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victory assured. "What is the condition of His presence?" must, therefore, be the question of supremest moment to those who desire to see the temperance reform move on to the conquest.

"Come out from among them, and be ye separate; touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you." This is the enlistment order, if we are going with God into the war. Absolute separation from the evil which is to go down is the first condition. "Come out," "be separate, "" touch not." "The unclean" thing is in the land of judgment and destruction; like Sodom, it waits the fire of just indignation, and those who have complicity with it must suffer when that storm shall fall.

"Come out," "be separate," "touch not." Can that mean to "work with all parties?" to compromise on "high license?" to "tax and regulate?" and, in order to reach the best method and find not the right but the attainable, go on casting the ballot for those whose highest ideal is to regulate and thereby perpetuate the “unclean thing?

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History bears witness that the devil has never been beaten with his own weapons. From behind his own defences, the Prince of Evil comes to defeat alone by the artillery of heaven, and they who use that artillery must leave the devil's camp.

There is a great deal of jelly-fish talk about good people agreeing upon the principles of the temperance reform but differing about methods, as if that were a very innocent matter, to be treated with silent charity; but the sin of these good people lies in the choice of methods. The liquor traffic is a social evil considered by itself. It is a political evil through the compromise legislation which sustains it. To these propositions most good men agree. A wrong method of treating this acknowledged evil is their sin. We are at the hour when one tremendous thing in this reform is method. "Come out," "be separate," "touch not," is the method in the unseen where the Lord of Hosts is leading to victory.

IN

RUM EVERYWHERE.

N the midnight calm and holy, when the world has sunk to rest,

When the spotless dew is trembling on the lily's folded crest, When the sighing of the zephyr creeps and steals upon the ear Soft and gentle as an echo wafted from another sphere,

I will leave my heated room, leave the darkness and the gloom,

I will leave the crowded city, quit the crime-polluted street; Wander through the meadows, where I may breathe a purer

air,

Feel a purer, holier, better earth beneath my straying feet. On through silent lanes where rustling trees are nodding overhead,

Whispering tales to one another of the pleasant summers fled; On through fields where corn is waving, as if in sleep is

heard

Some soft anthem stealing round it to whose melody is stirred; Stars are glistening in the sky, dewdrops glitter in reply,

Silent converse with each other violets and daisies keep; Robin with the scarlet breast dreams of mischief in his nest; Flow'rets, tired of being happy, close their petals now to sleep.

Yonder is a cot half hidden in a robe of red and green, Covered o'er with countless roses bathing in the pale moon's

sheen;

Surely nothing less than angels dwell within that cottage there;

Winning fairies must be hiding round a spot so bright and

fair.

To the window I will creep, through the lattice I will peepAlas! that such an Eden should have such a hell within! See the drunken father lie with his children weeping by,

And a bower of beauty blackened with the awful brand of sin.

Out again upon the highway, all my heart with sickness

numb,

From that cottage quickly flying to a village now I come; Rows of cottages, surrounded by green fields like verdant

seas,

Or like hidden treasures crouching in the shadow of the trees. But as I am drawing near, frightful noises greet my ear— Curses like the yells of devils, oaths that taint the very air.

Never city built by man since the world its course began Could eclipse the scenes of horror that within that village

were.

"Rum again!" I faintly mutter, as my footsteps hurry by, On past sights of drink and riot, evil plague-spots to the eye; Out again into the meadows-here, at least, I may breathe

free;

In this solitude of nature no drink traces shall I see.

Rivers glisten calm and bright in the moonbeam's spectral light;

Laughing streamlets, never sleeping, leap adown the green hillside;

Now the nightingale's sweet song breaks upon a list'ning throng

Of primroses and foxgloves that beneath the hedges hide. But the magic note is broken by a shriek so loud and shrill That the streamlets seem to stagger in their racing down the

hill;

And I heard rude, clamorous voices yonder by the river's brink,

Gruesome curse and ribald laughter-can I never leave the drink?

Back again into the town, with a spirit broken down

By the crime that ever meets me, wheresoever I may roam. Vainly do I strive to flee-still the serpent's trail I see Blasting, ruining, destroying every spot 'neath heaven's broad dome.

VOTE THE TRAFFIC DOWN.

I

HON. JOHN P. ST. JOHN.

BELIEVE that saloon-keepers are morally and socially just as good and just as pure as the saloons they keep; and the saloons they keep are morally and socially just as good and quite as pure as is the law that authorizes them to keep the saloons; and the law which authorizes them to keep the saloons in the sight of God is just as good and just as pure as the church member who votes for that kind of a law. The seller is engaged in a lawful business, and the seller measures up with the community that stands back of him. You have just exactly such a condition of things in your town as the people want-just such a condition of things as they will and as you will.

"But," you say, "the majority rule." I say, no! The majority does not rule in this country and never did rule. To-day we have a government of sixty millions of people run by about five millions, and one-half of the people of voting age are not allowed to have any voice in the government at all, although we hang them under the law just exactly as we do those fellows who voted for the law. It is not a 66 government of the people, by the people, for the people!" is a government of a lot of politicians, by the politicians, for the politicians.

It

The fact that the nation is taking a revenue from this curse out of the profits of the dealers in this business that destroys homes and immortal souls stands to-day, in my judgment, as a monument of God's wonderful mercy to us as a people. We must remember that while God's mercy endureth forever, His patience will not last always. I wonder that we have not already seen the handwriting on the wall; that we have not already been weighed in the balance, and found wanting.

One of the great questions of the hour is, Shall the government under which we live be held for Christ, or shall it

go down into outer darkness, lost forever under the crushing weight of its own sins. This is a serious matter and one that we can not pass by lightly. "Make a chain, for the city is full of violence!" Make a chain to hold down fast and tight that which is destructive and deadly to civilization! Every man to-day is making a chain, and I tell you that the chain you are forging is not any stronger than is its weakest link. It makes no difference how perfect you may be in this or that thing-you may belong to a church and you may pray one way, but when you come to vote on this question, if you vote against a measure that looks to the overthrow of the nation's greatest evil, the strength of your chain will be measured by the casting of your ballot.

I say that license, high or low, is a fraud and a sham! It is a fraud upon the liquor traffic if it's right, and I know it is a sham as a temperance measure. It is wrong in principle. I take the position-and I answer to God only for saying it— that no man can be a true follower of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and vote for any system of legalization of the liquor traffic as a beverage.

When he who gives way to the plea that we are going to settle this question on a high-license basis, that we can not effectually prohibit the liquor traffic, and, coward-like, goes to the polls and uses his ballot to vote against prohibitory laws, so that the saloon system continues, homes and immortal souls are destroyed when he comes before the judgment bar of God he will be just as guilty as the man who keeps the saloon. There is no compromise ground in this matter.

"Yes, but," says another, "what would you do if you knew you could not prohibit? Wouldn't you hedge it in with high license?"

I say to you no! I would stand out and enter my protest. I would get on God's side and on the side of home, and do my duty as a citizen of a great commonwealth, and leave God to take care of the results, and God will do it.

You talk to me about it letting us alone! It lets nobody alone! There is not a mother in all our land who sees her

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