ple involved. If there is a public wrong, it is the open saloon. The preamble to our national Constitution proposes "To form a more perfect union; to establish justice; to insure domestic tranquillity; to provide for the common defense; to promote the public welfare, and to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity. No one thing does so much to make these proposals impossible as the saloon.

It is as sound in morals as in law that "No legislature can bargain away the public health or the public morals. The people themselves cannot do it, much less their servants. . . . . Government is organized with a view to their preservation, and cannot divest itself of the power to provide for them."

But this very thing is done in licensing the saloon. Such legislation coaxes what we ought to crush. Slowly the people are separating into two camps. There is an everlasting conflict between those who would "protect" and those who would " destroy" the saloon. I oppose "high license" because I believe the best interests of the whole people require that the liquor traffic should be suppressed and not sanctioned.

It is weighed and found wanting. Economically, it is a waster, and always shows a balance against the State. Socially, it saps the life of communities, and is the foe of the church, the school, and the home. Politically, it gives the reins of power to the saloon vote, and yokes together corruption and conscience or gain. Morally, it never builds up but always ruins

character.

High license is a right royal method if you want a monoply, if you want to intrench the traffic, if you want to multiply difficulties in municipal government, if you want to defeat prohibition, but a very poor method indeed if you want to destroy the traffic and the drinking habit.

TOTAL ABSTINENCE AS A CHRISTIAN OBLIGATION.

BY REV. DR. H. L. WAYLAND (PHILADELPHIA).

WHERE in the Bible is the precept commanding total abstinence? There are, indeed, precepts forbidding drunkenness; but where is the precept forbidding moderate drinking? The question is less wise than might be desired. There are a great many things which are not forbidden in the Bible, but which we instinctively abhor. There are a great many things which are not commanded in the Bible, yet which we recognize as duties. We should think it very foolish for a man to say, "I may not get drunk on wine, because the Bible says, 'Be not drunk with wine,' but I will get drunk on whiskey, because about that the Bible says nothing." The Bible nowhere tells a man to risk his life in rescuing his wife and children from a burning house; the Bible nowhere forbids a man to allow his grandparents, or his aged aunt by whom he was brought up and to whom he owes everything, to die in the poorhouse; the Bible nowhere forbids a man to walk down Broadway without any clothes on.

ture.

The Bible does us the honor (alas, sometimes, it is to be feared, an undeserved honor) of supposing that we are possessed of common sense. If anything is proven by the uniform experience of mankind to be an evil, then that thing is forbidden by God, just as plainly, just as cogently, just as authoritatively, as though it were prohibited by express words on the page of ScripThe voice of God against slavery was declared in the effect which, in the universal experience of mankind, attached to slavery. The voice of God is against aggressive war, against public or private revenge, against gambling -whether it be at the faro board, at the baccarat table, or in the stock exchange. Human experience has spoken in vain if it has not demonstrated that the influence of indulgence in all forms of alcoholic drinks is hurtful just in the degree in which this indulgence takes place.

Experience has shown that the use of alcohol is injurious to the body, enfeebling to the muscles, paralyzing to the nerves, maddening to the brainoriginating, aggravating, inflaming almost every form of disease. It is ruinous to the mind, wrecking the highest and choicest intellect. It is degrading to the soul, exposing men to the tremendous declaration, "No drunkard shall inherit the kingdom of God."

I do not affirm that all these fatal results follow in every case of moderate drinking; but I do affirm that every moderate drinker is liable to them, and that full safety is found in total abstinence and in total abstinence alone. I do not affirm that every one who goes into battle is shot, that every one who goes through a plague-smitten city dies; but I do affirm that the risk is such as no rational being can justify himself in assuming.

Even where an unusual degree of self-control may make moderate drinking comparatively safe for him who indulges in it, yet it exposes to the gravest peril those who derive their life and their natural character from him. I. recall at this moment a man who took his whiskey regularly daily and in al

lotted amount. I do not think he ever exceeded the indulgence which he allowed himself. I never heard that he was affected by what he had drunk. But his two sons became drunkards. That the sin of the father is visited upon the children, is a truth of nature and of science no less than of revela tion,-not that by some legal or forensic process the son is reckoned guilty of the father's sin, but that the son, yielding to the influence of heredity, follows in the footsteps of the father without being withheld by the self-restraint which the father perhaps inherited from an earlier and purer and wiser generation.

This influence is not limited to the descendants of the moderate drinker; he sets an example to all about him. Young men plead his precedent; and all the more if he be a person of high standing in society and of many excellencies of character.

The very essence of Christianity is sacrifice of our pleasures, of our advantages, of our opportunities, of ourselves, for the good of others. The second of the twin commands, equal in authority, equal in essence, indissolubly joined to each other, is, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” We are to sacrifice our lesser good for the greater good of our neighbor; we are to surrender our luxury for his pleasure, our pleasure for his comfort, our comfort for his necessity, our necessity for his extremity.

We are called in this case to sacrifice a very slight gratification, a gratification not free from danger to ourselves, a gratification which has brought to ruin many stronger and wiser and better than we, a gratification which may entail the most serious calamities on our descendants, a gratification which, to all influenced by our example, may be most devastating—we are called on to sacrifice this for the greater good of others; we are called upon to make a slight sacrifice that we may not by our indulgence destroy our weak brother for whom Christ died.

It may be a sacrifice of a passing gratification; it may be that we shall be placed in an embarrassing position, socially, by declining the proffered indulgBut are these considerations for a moment worthy to be brought into comparison with the greatness of the good that may be secured and the greatness of the evil that may be avoided?

ence.

Can there be a plainer instance of the duty "to please our neighbor for his good to edification"? Can anything be more plainly deducible from the ethical teachings of the New Testament than the duty to deny ourselves the indulgence in alcohol, in order that we may save ourselves from the risk of ruin, and that we may save others from the perhaps yet greater risk of being ruined by our influence and example ?

It is idle for us to ask the drunkard to give up his indulgence while we are not willing to give up our much less imperative and exigent indulgence. It is idle to ask him to give up his whiskey, while we are not willing to give up our wine, our ale, our beer; and if at all we find it difficult to give them up, just so much the more strong hold has the habit secured upon us, and so much more imperative is the appeal to us for total abstinence, not alone for the good of our neighbor, but for our own good.

I do not hesitate to affirm that in the light of the Scripture there are few more imperative duties than the duty of total abstinence from all that can intoxicate, as a beverage.

TEMPERANCE MISSION WORK AMONG THE COLORED

PEOPLE OF THE SOUTH.

BY REV. DR. J. C. PRICE (NORTH CAROLINA).

THE Southland has been an inviting field for missionary endeavor for more than a quarter of a century. For the awful condition obtaining under the blighting and debasing influence of slavery gave our country, notwithstanding its boasted Christian civilization, a home missionary field varied in its degradation, great in its magnitude, and far-reaching in its consequences.

The "peculiar institution as a system sought to take from humanity its instincts, and to reduce men and women to the aimless condition of inferior animals. This was manifest not only in the customs governing slavery, but also in the laws of the land which gave it defense.

Under this baneful system there was no encouragement given to the training of the mind-the most signal distinction between man and the brute creation. In fact, it declared it a crime for a human being to learn to read and write, and a felony for any one to be caught leading the darkened intellect into the light of intelligence.

The peculiar institution was naturally soulless, and did not seek to encourage its dependents in their aspirations for religious or spiritual development. To be plain, there was nothing in the human chattel beyond that which was animal. Hence the lack of the practices of the consistencies of Christian culture. And even when the light of the Cross was permitted to shine on their gloomy vision, it did not come to them as direct rays from the sun, but rather like the reflected, warped, and often beclouded light from the moon. This heartless system made no claims or even pretensions to morality. It was the greatest legalized system of moral prostitution and vicious defilement the world has ever seen, and its single purpose in all this work of corruption was the increase of human stock in trade.

This moral stench was left undisturbed in its work of death until it threatened the very life of the Republic.

These are, in brief, the "previous conditions" which make the Southland a home missionary territory, and a class of its people objects of imperative and urgent missionary effort. The evil tendencies of centuries must now be arrested. The work of reform against the sins and errors must be industriously continued.

Many of the humane reformers began their work in this mission field, even before the clouds of battle had cleared away. The statesman, the philanthropist, and the churchman were all eager to devise plans, and carry into execution schemes that might in some way begin the work of righting the wrongs of centuries, remedy their evil continuance, and thus both atone for

the iniquity of the nation, and to some extent avert the danger resulting from the nation's sin. The work to be done was no child's play.

It meant the educational, religious, and moral reform of a whole race of men whose minds had been stunted, and whose moral sensibilities had been deadened for centuries.

The work was so old in formation and growth, so stubborn in character, and so malignant in its manifestations, that not a few men and women despaired of any result that would be at all encouraging or commensurate with the labor and means expended on it.

When many heroes and heroines started in this work to emancipate the people from the more galling bondage of mind and heart, many good people laughed at their untempered zeal, and said they were going on "a fool's errand." But the results thus far have more than justified the endeavor and its accompanying sacrifice.

The workers were necessarily general in the plan and scope of their work. They sought the educational and religious advancement of the people. And no one who has studied their movements will say for a moment that the work then started has not been successful even beyond the expectation of some of the most sanguine of the Negro's friends.

In matters of education this success has been signally phenomenal.

The little bands of Negroes learning the alphabet of knowledge have grown into graded and normal schools, scattered all over the Southland, and instead of a few hundred Negro children in the public schools of the land, they now number about one and a half millions. The log-cabin schools of the war period have developed into colleges and universities, whose attendance runs from 100 to 700 students.

In addition to this, special phases of training are rapidly multiplying. Schools of medicine, theology, and law are becoming indispensable to the completion of our work of educational reform.

The great missionary societies of the leading denominations North have been equally conspicuous and fortunate in their distinctively religious work. This religious progress has been a marvel. The people, who were like sheep without a shepherd just after their emancipation, have been organized into large and flourishing churches. The government of these organizations, as a rule, is characterized by intelligence, industry, economy, and great selfsacrifice. These various church organizations have worked arduously and faithfully, and the number of communicant members of these religious bodies is nearly two million souls.

Many of these organizations are self-reliant and under Negro control and management, and they estimate their strength from 150,000 to 500,000 members.

These colored organizations have their own magazines and newspapers; their Sunday-school and church publications; their colleges and universities; and all of these institutions they not only control but support. No one could have believed that such would be the outcome when these missionary efforts were started twenty-five years ago.

We have taken the retrospect simply to show something of the progress of missionary work in the South.