EXTRACTS FROM CORRESPONDENCE.
KNOWING that you have been a temperance worker, I take the liberty to ask a question, hoping that you can give me a few suggestions that may be of great value to us. What can we do to secure temperance in our village? It is a coal-mining district, and there are about three hundred inhabitants. About two hundred are men of several nationalities, and of these about ninety-five per cent use strong drink. The laws of our State are such that no one is allowed to sell intoxicating liquor here; but it is sold on what the people call the “blind tiger” system. When the law is enforced, the drinkers send and get liquor as private persons. It is used in nearly all the homes of the foreigners; and the larger per cent of the Americans use it. Many of the children of the foreign population are from early childhood taught to drink. Any suggestions you can give us will be greatly appreciated. If we can save one person from a prison and a drunkard’s grave, we shall claim the victory. The question that you ask is a very live and important one, and one which is not confined entirely to your own community. The best method that I know of for securing temperance in any community is to give the people the gospel straight. This is the one only antidote for the drink-habit; and it is the drink-habit that keeps the saloon alive. The saloon lives on that by which men die. As to whether the antidote shall be applied or not, that must always be left to the free choice of the individual. Those who will not accept the gospel can not be broken of any bad habit so that it will stay broken. To undertake to apply the civil law to this question is unnecessary, and must always be unsatisfactory; because anything that votes can do, votes can undo. You might secure the closing of the saloons to-day by vote, and find them opened by other votes to-morrow. Everything depends upon the personal demands of the individual man. If he will have whisky, he will have it whether it comes through the open saloon or the “blind tiger.” As the liquor traffic is at work in your town on the “blind tiger” system, there is no way open to you except to try to convince the individual man of the evil of his course. This requires earnest, consecrated, personal labor,—gospel temperance work in the most practical, personal application. Organize into a working force all your people who are opposed to the drink traffic and habit; pray over it; get the inspiration of the Spirit of God; and go after these men with earnest determination to convince them of the evil of their course, and lead them to the acceptance of Him who alone is equal to this emergency; and by the same gospel, convince men of the iniquity and danger of voting to license the saloon, according to Isa. 5: 22, 23. I know of no other effectual way of closing up a saloon. This will take self-abnegation, self-denial, and such consecration as no other line of teaching and preaching calls for. S. M. I. H.