The Temperance "Instructor"
By G. B. Thompson
The circulation of the INSTRUCTOR affords our young people a splendid opportunity to do a good work in behalf of temperance. The manufacture and sale of intoxicating drink constitutes one of the greatest evils in the world. The rum traffic is indeed the overshadowing curse. Through indulgence of the appetite for intoxicating beverages, thousands have been robbed of a spotless character. The insane asylums are thronged with thousands of wrecks, worse than dead, whose reason is dethroned through this evil. It transforms sober, industrious, virtuous citizens into drunkards, paupers, and beggars, filling the almshouses with once industrious citizens, to be supported by public charity. Intemperance in rum trains the young in infidelity, dissipation, ignorance, lewdness, and every other conceivable vice. It incites otherwise peaceable communities to riot, robbery, and bloodshed. It multiplies accidents and incurable diseases. It changes loving, indulgent fathers into fiends, mothers into widows, and makes children orphans. Look at the pawnshop, the poorhouse, the police court, the hospital, the penitentiary, and the gallows as samples of its awful work. No work in behalf of temperance can be complete unless we lift our voice against this monstrous evil. The circulation of the INSTRUCTOR is one way we can help check this stream which is sweeping unnumbered victims over its Niagara of destruction. Our people in the New South Wales (Australia) Conference last year engaged in a strong temperance campaign. It was not carried on entirely by the young people, but they were a factor in it. Years ago we were instructed that we are not to stand aloof from other temperance workers, but to unite with them, and we would see good results. Our people in Australia did this, and the Lord blessed them. The question was one of local option. Although we have only about six hundred Sabbath-keepers in this conference, a special edition of the Australasian Signs of the Times was published for the campaign, and one hundred twenty thousand copies were circulated. Tens of thousands of pages of tracts were also specially prepared for the occasion. Both papers and tracts were given away. The money to pay for all this literature was raised by contributions solicited from persons not of our faith. Twenty-five hundred dollars was thus raised, some of the friends giving as much as fifty dollars to help in this campaign against the Moloch of strong drink. This campaign resulted in greatly extending our influence, and bringing our work before the most influential and educated class of people. Leading temperance workers spoke at our camp-meeting, some of whom were persons of note. Think what the thousands of young people in this country might do in a united effort in this matter. A great work has been done with former Temperance specials of the INSTRUCTOR; but a much greater work ought to be accomplished this year. Why not plan to double the circulation of this forthcoming special over all previous numbers? In the starving children, the hopeless epileptics, the neglected homes, the broken-hearted wives, the distracted parents, the chattering imbeciles, the ragged loafers all about us as the result of strong drink, we can find our inspiration.