Temperance Column.

Evening Post, Volume XLVIII, Issue 54, 1 September 1894, Page 2 (Supplement)

Temperance Column.

TEMPERANCE TWIGS. [By Fabhkb John]. The early nerve-steadier catches the last night's tippler. Self-defence is nature's first law, and Prohibition is self-defence. Quit voting against Christ's kingdom, or else quit praying for it. All kinds of vices grow around the saloon, like weeds around a slime pit. A Prohibition that didn't prohibit would never be abused and execrated by whisky men. While the citizens of this 'nation falter, rum fortifies. Lot some man build a gilded hell and apply for a license to dispense cholera germs, or small-pox. Alcohol is the devil's Prime Minister, and Christians are voting confidence in his Cabinet every year. The Lord is ashamed of the Christian who is afraid of moral questions in politics. Preaching against sin in the abstract is a good deal like aiming at the zenith to kill a crow in the cornfield. The license system is the play re-enacted of Joseph's brethren taking bribes for Joseph's servitude ; in tax receipts instead of silver. The devil is perfectly willing that we should pledge not to "taste, touch, or handle,' so long as we don't pledge to interfere with those who make and sell. Spending millions for armour - plate against foes that may never land, and fighting a foe already landed and destroying 100,000 men yearly, with liquor laws no better than mud breast - works, is the politician's idea of statesmanship. What is the moral difference between half-a-dozen men conspiring that one shall Mil another with a knife, and the voter, the legislator, the judge, the brewer, the bondsman, and saloonist agreeing that the bartender shall kill others by whiskyselling ? You might just as well try to harmonise an inconsistency between the North Star and the needle of the compass, as between a voter's confession of faith and his ballot. The first man didn't like a prohibitory commandment, and repealed it by the help of his wife and Satan ; but it wasn't long until his posterity needed ten prohibitory laws. — The Voice.