and happiness.
But 1t does mean that had the traffic
been abolished in the United States for
the last twelve months the drunkards
protected from their appetites, the
young men saved from temptation,
then would have been at the end of the
year something like five billion dollars
more of wealth in our land than there
is today, and it would be true in increas-
ing ratio for every twelve months of
the future.
But Christian America is not satisfied
with her own disgrace, she world de-
bauch benighted Africa, and plunge her
into deeper darkness. The amount of
liquor from America that passed
Madura, port of registry, for the
coast of Africa, in one week, was %, 900
cases of whiskey, 10000 cases of bran
dy; 10000 cases of Old Tom, &c, 900
barrels of rum, $4,000 demijohns of
rum, "a, 600 bottles of rum; Is, 900 barrels
of absInthe, $50, 900 cases of gin.
In Sierre Leone during one fourth of
a year $50 tons of liquors were unloaded
at dry town to be transported to
towns in the interior.
Inc Church must always be hand in
hand with the cause OF temperance.
The liquor traffic is responsible tor
the most of the crime, and pauperism
and large per cent of insanity. Some
of your readers will recall the excite
ment and interest throughout the coun-
try over the abduction of Charley Ross.
The heart of the nation was touched
because it brought home to every
father and mother the possibility that
their own little ones might be taken in
the same way. Yet this was insignif-
cant compared with the danger to which
every child in the land is exposed
from the liquor traffic, and the
people go on unheeding this awful
danger. The church can never win by
having one sermon year preached on
the subject, nor can she win with so
many of her members and officers serv.
ing it at their table to children and
friends, drinking it on state occasions.
renting their property for saloon pur-
poses, advocating it for the money it
brings them. The church must be I'M
firing in its energies, and not apologize
for moderate drinking. The question
may well be raised, is there any such
thing as moderate drinking? A single
glass may be classed as immoderate
drinking. Every christian will, and
every protesting christian should, fol-
low the example of Paul, and forego
their personal appetites rather thar be