Sunday Sabbath and Temperance
THE pertinacity with which the friends of the Sunday-sabbath insist that their movement is part and parcel of the temperance question, is worthy of a better cause. Every man who insists that the saloons must be closed on Sunday, tacitly admits that they may remain open on other days; and thus he acknowledges that the business of selling liquors is as legitimate six days in the week as other branches of trade. If the man who owns two horses, a gray and a bay, says to his son, "John, you must not ride the gray horse," he implies that he may ride the bay; for it is equally within his power to say, "John, you shall not ride either horse;" and his neglect to exercise his parental authority in the case of the bay horse, is a tacit permission to his son to ride that horse. And just so it is with the liquor question. Those who have the power to close saloons on Sunday, can also close them on Monday, and on every other day; and their failure to do so shows that they are zealous, not in the cause of temperance, but for the Sunday. They only are worthy the name of temperance men who favor prohibition seven days in the week.