Good Templars and Christian Temperance
By Editor
ONE of the State deputies of the order of Good Templars reports that the night selected for the institution of a lodge was "prayer-meeting night," but that the two churches in the community adjourned their meetings, and "came in and helped us, both ministers becoming charter members;" which the Rescue declares to be "a fact on which both the ministers and the order are to be congratulated." Perhaps the order may be congratulated, but the cause of temperance cannot be. When any professedly temperance work becomes a rival of the church, its usefulness as a temperance concern is gone, for there cannot be any real temperance that is not Christian temperance. We have in this another proof of the fact, which we have known for a long time, that the success of the order of Good Templars bears no relation to the success of the cause of temperance. Temperance has nothing whatever to do with secrecy.