"KNIGHTS OF THE ROYAL ARCH."
By C. M. S.
THE liquor merchants and bartenders have organized a lodge of their own, under the name of "Knights of the Royal Arch." It is somewhat on the order of the Odd Fellows, Masons, and other secret orders. It is supposed to aid its members in case of sickness, and to care for the family of any member removed by death. But it makes no provision for relieving the wants of families whose means of sustenance has been squandered at the bar. It provides no clothing for the wife and child when the drunken father has pawned the remnants of their scanty wardrobe and poured the proceeds of the cruel sale down his burning throat, to make himself less of a husband and less of a father to them than he had been before. It pays no funeral bills for those who are burried into eternity out of a drunken sleep, and have left the entire proceeds of their toil in the till of the saloon-keeper, and have thrown themselves into the hopper of his drunkard-making machine. It pays no benefits to the wife robbed of a husband, the widow robbed of a son, the orphan robbed of a father, by the knife or bullet of a drink-crazed madman. Nay, this is the harvest upon which it feeds. The misery of the multitude is the ponderous mint that is pouring a continuous stream of gold into their hungry coffers—blood money of the innocents. And what are the people being asked to do with this insatiate destroyer? —They are being asked to pray and vote for the closing of the saloons on Sunday!—Another "righteous compromise," and just as unrighteous as was that so-called "righteous compromise" which permits and propagates in India the wickedness of social vice! Every compromise with evil is a victory for evil. The consistent Christian can not afford to "give aid and comfort to the enemy." The saloon is an evil every day in the week. Its work can not be made righteous, honest, or elevating by closing its doors one day in seven.