Newspaper Page Text
R SRR R o
R, TALMAG] ‘i
A A 4
K) 0 LY " DIVINE’S SUN
. AY SERMON.
U: «“The Uses of Money.”
. e ST ’
;. “They that willbe rich fall into
ptation and a snare, and into many
Dlish and hwrtful lusts,which drown men
degcstruution and perdition.”—l Timothy
9
That is the Niagara Falls over which rush
a multitude of souls, nnfiwly the determina
tion to have money anyhow, right or wrong.
. Tell me how a man gets his money and what
he does with it, and | will tell 30\1 his char
acter, and what will be his destiny in this
world and the next. I proposs to speak this
morning about some of the ruinous modes of
goetting money.
We recently passed through a national
election in which it has been estimated that
thirty million dollars were expended. Ithink
about twenty million of it were spent in out
and out briberfi. Both parties raised all
they could for this purposs, But that was
only on a large scale what has been done on
a smaller scale for fifty years and in all de
partments,
Politics from being the science of good
government has often been bedraggled into
the synonym for truculency and turpitude.
A monster sin, plausible, potent, pestiferous,
has gone forth to do its dreadful work in
all ‘ages. Its two hands are rotten with
leprosy. It keeps its right hand hidden in a
deep pocket. The left hand is clenched, and
with its ichorous knuckle it taps at the door
of the court room, the legislative hall, the
congress and the parliament, The
door swings open and the monster
enters, and glides through the aisle of the
council chamber as softly as a slippered page,
and then it takes its right hand from its
deep pocket and offers it in salutation to
judge or legislator. 1f that hand be taken,
and the palm of tha intruder croes the palm
of the official, the leprosy crosses from palm
to palm in a round blotch, round as a gold
eagle, and the virus spreads, and the doom is
fixed, and the victim perishes. Let bribery,
ac%ursed of God and man, stand up for trial.
he Bible arraigns it again and again.
Samuel says of his two sons who becamse
judges: ‘‘They took bribes and Ferverted
Judgment.” David says of somse of his pur
surers: ‘‘Their right hand is full of bribes.”
Amos says of some men in his day: “They
take a bribe and turn aside the poor in the
gate.” Eliphaz fortells the crushing blows
of God’s indignation, declaring: ‘‘Fire shall
consume the tabernables of bribery.”
It is no light temptation. The mi%htiest
have fallen under it. Sir Francis Bacon,
Lord Chancellor of England, founder of our
modern philosophy, author of ‘Novum
Organum,” and a whole library of books,
the leading thinker of his century, so
precocious that when a little child he was
asked by Queen Elizabeth: *“How old
are you?’ he responded, ‘lam two years
younger than your Majesty’s happy
reign;” of whose oratory Ben. Johnson
wrote: ‘“The fear of every man that heard
him was lest he should make an end;” hav
ing an income which you would suppose
would have put him beyond the temptation
of bribery—thirty-six thousand dollars a
year, and Twickenham court a gift, and
Erincely estates in Hertfordshire and Gor
ambury — yet under this temptation
to bribery falling flat into ruin,
and on his confession of taking
bribes, giving as excuse that all
his predecessors took them:; he was fined
two hundred thousand dollars, cr what cor
responds with our two hundred thousand
dollars, and imprisoned in London tower.
8o also Lord Chanecellor Macelesfield fell; so
also Lord Chancellor Waterbury perished. The
black chapter in English, Irish, French and
American politics is the chapter of bribery.
Some of you remember the Pacific Mail
subsidies., Most of you remember the awful
tragedy of the Credit Mobilier. Under
the temptation to bribery Benedict Arnold
sold the fort in the Highlands for
$31,675. For this sin Gorgey betrayed
Hungary, Ahithophel forsook David and
Judas kissed Christ. When 1 see so many
of the illustrious going down under this
temptation, it makes me think of the red
dragon spoken of in Revelation, with seven
ds and ten horns and seven crowns,
wing a third part of the stars of heaven
n after him. The lobbies of the legisla—
'es of this country control the country.
e land is drunk with bribery.
‘Oh,” says some one, *‘there’s no need of
king against bribery by promise or by
Ilars, because every man has his price.” I
not believe it. Even heathenism and the
k ages have furnished specimens of in
ruptibility. A cadiof Smyrna had a case
ought before him on trial. A man
ve him five hundred ducats in
bery. The case came on. The
iber had many witnesses. The poor
an on the other side had no witnesses. At
close of the case the cadi said: ‘‘This
r'man has no witnesses, he thinks: I shall
oduce in his behalf five hundred witnesses
ainst the other side.” And then pulling
out the bag of ducats from under the -otto
man, he dashed it down at the feet
of the briber, saying: “I give my
decision against you.” ‘¢ Epam
inondas, offered a bribe, said: “I will do
this thing if it be right, and if it be wrong
all your goods cannot persuade me.”
Fabricius of Lfihe Roman senate was offered a
bribe by Pyrrhus of Macedon. Fabricius
answered: **What an example this would be
to the Roman people: you koej) your riches
and I will keep my poverty and reputation.”
The_ President of the American Congress
during the American Revolution, General
Reed, was offered ten thousand guineas by
foreign commissioners if he would betray
thi; country. He re%lied: “Gentlemen, lam
a very poor man, but tell your King he is
not rich enough to buy me.” But why go
so far, when you and I, if we move in
hongrable society, know men and women who
gy all the concentrated force of earth and
ell could not be bribed. They would no
more be bribed than you would think of
tempting an angel of light to exchange heaven:
for the pit. To offer a bribe is villainy, but
_ it is a very poor compliment to the man to
whom it is offered.
T have not much faith in those people whor
about bragging how much they could get
fiothey would only sell out. Those women
who complain that they are very often in
- gulted need to understand that there is some
thing in their carriage to invite insult.
There are men in Albany and at Har
risburg and at Washington who would no
more be approached by a bribe than a pirate
boat with a few cutlasses would dare to at
tack a British man-of-war with two banks of
2 s\ms on each side loaded to the touch hole.
hey are incorruptible men, and they are
the few men who are to save the city and
save the land. Meanwhile, my ad
vice is to all people to keep out of politics
unless you are invulnerable to this style of
temptation. Indeed, if you are naturally
strong, %ou need religious Dbuttressing.
Nothlni us the grace of God can sustain
_our: public men and make them what we
‘wish. .1 wish that there might come an |
_old-fashioned revival of religion, that
‘{6 might break out in' Congress and in
the Legislatures and bring many of the lead
_ ing Republicans and Democrats down on the
- anxious seat of repentance. That day will
_ come, or something better, for the Bible de
% that Kings and Queens shall become
: m%fl.hm and mothers to the church,
and if the greater in authority, then certain-
1, My charge also to -parer !}W mfiwi
bribe your children. Teach them to do that
- which is right, and not because of the ten
cents or the orange yon will give them.
'There iga greatdifference between rewarding
virtue and mnklng'gno profits thereof the
‘impelling motive, at man who is honest
merely because ‘‘honesty is thea best policy”
is aJready a moral bankrupt. 1
My chnrfo is to gou. in all departments of
life, steer clear of brikary, all of you. Every
man and woman at some time will be
tempted to do wrong for compensation. The
bribe may not be offered in momi‘ It may
be offered in social position. t us re
member that there is a day coming
when the most secret transaction of pri
vate life and of public lifs will come up for
public reprehension. We cannot bribe death,
we cannot bribe sickness, we cannot bribe
the grave, we cannot bribe the judgments of
that God who thunders against this sin.
“Fie!” said Cardinal Beaufort, ‘‘fle! can't
death be hired? is money nothing? must I
die. and so rich? if the owning of the whole
realm would save me, 1 could get it hy
policy or by purchase—by money.” No,
death would not be hired then: he will not
be hired now. Men of the world often regret
that they have to leave their money nere
when they go away from the world. You
can tell from what they say in
their last hours that one of their
chief sorrows is that they have to leave their
money. I break that delusion. 1 tell that
bribe taker that he will take his money with
him. God will wrap it up in your shroud. or
put it in the palm of vour hand in resurrec
tion, and there it will lie, not the cool,bright,
shining gold as it was on the day when you
sold your vote and your moral princinle, but
there it will lie, a hot metal, burning and
consuming your hand forever, Or, if there
be enough of it fora chain, then
it will fall from the wrist clank
inz the fetters of an eternal captivity. The
bribe is an everlasting possession. You take
it for time, you take it for eternity. Some
day in the next world, when you are long
ing for sympathy, you will feel on your
cheek a kiss. Looking up you will find it to
be Judas, who took thirty pieces of silver as
a bribe and finished the bargain by putting
an infamous kiss on the pure cheek of his
Divine Master. £ &
Another wrong use of money is seen in
the abuse of trust funds. Every man dur
ing the course of his life, on a larger or
smaller scale, has the properltjrv of others
committed to his keeving. eis so far
a safety deposit, he is an administrator, and
holds in his hand the interest of the
family of a deceased friend. Or he is an
attorney, and through his custody goes the
payment from debtor to creditor, or he is
the collector for a business houss
which compensates him for the responsi
bility; or he is a treasurer for a charitable
institution and he holds alms contributed for
the suffering; or he is an official of the city
or the State or the nation, and taxes, and
subsidies, and salaries, and supplies are in
his keeping. It is as solemn a trust as God
can make it. 1t is concentred and multi
plied confidences. On that man de
- pends the support of bereft household. or the
morals of dependents, or the right of move
- ment of a thousand wheels of social mechan
ism. A man may do what he will with his
- own, but he who abuses trust funds, in that
one act commits theft, falsehood, per
jury and becomes, in all the intensity
of the word, a miscreant. How many
widows and orphans there are with
nothing between them and starvation
but a sewing machine, or held up out of the
vortex of destruction simply by the thread
of a needle, red with their own heart’s blood,
who a little while age had, by father and
husband, left them a competency. What is
the matter? The administrators or the exe
cutors have sacrificed it—running risks
with it that they would not kave
dared to encounter in their own private af
fairs. How often it is that a man will earn
a livelihood by the sweat of his brow, and
then die, and within a few months all the es
tate goes into the stock gambling rapids of
‘Wall Street. How often is it that you have
known the man to whem trust funds were
committed taking th>m out of the savings
bank and from trust companies, and ad
ministrators, turning eld homesteads into
hard cash, and then putting the entire estate
juto the vortex of speculation, Embezzle
ment is an easy word to pronounce, but it
has ten thousand ramifications of horror.
There is not a city that has not suffered
from the abuse of trust funds. Where is the
court house, or the city hall, or the jail, or
the postoftice, or the hospital, that in the
building of it has not had a political job?
Long before the new Court-House in New
York city was completed, it cost over §12,-
000,000. = Five millions six hundred and
sixty-three thousand dollars for furniture.
For plastering and repairs, $2,370,000.
For plumbing and gas works,
$1,231,817. For awnings, $23,553.
The bills for three months coming to
the nice little sum of $13,151,198.39. ’Fhere
was not an honest brick, or stone, or lath, or
nail, or foot of plumbing, or inch of plaster
ing, or ink stand, or door knobin the whole
establishment.
That bad example was followed in many of
the cities, which did not steal quite so much
because there was not so much to steal
There ought to be a closer inspection and
there ought to be less op%orbunity for embez
zlement. Lest a man shall take a five cent
piece that does not belong to him, the con
ductor of the city horse car must
sound his bell at every payment, and
we are very cautious ahout small offenses,
but giva plenty of opportunity for sinners on
a lar%e scale to escape. For a boy who steals
a loaf of bread from a corner grocer to keep
his mother from starving to death, a prison;
but for defrauders who abtscond with half a
million of dollars, a castle on the ‘Rhine, or,
waiting until the offense is forgotten, then a
castle on the Hudson!
Another remark needs to be made, and
that is that people ought not to go into
places, into business, or into pesitions, where
the temptation is mightier than their
character. If there be large sums of mone
to be handled and the man is not sure of hi};
own integrity you have no right to run an
unseaworthy craft into an euroclydon. A
man can_ tell by the sense of weakness
or strength in the presence of a bad opfior
tunity whether he is in a safe place. ow
many parents makean awful mistake when
they put their boys in banking houses aund
stores and shops and factories and places of
solemn trusts, gwithout once (Piscussing
whether they can endure the temptation.
You give the boy plenty of money and have
no account of it, and make the way
down, £ become very easy, and - you
may put upon him a pressure
then he cannot stand. There are men who
go into positions full of temptation, cop
sidering only the one fact that they are
lucrative positions. I say to the youn,
people here this morning, dishonesty wifi
not pay in this world or in the world to
come.
An abbot wanted to buy a g}eoe of ground
and the owner would not séll 'it, but the
owner finally consented to let it to him until
he could raise one crop, and the abbot sowed
acorns, a crop of two hundred years! i
And I tell you, zoung man, that the dis
honesties which you plant in your |
peart and life will seem to be very insigmi
ficant, but they will grow up until they will
overshadow you with horrible darkness,
overshadow all time and all eternity. It
will not be a crop for two hundred years,
but a crop for everlasting ages.
I stand this morning before many who |
have trusted funds. It is a compliment to
you that you have been so intrusted, but I
charge you, in the presence of God and tha
AR L S S SRR SRS 4 S
w ‘,5;.,;.@?“ e “fifiwf« {'fifiw&! fl :
T T Tae yous
0L you m - AD fll. k“p ,o“r own
gfl te account at the bank separate
1,, rom your account as trustee of an
om" or trustee of an institution.
~ That .&h&r’qim at which thousands of peo
ple oanho shipwreck, ‘l‘h:g get the , property
of others mixed up with their own property,
' taey put it into investment, and away it all
| fm.' and they cannot return that which
they borrowed, Then comes the ex
plosion and the money market is shaken
and the press denounces and _ the
church thunders expulsion. You have
no right to use the property of others except
for their advantage, nor without consent,
unless they are minors. If with their con
~sent you invest their property as well as you
can, and it 1s all lost, you are not to blame,
- you did the best you could; but do not come
into the delusion which has ruined so
“many men, of thinking because a
thing is in their possession, therefore
it is theirs. You have a solemn trust
that God has given you. In this vast assem
blage there may be some who have misap
propriated trust funds. Put them back, or,
1f you have so hopslessly involved them that
you cannot put them back, confess the whole
thing to those whom you have wronged, and
you wil sleep better nights,.and you will
have the better chance for your soul. What
a sad thing it would be if, after you are
dead, your administrator should find
| out from the account books, or from the lack
~of vouchers, that you were not only bankrupt
!in estare, but that you lost your soul. If all
ths trust funds that have been misappro
priated should suddenly fly to their owners,
and all the property that has been purloined
should suddenly go back to its owners, it
- would crash into ruin every city in America.
A blusterir% young man arrived at a
hotel in the West and he saw a man on the
sidewalk, and in a rough way, as no man
' has a right to address a laborer, said to
- him: ‘Carry this trunk upstairs.” The man
~carried the trunk upstairs and came down,
‘ and then the younz man gave him a quarter
of adollar which was marked, and instead
of being twenty-five cents it was worth only
twenty cents. Then the young man gave
his card to the laborer and said: *You take
this up to Governor Grimes; I want to see
him.” ‘‘Ah,” said the laborer: ‘I am
Governor Grimes.” ‘‘Oh,” said the young
man, ‘‘you--[—excuse me.” ‘Then the Gov
ernor said: ‘I was much impressed by
the letter you wrote me asking for a
certain office in my gift, and [ had made up
my mind you should have it; but a young
man who will cheat a laborer out of five
cents would swindle the Government of the
State if he got his hands on it. I don’t want
you. Good morning, sir.,” It never pays.
Neither in this world nor in the world to
come will it pay.
1 do not suppose there ever was a better
specimen of honesty than was found in the
Duke of Wellington. He marchéd with his
army over the French frontier, and the army
was suffering, and he hardly knew how to
get along. Plenty of plunder all about, but he
commanded none of the plunder to
be taken. He writes home these re
markable words: ‘**We are over
whelmed with debts, and I can scarcely stir
out of my house on account of public credit
ors waiting to demand what is due them.”
Yet at that very time the French peasantry
were bringing their valuables to him to keep.
A celebrated writer says of the trans
action : “ Nothing can be grander or
more nobly original than this admis
sion. This old soldier, after thirty
years’ service, this iron man and victorious
general, established in an ememy’s country
at the head of an immense army, is afraid of
his creditors! This is the kind of fear that
has seldom troubled conquerors and invaders,
and I doubt if the annals of war present
anything comparable to its sublime sim
plicity.”
Oh! is it not high timathat we preached
the morals of the Gospel, right beside the
faith of the Gospel? Mr. Froude, the cele
brated English historian, has written of his
own country these 'remarkable words:
“From the great house in the city of Lon
don to the village grocer, the commercial
lite of KEngland has been saturated
with fraud. So deep has it
gone that a strictly honest tradesman
can hardly hold his ground against competi
tion. You ean no longer trust that any ar
ticle you buy is the thing which it pretends
to be. We have false weights, false meas
ures, cheating, and shoddy everywhere, And
yet the clergy have seen all this grow up in
absolute indifference. Many hundreds
of sermons "have I heard in Eng
iand, many a dissertation on the
mysteries of the faith, on the
divine mission of the 'clergy, on bishops
and justification, and the theory of good
works, and verbal inspiration, and the
efficacy of the sacraments; but, during all
these thirty wonderful years, never one that
I can recollect on common honesty.”
Now, that may be an exaggerated state
ment of things in England, but I am very
certain that in ali parts of the earth we need
to preach the moralities of the Gospel right
along beside the faith of the Gospel.
My hearer! what are you doing with that
fradulent document in your pocket? My other
hearer! How are you getting along with that
wicked scheme you have now on foot? Is
that a *‘pool ticket” you have in your pocket?
Why, O young man, wereyou last night
practicin§ in copying your employer's sig
nature? Where were you last night? Are
your habits as good as when you %est. your
father's house? You had a Christian ances
try, perhaps, and you have had too many
prayers spent on you to go overboard
Dr. Livinfgsbone, the famous explorer, was
descended from the Highlanders, and he
said that one of his ancestors, one of the
Highlanders, one day called his family
around him. The Highlander was dying; he
' had his children around his death-bed. He
said: “Now, my lads, I have looked all
through our history as far back as [ can find
it, and I have never found a dishonest man
in all the line, and I want you to understand
you inherit good blood. You have no excuse
for doing vu-ongs My lads, be honest.”
Ah, my friends, be honest before God, be
honest before your fo_gow men, be honest be
fore your soul. If there be those here who
have wandered away, come back, coms hgme,
come now, one and all, not one exception
in all the assemblage, come into the Eing—
dom of God. Come back to the right
track. The door of mercy is open and the
infinite heart of God is full of compassion.
Come home! Come homs! Oh, I would be
well satisfied if I could save some young man
this morning, some young man that has been
going astray and would like to get back.
lam glad some one has set to music that
scene in August of 1881, whsn a young girl
saved from death a whole rail train of pas
‘seniers. Some of you remember that out
west, in that year on a stormy night, a hur
ricane blew down part of a railroad bridge.
A freight train came along and it crashed
into the ruin, and the engineer and conduct
or perished. These was a girl living
o her father's cabin near the disaster,
wnd she heard the crash of
he freight train, and she knew that in a
‘ew moments an express train was due.
She lighted a Ilantern and- clambered up on
the one beam of the wrecked bridge on
to the main bridge, which was trestle work,
and started to cross amid the thunder and
the lightning of the tempest and the ragin
of the torrent benedth. One misstep anfi
it would have been death. Amid all that
horror the lantern went out. Crawling
sometimes and sometimes walki over the
slippery rails and over the tres’:}ge work, she
came to the other side of the river. She
wanted to get to the telegraph station, where
the express train did not stop, so that the
danger might be telegrapehd to the station
LRI L Y T | R SLR G R T BAT TNI PR YSR
whoro the train dil stop. The grat
was due in five minutes. She was one
mile off from the telegraph station,
but fortunately the train was late.
With cut and bruised foet she flew
like the wind., Coming up to the telegraph
gtation, panting with almost deathly exhausa
tion, she had only strength to shout, ** The
bridge is down,” when she dropped uncon
pons and could hardly be rasuscitated The
inessage was sent from that station to the
next station and the train halted, and that
night that brave girl saved the lives of hun
dreds of Fasuengox's and saved many homes
from desolation.
But every street is a track. and every style
of business is a track, and every day is a
track, and multitudes under the power of
temptation coming sweeping on and sweep
ing down toward perils raging and terrific.
GGol hep us to go out and stop the
train. Eel: us throw some signal. Let
us give some warning. Byv the throne
of God let us flash some influencs to stop the
downward progress. Beware! Bewave! Tae
bridge is down, the chasm is deep, anl the
lightnings of (01l set all the night of s.n on
fire with this warning: ‘‘He, that being
often reproved, hardeneth his neck, shall
suddenly lie destroyed, and th at without
remedy.”
THE CARTHUSIANS.
Monks Who Live in Nearly Perpet
ual Silence.
The cable brings the news that the
Carthusian monks have refused an offer
of $15,000,000 from a London firm for a
monopoly of the manufacture and sale
of their world famed liquers. And it is
not like’y that offsrs even much larger
will succeed in obtaining from the monks
their long and jealously kept secret.
The cunning combination of samples
whereby the flavor of the four varieties
of the article are produced has never
been known outside the monastery pre
cincts and doubtless never will be,
Numberless experiments have been
made to produce a liquor resembling
them, and though money and much
trouble have not been spared the result
has always been a failure. Upwards of
four dozen different plants, 1t is said,
are used in the manufacture, the prineci
pal of which are the earliest tender
shoots of the pines, wormwood, balm,
mint, and mountain pinks. Many of
the herbs are cultivated by the monks,
each of whom has his little garden,
which, with a small carpenter shop, is
his place of recreation. The good St.
Bruno held wisely that a healthier re
laxation from long vigils of contempla
tion and prayer was to be had in manual
labor than in mere objectless walking.
The distillery is not within the mon
astery ; it is lower down the mountain,
some distance out of the village of St.
Laurent, and is conducted by one lay
brotber, under whom 2re employed a
number of ordinary laborers.
The Carthusian order has the distine
tion of being the only one of the ancient
communities which has never been re
formed or in need of reform, a fact ex
plainable by the stern opposition of its
superiors from the very beginning so
“ mitigations ” or tamperings with the
heroi¢ rules of the great founder.
Among other provisions for the thorough
weaning of his monks from the world,
St. Bruno decreed that no woman
should ever set foot within Chartreuse,
and it is only royalty itself, backed by a
brief from the Pope, which has on a few
oceasions been able to break through
this rule.
The brotherhood never eat meat, and
are denied cheese and butter for six
months of every year. They sleep on
sheetless beds in their day clothing, and
each monk eats his meagre one meal a
day and collation solitary in his cell.
Over the doors of these cells such in
seriptions as O Beator Solitudo” re
main from the old time. Perpetual
silence, except on high festivals, 1s the
rule, and when death comes to claim
them, generally at a great age, for as
ceticism and pure air and thorough iso
lation from worldly distractions, lengthen
out the life wonderfully, they are laid,
with nething about them but their white
robes, in the little crowded burying
ground in the centre of the buildings.
A cross, with neither name nor date,
stands at the head of each many-ten
anted grave. The superiors’ resting
p*aces are distinguished only by having
a'cross of stone instead of wood. Be
sides giving length of days, the life led
by the monks impresses on them a look
of spirituality and refinement. An Eng
lish traveler says : ‘I never saw a Car
thusian monk who did not look like a
gentleman.”
Thetime allowed to male visitors at the
monastery does not exceed forty-eight
hours. Insummer the houseiscrowded,
sometimes as many as 200—many of
them priests making a ‘‘retreat”—being
there together. Ladies who climb up to
get an outside view of the famous place
are lodged and entertained by a few of
the Sisters of Providence from Grenoble,
who have a convent near by.
In 1676, the date of the last rebuilding
of the monastery, it was aftiliated to no
less than 260 houses of the order through- |
out Europe. Of these the most well
known was the old Charter house of
London. But revolutions and changes
of many sorts cansed the number to
dwindle until to-day the followers of
St. Bruno are few enough.
The returns from their distillery are
of course very large, but were they
greater by far, the monks, whose oppor
tunities of doing good are immense,
could find means to dispose of them for
the benefit of their fellow-creatures.
For themselves the money does not
change a single item in their way of
living. St. Bruno’s rules and constitu
tion are as fnii;hful]{l followed and ad
heved to in 1889 as they werein 1084,—
COhlacago T'imes.
TaE Secretary of War has approve¢
the plans for the building of Fort Sheri
dan Military Post at Highwood, 111.,
as recommended by Capt. C. P. Miller,
The cost of the building will exceeqd
$300,000, and will be begun at once, the
officers’ quarters being the first to be
put under way., In all there will be
thirty-five buildings erected, and it will
be the finest military postin the United
States, It will front on Lake Michigan,
LR B T X B LTR A G TTR e
~ TEMPERANCE.
« True Heroism.
Let others write of battles fought
On bloody, ghasily fields, ;
Where honor greets the man who wins,
And death tae man who yields;
But I will not write of him who fights
And vanguishes his sins—
Who struggles on tiiongh weaiy years
Against himeelf and wine,
He is a hero, true and b ave,
‘Who tights an unseen toa,
And puts at Jast beneath his feet
His passions base and low;
And stands erect in manhood's might,
Undanted, undismayed-—
The bravest man who drew a sword
In foray or in raid.
It calls for something more than brawn
Or muscle to o’ercome
An enemy who marcheth not
With banner, plume or drum—
A foe forever lurking ni:h,
With silent, stealthy tread,
Forever near your board by day,
At night beside your Led,
All honor, then, to that Lrave heart,
Though poor or rich bho be,
Who struggles with his baser pare,
Who conquers and is free.
He may not wear a hero's erown
Or fill a hero’s grave,
But truth will place his name among
The bravest of the brave
Bible Facts Not Bible Doctrines.
‘We frequently receive wildly fanatical let
ters attempting to defend the modern liquor
traffic by facts related in the Bible in regard
to wine drinking, The upholders of poly
gamy use the same argument; murderers
and thugs might do the same. But Bible
facts are not Bible doctrines. There is no
more defense in Bible doctrine for liquor
selling in America to-day than there is for
slavery and for lying stealing, and adultery.
—Z2he Voice.
Cider and Temperance
A Boston paper remarks that the new
amendment propo ed to be added to the Con
stitution of tge Bay State [to prohibit the sell
ing of cider as a beverage, we infer], will not
hinder the manufacture of cider by the farr
ers in case it is engrossed and improved by
the people. The farmers may manufacturs
cider just as they do to-day, anl after con
verting it into vinegar can make two and a
half or three cents 2 gallon more than if sold
as a beverage. 1t is quite probable that this
amendment will be given by the Massa
chusetts Legislature to the people to act upon,
and it is decidedly important that they act
intelligently. —New Yorlk Witness.
Drinking in Ancient Times.
It would be a great mistake tosuppose that
the medizeval inhabitants of northern Europe
were mere hordes of drunken barbarians,
The favorite beverage of the ancient Teu
tons was the lightest kind of bear—brewea
in camp-kettles. on their monthly days ol
merrymaking, wien their potations, indeed,
were liniited only by the veto of rather in
dulgent chiefs, who knew how soon the
effects of the symposium would be neutralized
by the rouglh, out-door sports of their fol
lowers. In time of war the beer-kettle was
often buried for monthks together, and the
Gothic warriors who annihilated a Roman
army on the plain of Adrianople were, on
the whole, perhaps the soberest men of their
time. In subsequent centuries the bibulout
propensities of the Saxon rustics were greatly
limited by their poverty.
i A Boy's Terrible Inheritance.
The most striking illustration that is in
my recollection at the present moment was
in one whom I knew from his birth until he
met his death by the most tragical of suici
dal acts, and who was as peculiar in some re
spects before the fatal infiuence of drink had
actually seized on himas afterward. On his
paternal side this boy directly inherited the
alcoholic taint: on his mother’s side, indi
rectly. He was a boy not wanting in a cer
tain abilty, and not wanting in a certain
beauty of build: but he had avout him no de
termination of purpose. He was restless
without object, capricious, and often melan
choly. He was not intentionally cruel, but
as it without knowing it he was suddenly
and often desperately cruel with animals and
playfellows alike. No he grew up, not mak-
Ing much progress in anything, and caring
less tor play than a healthy boy
should. At Jast, when he was undet
age, the taste for wino, and almost in
stantly for stronger fluid of the same
spirit-class, was acquired. Then as it
were, with a bound, he passed into dipsoma
nia. There were no 11'»ralimin:u'y stages of
gayetgv. of occasional intoxication, with
periods of reformation; no relapses under
anxiety or urgent temptation, but a com
plete transformation of the whole man—or,
rather, the whole youth-into drunk mad:
ness. He did not, would not, could not
reason on the matter. e was as conscious
of the evil as was anyone who looked at him
in his worst phases. "He had no desire what:
over to reform. 1t was his confession thafl
he cared for life only so far as it gave him
the opportunity to indulge in drink. Having
no dpif.y for himself, he had no pib{ for others,
and disrogardCul of his welfare, dragzge! all
who approached him, as far as he could, into
his own conrse: not, he it observed, from
any desire to do them wrong, but from an
actual indifforence, or, it may be, ignorancs
of she relations hetween right and wrong:
and 50, for many years, his distorted way of
life, accursed, as he himaslf said, and ac
cursing, progressed, until in mare rreak, ani
practising in the actual act of killing him
self an awful cruslty on others, he came t¢
his untimely end. — /Mion oar,
Temperance News and Notes.
Russia closed 80,000 dram shops by law
last year.
The Toronto General Hospital had, last
year, seventy-three cases of ‘‘alcoholism.”
The Sons of Temperance have thirty-six
grand and 1500 subordinate divisions located
in the Btates, Territories and British Prov
inces,
A npative newspaper of India makes this
?ertinent remark: “Our liquor traffic begins
)y hanging a sign over the door,and ends by
hanging a man on a gibbet.”
A question that is becoming a local issue
in.many cities of many States is thus asked
by the Fort Wayne (Ind.) Sentinel: ‘Are
the saloon-keepers or the citizens running
Fort Wayne?’
Mr. Walker, the coatractor of the Mam
chester ship canal, has entered into an ar
rangement with a coffee public house com
pany to supply the thousand of navvies
under him with barmless drinks and nour
ishing food. No intoxicating liquor is al
lowed to be sold.
| Dr. Oswald says: During the horrible
flood whien a few months ago devastated the
two richest fprovinces of the Chinese Empires,
anumber of vile marauders eked out an exist
ence by fishing out wreck?e and plunder
ing floating corpses. The idea of mentioning
the profits of theso wretches as a compensat
ing offset to the horrors of a public calamity
would justly consign its meer to the
custody of a lunatic commission, yet, by an
exactly analogous line of arfinmont mnnty of
our ]political economists continue to defend
the Jegal sanction of the liquor traffic.
Killarney, Ireland, with a mfim of
6500, supports eighty-three shops be
sides hotels, g
