WOMEN'S WORK FOR TEMPERANCE.

Evening Star, Issue 11701, 6 October 1902, Page 7

WOMEN'S WORK FOR TEMPERANCE.

WOMEN'S WORK FOR TEMPER ANCE.

(Addfess by Archdeacon Wilberforce.)

One Word has been ringing in. my heart: "This Lord shall deliver Sisera into the hands of a woman." Whether it is the Sisera of opium Or the Sisera- of drink, God is going- to deliver him into the hands of a woman. The very atmosphere of this'hall is the promise of it_ in God's own good time; why it is redolent of the prayers of women. This day something like thirty women, representing as many different societies, have raised up their -voices in this hall, and prayer has been going up with their voices, and the power of God is bound to come down.

If I understand the object of this society, it is, I believe that this temperance' movement is to drive its root 9 deep down into every land in the world. I think wo have great reason to thank God and take courage. Looking at the temperance movement from the personal and individual point of view, one is likely to be discouraged. Every individual woman in searching her own work, seeing the pledgee broken, the ruined homes, the hopeless lives, the despairing deaths, may find her heart almost crushed, and imagine that there is no progress. But look at. the universal aspect % of the movement, then you will Eeo what ground has been gained, • and thank God with all your heart. If you stand on the rocks and look out to sea you cannot see the tide rising; but look behind you: the great stones are being covered stealthily and steadily by the shining waters. Though we are confronted with the almost always increasing drink bill, though we meet with disappointments in our individual work, yet there is a change coming, over the whole of the known world in the direction of temperance. I have attended meetings presided over by earnest men and women who met to consider the awful scandal of sending cut the Gospel to foreign countries side by side with drink. I cannot help thinking instead of fulfilling its destiny as foreshadowed in the words "Ye are the salt of the earth," the Anglo-Saxon race is qualifying to be called the poison of the earth. When the chailman on one occasion pointed to a large map of Africa, showing a line which indicated a protected zone where no intoxicating liquors might be sold, he filled me with covetousness, and I said: " I hope we shall live to see that line reaching from Mashonalaud to Hyde Park Corner."'

it is coming! This World's Women Christian! Temperance Union is helping to bring it about. I don't want to keep you all night to tell you of the change socially. In the old days <total abstainers were scoffed at, and they almost had to apologise for drinking water; now we find people constantly murmuring something like an apology for drinking wine in our presence. The change is coming slowly and steadily, and wben we are beginning to be disheartened in our individual effort we must look to the change that is taking place all over the world, take Courage, and thank God. Nowhere is there greater evidence to progress than in the direction of this particular Association. I would like if I could to take a golden peg out of the inimitable utterances of God that I might hang an exhortation upon it. As I think of the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union I remember these words of out blessed Lord when He Said: "The kingdom of Heaveu is like unto leaven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened; " and I say, unite a magnificent prophecy to the work of God's own method of redeeming and purifying this world.

I look at- the magnificent text and see its deepest, and most spiritual signification in Hini whose mother was the representative

of everlasting motherliness, Almighty God. Woman on earth is the representation and embodiment of love; no love so heroic, so tender, so self-sacrificing, so clinging as a woman's love, and it is just a note of that love which no language can describe. "He so loved the world that He gave His only begottcn Son." I see. the three measures of meal in the threefold nature of inau, in the spirit-, soul, and body, and the leaven is represented in the Divinity that stvrs withiu us. The Divine nature of God Himself is implanted in every man just as the germ is implanted in every seed. It is oulv

waiting to be called injto activity as tbfe seed waits to he called into fccing, by the Sun and the rain. ' -.'.-.■ ..'

Women are the ones! that we Men have been sometimes accused to call, the weaker sex. Ido not know whyVwe did so, unless it were that we. might keep them down before they, were heard. In what were, they weaker? Tennyson has dared to say * Woman the lesser nttS?' But bo pointed out the only single, ease in which woman, was weaker than man. She is weaker in her animal appetites m proportion as she is stronger in spiritual .development. Therefore, when we can seo womaiv, the sex taking this sacred leaven atid putting it into tho tnree measures of meal for suffering huJGanity all over the world, then we grasp the meaning of that splendid promise:.," Till the whole is leavened." .Shall any man dare stand in the way of the irresistible mandate of tho All Father? If Ho says you shall go oh, is it not an encourageinent to you in whatever department of this great battle yon are fighting? Yon have the Eternal Power on your side, and nothing can beat you. Ton are not weaker, because you have all the power of the hidden Christ within you. Mark what a magnificent motto this is! It is the World's Women's Christian Temperance Union. What for? To win the world for Christ and, for Temperance. That is the biggest. w-Ord, in the whole languages that word Christ. ' Never dare to crystallise it clown into one small harrow definition. When you go < out bringing it back to Christ you are teaching the world that God loves it, that fiis heart is poured out constantly in strength for the sake of the world; and if you put that, word first and temperance second, you ,aro on the road to victory, for you „ are keeping yourself in communication, with, this Idaster. Only organise and work, believing in your power; look upon yourselves as high priestesses of humanity, believing that you are ordained of God, not necessarily by the laying on of hands, hut in that splendid order of Melchisedec, which is tho secret consecration of the Holy Ghost, and that power will carry you through every difficulty. Failure has" nothing to do With tho God whom you serve. What we have got to' do is to pray to Him constantly that we may have the mouth of wisdom. Somo people, you kriow have the mouth of wisdom, while othors have wisdom but no mouth, those wise people who won't speak When We are asking God to give us both, ought to see that the prayer is answered. ********

I have only tills one- tliiiig moi*, and that is, I. heard our noblo president, Lady Henry Somerset, fcay " Federation is in the air." We Want it to be Bome.wh.e3re olse than in the air. We Want it to bo in practical application in daily, life; we want to see all tho splendid reniedial agfheies ih the world, Which; a-tfe helping forward the coming of the Kingdom \>f Heaven, in a close heart-union all round the world. We waste an enormous amount of force by not being, concentrated at one point. I once (spent the whole of one. afternoon with Sir Arthur Blackwood in the Post Office. He called me to the cable chamber. I could have stayed there Until now. There you have one single centre, And, as it Were, the voice, of the whole World is being heard in that rsßm. All the activities of the World going on just the pamS without interference, but ail centre there in the cable room.

We want to have o, cable" room foi ail this splendid work that, is £omg oft for the Wbmetfs Temperance Unions all ovser tire world. Sow, do toot let any insula* > national prejudice hinder you from casting in your lot With the work in that itoagitificeht coiintry on the other side of tbeistsi. America has taught us many lessons. It has entirely condoned having sent us all those mixed drinks, with such drtadfnl names as " Sampson with his hair on" ; it has condoned all sins by somo of the most splendid reforms that the world has ever seen. At the present moment it is the heart and soul of the temperance reform movement of the world. It is V*ry easy to say that Prohibition in America is altof ether a mistake and a failure; Lady Henry omersek knows it is toot so. She has-been, as I have been, to that sacred spot in the State of Maine, and has seen what they call "the spirits in prison," where all the drink seized is put by for a ccf tain time, and then once a mouth solemnly poured down the towp whence it finds its way out lo sea. That was a glorious sight for a weather-beaten teetotaller like myself, and I regarded it as a kind of prototype and prophecy of what will one- day happen in poor, unhappy Great Britain, as eoon as we understand that we, too, want our children and women protected. Every single branch of the British Women's Temperance Association should be affiliated with the great central work. I very strongly recommend the affiliation of all branchies of Christian work to tie great central cause that now girdles the world. The sun never Beta on the World's Women's Christian Temperance Unions, for that bit of white ribbon binds them all over the universe.