The Jasper weekly courier. [volume] (Jasper, Ind.) 1858-1922, 1914-08-07
JASPER, INDIANA, FRIDAY, AUGUST 7, 1914

cloisterd virtue, unexercsed and unbreathed, that
never rallies into and sees her adversary but sinks
out OF the where that immortal garland is to be
for not without dust and heat. That which puri-
hes us is trial. and trial is by what is contrary. |
have not exercised selfcontrol when have left nv
passion unsubdued and simply placed myself in posi-
ton where can't exercise it. We achieve self-control
only when we lash passions, tastes appetites into
obedience to something higher. Prohibition is in the
main, only exchanging one sort Of intemperance for
another. PrOhibitionStS, when they denounce all
temperate drinkers as food for hell and all saloon
keepers as food for the gaows, get drunk bad and
narrow passion--a worse thing than even getting
drunk on wine! Prohibition says at best: 81 would
do it, but my pledge prevents me, and | can't! A
true temperance says: 81 would do it. there no arti-
fcal barrier in the way of pledge to prevent me;
but my moral sense tells me ought not to do it, and
won't" The temperate man, because he can control
himself can control all things. He is monarch of this
beautiful external world, and he makes all its riches
and all It's delights and all it's throngng beauties his
combination of the things God has created which has
not It's legitimate All things within his reach the
temperate man will draw about him. and show how all
things may be turned to good From the eminence of
thought, of feeling, of pure emotion of selfreliant
power he occupies he will cry to all the restless sons
of EARTH to all the toers after empty ambitions, to all
who rocked by bad impulse, or swayed by
brutal passion ensaved appetite, "Come hither ye
1alnt and weary ones; come and learn how things
turned by you into dire are, in their very
richest blessings; come and learn how impulse may be
cpned into sweetest love- how appetite may be train
ed to minister to enjoyment how all the abundant and
aboundng beauties of the world may be used for good
and made so many rounds In that beauteOus ladder
Whereon men and women may toll after the absolutely
lovely" believe in enjoyment. There is nothing in
this world that is not put there for to enjoy.
There are no accursed agencies in all the great realm
OF nature. What God has created and what God has
given man will to make man has every right wisely to
use. do not believe in asceticism. | abhor it and
reject 1t utterly in every conceivable form. Surely it
can not be that He who earth with richness and
blesses earth with fatness that He who decks each
weed with dewy, pearls that make the Jewels resting
on the bosom of queen look dim; that He who has
made the loviest hidden away in nature.-.m most
secret SOltudes faulteSsy symmetrical in FORM who
has throned beauty in the irefretted sky and made
It's spirit dwell no less the meanest insects wing
who lnStructS the vleWlesS winds to awake the deep
orchestral music of the forest trees and who makes
all nature ring to their never ending gladstone
hymn of praise, it not be that he meant that this
lie OF ours should be made thing of darkened gloom
but costive sympathy for any pleasure of suen alb
stnence from any one thing in which any honest man
can lind an innocent delight!
Did God set his fountains of light in the skies.
That man should look up with tears in his eyes?
Did God make this earth so abundant and fair,
That man should look down with frown of despair?
Away with so heartess, so joyless creed
The soul that believes it is darken'd indeedp'
The prohibition movement has been agitated for
nifty years. An immense amount of money has been
expended; an enormous amount of enthusiasm has
been called into exercise and yet what has the result
been! thousands upon thousands of ntemperate tenn
perance speeches have been uttered cart loads upon
car loads OF books, pamphlets and tracts have been
written and circulated; millions upon millions of dol
lars have been spent and yet the vice against which
all has been directed has not diminished one lot or one
title. The prohibition movement in so far as it had
Tor Its OBJECT the making total abStainerS of men, has,
it must be confessed, proved wretched failure.
Continued in the next issue