Temperance Column

Bruce Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 310, 6 October 1899, Page 3

Temperance Column

[The matter for this column is supplied by a representative of the Bruce Prohibifc.on League, who alone is reaponuible for thd opinions exprea&ed hereuuder.] One chief cause of insanity. There are many cauaes, bat Dr Forbes Winslow eayfl:— " Quite 30 per cent. >qt lunacy in all parts of the world originates, in habits of intoxication." (''Mad Humanity /\ p. 414) Piofeßaor F. ~W. Newman : " Intoxicating drink is the greatest factor of insanity." Dr F. R. Lees : " Insanity, in tho main, corresponds in every country with the use of intoxicating drinka." Lord tihaftesbury, for 16 years Chairman ot the Commission in Lunacy said : — " Sixty out of every hundred come to the asylums directly through drink." A TEMPER AN Oil VILLAGE. Some interesting facts have beeu published respecting the temperance colliery village of Roe Green, in Lancashire. Five-and- twenty years ago the Houses of the village belonged almost exclusively to the Bridge water trustees, who employed rnosb of the meu. To-day, out of 140 houses, 81 are inhabited by their owners. Oue Temperance association has a membership of 270, another — the Band of Hope — 286. There ia a co-operative stoic, the properly of the village, yielding a pi-otit of in the £. This church aud Sunday-school have been built by the workmen themselves, «t a coat, of £2700, and while in the United Kingdom as a whole, one in four of persons over sixty years of age receives parish pay ac lea-:t tor a p*n; of the year, in Roe Green there id not a single one over this age receiving pauper relief. Clearly there is something to be B=>id for a temperance village. — ' Home Words.' THE AKCHBL-H P OF CANTERBURY UPON PKAOTICiS AND PliEOifiPl. The Archbishop of Canterbury, at at, Oxford, in November, delivered an address at the Oxfurd Union Society; in the debating hail; which wa3 thronged, A PLEA FOE THE TEMPEEANCE MOVEMENT. He came there, he said, as they were aware, as a member of two great national societies — namely, the Church of England Temperance Society and the National Temperance League. He was president of the one, he was president of the other. — (Applause.) They had in this country a terrible curse, the prevalence of the sin of intemperance, and it had been maintained by custom now for a very long period. It was doing mischief still of the very worst kiad, and they saw men degraded by it to the lowest degree, while terrible sufferings were brought on women and children. With all this evil before their eyes, was it possible for them to say that they did not care; and that tney wore indifferent to all this ? To act in that wny was not consistent with the highest Christian life. They ought not to be indifferent to what effect all this produced upon other men than themselves. — (Applause.) Ifc was not possible for any man to say that he was absolutely safe. He had known sad instances iv the university of young men giving way to this temptation, until they were ruined in body, and, ay far as men could judge, ruined in soul. THE VALUE OP TOTAL ABSTINENCE, He had been for many years & total abstainer from all intoxicating liquors — (applause) — not because he fouad it at all necessary for his own life, bun because he found that tho influence he could exercise upon other people in this particular was greater when he was abitaiumg entirely. He fouud very soon, indeed, that if he were to affect other people at all, the difference between saying " Come along" " Gr j along" was enormous. — (Applause.) There was a vast differenca between the exhortations of a man who, in order to show his thorough sympathy with his tempted fellow-creatures. wa« giving up something which it was not at all necessary for his own spiritual life to give up, and an exhortation to be careful, to be moderate, to watch themselves. For a grout many therti was no other road to a real recovery but total abstinence-— (applause), — and when the man saw that — and the evidence for it was overpowering — *nd felt the dreadful mischief that this thing was doing, and to rescue these unfortunate people, it w»s a very natural conclusion to say, " I will have nothing more to^do with it." THEY WEEE THEIE BEOTHEE's KEEPEBS. There was nothing like shoulder-rto-shoulder. It was this way that all the grfcat battleß were really won, and so in this great battle to which, in the name

of the Master, they, weie summoned, he would say the thoroughness of the fight was well worth purchasing at the coat of giving up muny more indulgences than the indulgence in intoxicating liquors. He maintained that not only the Christian," but the man who desired to live on the highest principle and for the most heavenly motives, ought to do his very utmost to rescue his brother by whatever means he found most effectual for that purpose. — (Applause.)