rendering again, and crying: "How long, O Lord, how long before these infamous solicitations shall be gone?

And how many mothers there are waiting to see if this national curse will not lift! Is that the boy that had the honest breath who comes home with breath vitiated or disguised? What a change! Oh, what a funeral it will be when that boy is brought home dead!

Ay, and there are many wives waiting for domestic rescue. What a hell on earth a woman lives in who has a drunken husband! O Death, how lovely thou art to her and low soft and warm thy skeleton hand! The sepulchre at midnight in winter is a king's drawing-room compared with that woman's home. It is not so much the blow on the head that hurts as the blow on the heart. The rum fiend came to the door of that home and opened it and stood there and said: "I curse this dwelling with an unrelenting curse. I curse that father into a maniac. I curse that mother into a pauper. those sons into vagabonds. I curse those daughters into profligacy. Cursed be bread-tray and cradle. Cursed be couch and chair and family Bible. Curse upon curse! Oh, how many wives are waiting to see if something can not be done to shake these frosts of the second death off the orange-blossoms!

I curse

Yea, and God is waiting, the God who works through human instrumentalities, waiting to see whether this nation is going to throw off this evil. And if it refuse to do so, God will wipe out the nation as he did Phoenicia, as He did Rome, as He did Thebes, as He did Babylon. He is waiting to see

what the church of God will do.

Ask God what to do and He will make it plain. Do not ask your political party. Vote with reference to that day when you must give an account. Young men of America, pass over into the army of teetotalism. Tens of thousands of young men have been dragged out of respectability and out of purity and out of good character, and into darkness by this infernal stuff called strong drink. Do not touch it! Do not touch it!

WE

GOD'S CLOCK STRIKES.

REV. GEORGE F. PENTECOST.

E are often told that we must keep the temperance question out of politics; that it is a purely moral issue. That is, I believe, true as far as the individual aspect of this question is concerned, but the question has a public side to it, and as such it is a question that does and has and must in the future, much more than in the past, enter the domain of politics. In fact, it is already in politics.

It

The saloon power is a political power. As a matter of fact, there is no business that is so closely and compactly organized for political purposes as are the National and State Liquor Associations of this country. It is a monstrous monopoly which depends on legislation for its existence. has been shown that in a single winter the Liquor Association of New York spent more than $100,000 at Albany fighting the excise bills introduced by men who had some appreciation of the danger to the State as well as to the people of this business.

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I have rejoiced in the principles and triumphs of the "Grand Old Party," which for twenty-five years has expressed and executed the best moral sentiment of the country in her official and political action. In view of her past history, I have been inclined to pass by with a charitable judgment some of her glaring inconsistencies of more recent date, hoping and believing that her underlying principles and her genius for conscientiousness would bring her around to a true position, and purge her from corrupt men crept in, in times of peace and in the absence of great issues. But now I see that grand old party trailing the glorious banner of truth and righteousness, under which she has marched for a quarter of a century to victory, in the dust and filth of the saloon, which has evermore been the bulwark of her foes, and lifting aloft the filthy and criminal rag of "rum and riot" for the sake of votes and office and spoils.

Lord Bacon has said that the saddest sight in this world "is to see a man marching in procession at the funeral of his own greatness." He was uttering an unconscious prophecy of the end of the Republican Party. Look at that party as now seen in the Empire State! Behold the humiliation!

See the procession, and at the head of the column a banner with this strange device, "An Act for the Protection of the Republican Saloon-keepers.' This is not the party of Abraham Lincoln, of Seward, of Andrew, and the heroes, military and civic, of twenty years ago. She has been drugged by rum and beer, and now is strangely metamorphosed. Brethren, in the face of God and man I can not march in procession with that party any longer. For I can not at once look upon that new banner at the head of the column and into the face of God. * * *

Our remedy lies in the organization of an anti-saloon party whose one business shall be to destroy the power of the saloon, not by protests but by votes. There are enough voters who are opposed to the saloon, if they will, to overthrow their power. I pray God they may do so. There is no help to be had from either of the two great political organizations, and nothing but legislation with a powerful public sentiment behind it will deliver us out of the hands of the Philistine saloon-keepers. The Democratic Party is a saloon party from principle. They can not legislate against the saloon without an entire regeneration of their principles, for, as they put it, they are opposed to all sumptuary legislation. The Republican Party is not a saloon party from principle, but for the sake of votes she has stultified her principles and declared for the saloons. There is, therefore, no remedy short of political organization and legislation which, if it can not completely destroy this monster criminal business, will at least so hold it in check and terror that it can not thrive. Therefore, we must organize a third party whose corner-stone shall be prohibition of the traffic.

Brethren, let us do our duty in this matter.

Twenty-five years ago God spoke to the conscience of this nation for the

last time on the subject of human slavery. His time-clock struck twelve, and rang out the sound full and clear. It said, God's time has come at last to destroy human slavery. The conscience of the nation responded to the call of Almighty God. Men sprang from both the Whig and the Democratic parties and united in favor of the Republican Party, and with one tremendous blow did God's bidding. Human slavery disappeared from these fair United States, and ever since God has honored this country as He never did another. One's imagination shudders to think what would have been the result if the nation had not responded to God's call then.

Once more the time-clock of God Almighty is ringing out the hour of high noon. God is summoning His troops from all parties, and bids us strike this evil-a thousand times greater than slavery-down to the earth, bind it and cast it out and down into hell, where it belongs. It almost paralyzes one's heart to think what may be the result to us and to our land if we refuse to respond to the call. May God enlighten us and give us the courage to strike in His name for the right and against the wrong.

N the broad light of day my grim visage I hide,

IN

Nor out in my uniform once dare I ride;

For 'tis red with the blood of the victims I've slain,
And it's spangled with tears, like the dew on the main.
That a victor I am there is none to deny,

For who ruins or rules so many as I?

War and famine their millions in dust have laid low,
But of all that is holy am I the arch-foe.

See my army move on! None can with it compare;
Though they fall by the myriads, why should I care?
For recruits always ready come pressing along,-

How I gloat o'er their revelry, joy in their song!
I am not content with aught save the best,

My recruits must be generous, their all must invest;
Let them take but a draught and I count them as mine,
On my black-list enroll them e'er the truth they divine;
And out of the specie that falls in the till

I forge chains to make them the slaves of my will.
The king on his throne and the prince in the hall
Pay homage and bow before King Alcohol.

In dungeons the prisoners have pined and have died,
But their spirits were free, and all bondage defied;
But my chains bind in manhood the God-given will,
Though they long to be free, they are prisoners still.
Press closely, O mother, your boy to your breast,
Though your arms may be weary, your heart now may rest;
Press again to your lips those tiny pink feet

For I'll cause them to fail, and to fall in the street.
Listen! How with sweet accents he now lisps thy name,

I will teach him his Maker's and thine to defame.
I'll await him in banquet, in home and in hall:
That beautiful boy-by my oath, he shall fall.
I hear the upraising of men o'er the land
Against my dominions-a host they command;
But at all legislators and "legions" I laugh,
While with my battalions my poison I quaff.
But there is one Name-I must whisper it low-
'Tis humanity's refuge, but my dreaded foe;
It has power to lift up the veriest slave,

At its mention I quail, ha! I thought I was brave.
That name I can't speak it-I'll try to forget,
Drink again, O my boys! ere the stars all are set.
I have lost from my force some I thought were my own,
As they looked, and were saved by the Crucified One.
Then rouse ye, my children, find joy in the bowl,
Ye must not grow tender, nor think of the soul.
When the tongue cries for liquor let no prayer be said,
Though the children are crying and praying for bread.