Earlier text: The Memorial of CreationAlice Cross Wins Her Husband to Christ
AMONG the strongly marked characters of the heroic age of English Methodism, was a comely farmer's wife named Alice Cross. After her conversion, her quiet, sober husband refused for a season to obey the truth. She strove hard to win him to Christ. When leaving home for the Wesleyan meeting, she would pause at the door, with her straw hat in one hand, and the other on the door-latch, while she said: "John Cross, wilt thou go to Heaven with me? If thou wilt not, I am determined not to go to hell with thee." These blunt sentences, had they been spoken in an acrid tone, might have wrought more powerfully on John's temper than on his conscience. But being the utterance of an earnest woman, the expression of profound conviction, the voice of a soul full of tenderness and of the spirit of heaven, they were finally effectual, and John Cross sought to go to Heaven with his devoted wife. If every Christian wife were as earnest as Alice Cross, there would be few homes with one of its heads traveling toward Heaven and the other toward perdition. Her spirit, not her peculiar method, cannot be too highly commended, or too faithfully emulated by Christian wives.—Zion's Herald. An inquirer at a temperance meeting interrupted the speaker by exclaiming: “I say, mister, do you think a gin sling does a fellow any harm?” To which the lecturer replied: “Not if the man slings it far enough; but when the gin slings him ever so little, then it does harm.—Temperance Chronicle.” The Biblical Meaning of Temperance
A NEW meaning is unfolded from the word "temperate," so harped upon by our "moderate" friends, when it is understood that in the Scriptural use of the term, the Greek word employed is synonymous with the Hebrew term used in Gen. 43:31, where, in speaking of Joseph's tears for his brothers, he is said to have gone out of his chamber, where he had been weeping, and "restrained himself." Temperance, in Bible language, evidently means refraining, or total abstinence.— Signal. THEY say that beer does not intoxicate; that it promotes health and happiness, and if its use should become general, would redeem society from much of the evil effects of liquor drinking. Along with such assertions put testimony like the following confession of a hard working man arrested recently for homicide: “I am forty-three years old, have been sixteen years in this country, and have worked at Tiemann’s paint factory fifteen years. I have a wife and three children. I live on the top floor, and Lippold on the second floor in the same house. We had some angry talk four weeks ago, since which I have avoided him and kept up stairs after getting through my day’s work so as to keep out of trouble. On Sunday I went for a walk by the river, and when I came home went straight to my room. Afterward I came down in my stockings. As I came out on the stoop he hit me, and I got mad and stabbed him with my knife. I did not mean to kill him. I did not say anything to provoke him before he hit me. I was not much drunk, I think, having drank only four or five glasses of beer. I never had any similar trouble before.”—The Signal. The Chicago Tribune proposes, since most crimes are instigated by the use of intoxicating drinks, that licenses be put up to a price that will make a fund to pay the expenses of courts and prisons. But the Tribune fails to tell us why we should tolerate for a day a system which beyond all doubt does originate and foster most of the vice and crime of every city. Why continue it at all? If the loss it occasions is thirty times as much as the income from license, does it seem wise to license it? The Tribune's plan is to put the cost of license very high. But would not a higher license simply compel the doing of a larger business, so that the higher the fees the wider the ruin. The more expense the more sales, and the proportion between expenses and profits must be always about the same. We advise a shorter method, grant no more licenses, make no costs, and then we shall need no fund to pay them. Mr. P. T. Barnum writes that in Bridgeport a liquor saloon depreciates adjoining property to the amount of $5,000. We may add that one saloon will also cause to disappear values among its customers to the amount of $5,000 annually. So that the average license fee does not nearly pay back to government a sum equal to the taxes it suppresses, to say nothing of the actual costs entailed by crime. We protest against using money paid by honest temperance men to pay the cost of prosecution and other damages occasioned by the sale of liquors licensed or unlicensed. Give us laws that will define clearly the legitimate effects of drinking, and let the costs, be they less or more, be levied on the men who sell the liquors. When we give good material to a blacksmith or tailor or miller, and he ruins it, we can recover the value. We ought to be able to recover at least a percentage of the value of a boy from those who planned and compassed his ruin. If we tolerate license at all, they should give bonds stronger than straw, to guarantee all such assessments. The fact that all saloons unite in ruining men, and that any one drinker usually obtains drink at many places, should bind them together as one man, when we fasten damages upon them. We should not object to grouping them by corporations or by counties in cases of damage.—Golden Censer. "WHAT is whisky bringing?" asked a dealer in that article, one day. He meant to ask, how much it is selling for. A gentleman who heard the remark took it in an entirely different sense from that. "What is whisky bringing?" do you ask. I'll tell you: "It is bringing men to prison and to the gallows, and it is bringing women and children to poverty and want." There never was a truer answer than this. It is estimated that it sends to prison every year one hundred thousand men and women. Twenty thousand children are sent to the work-house annually by drink. Three hundred murders are caused by intemperance every year. Two hundred thousand children are made orphans every year, by this dreadful evil; and sixty-five thousand are killed by intemperance every year in this country. Does it seem possible that man will deal out to his brother such poisonous stuff, when he knows that it will prove his ruin? Laws ought to be established and put in force, so affecting the rum-seller that not one would dare put up his sign, or stand behind the counter and deal out the fatal poison. Visit our large cities. Over the door of almost every other place of business you will read: "Ales, wines, liquors, and cigars." "Ales on draught." "Lager beer saloon," etc. How can the unwary escape, where so many traps are set for them. Villages rarely have such signs over their doors, but then there are "holes in the wall" protected by a few oyster shells, where the thirsty can dodge in for a glass of stale beer, if for nothing stronger, and thus pave their way to destruction New York Pays More for Tobacco Than Bread
NEW YORK pays more for tobacco than for bread. Dealers say that there are smokers in that city who average a hundred cigars a week, and men whose cigar bills run up to thousands of dollars per annum. Sandy's Partner.
By W. J. Chase
You know how quickly news spreads in a small town. As soon as anything unusual happens, there are always people ready to carry the news about, so that one cannot long escape hearing of it. So it is not strange that when Sandy McNeil announced his intention of closing his saloon, half the town heard of it before night. I heard of it sooner than many, because I had worked to get that saloon closed—worked long and hard, appealing to the law, to the people, and to Sandy himself. I knew Sandy—knew him before he began his cursed life-destroying traffic, and though he was a coarse, hard man, wholly given up to the spirit of this world, I did not at first despair of convincing him of the sinfulness of liquor-selling, and of persuading him to abandon it. I had even kept up a sort of friendliness for him all through my fight against his saloon, which he was too sensible to take mortal offense at. "You're doing what you have a right to do, and so am I," he said. "Beat me, and I'll give in, provided you'll do the same." "I'm bound to fight against the saloon," I answered; "but I have no desire to annoy you—unnecessarily, that is. If you will agree to close your bar, I'll take your liquor off your hands, so you'll lose nothing." "What will you do with it?" he asked slyly. "Pour it in the street, make liniment of it, or put it to some honest use. No human being shall taste a drop of it, you may be sure." "I dare say, but I don't care to sell. Go ahead and fight me. I'll fight fair if you will." So we tried it, and as I said, I was beaten. The court upheld Sandy, and the majority of the voters refused to vote for prohibition, so I had to give in with the best possible grace, and turn my attention to other branches of temperance work. Hence, I was surprised to hear it reported that Sandy had voluntarily closed his saloon, and it was with curiosity not unmixed with skepticism, that I hastened to learn the truth. The saloon was closed, sure enough, and that fact was announced by a notice posted on the door. But Sandy was nowhere about, and no one else knew the reason for his sudden decision. Apparently the saloon keeper had gone away to avoid questioning, but I was too much interested to let the matter rest, so I posted off to hunt him up. Finally I found him. "Well, Sandy," I said, "have you closed the saloon?" "I should think you could see that," he answered, shortly. "Yes, but what I want to know is, have you closed it for good?" "I thought it was your belief that all closing of saloons was for good. But I've closed her to stay, if that's what you mean." "That is for good, I am sure," I answered. "How came you to do it?" "Thought it wouldn't pay." "But I tried to convince you of that, and couldn't. Who else has been laboring with you?" "I cannot say," he answered, mysteriously. "Do you stick by your offer to take the liquor off my hands?" "Yes," I said, hesitating a little, "if you'll tell me what brought you round." "I'd sooner give you the stock," he said, "take it, and do as you like with it; and if you get anything from it, use it for temperance." "Thank you, Sandy," I answered; "but I wish you would tell me all about it. I really want to know, Sandy, for it might help me in my work." "It would not help you," said Sandy; "you could not make people dream as I did, and if you could, maybe it would not affect them." "It must have been, and yet I can scarcely believe it yet. Listen, and I'll tell you. Last night I was staying in the bar-room till pretty late—after turning out my latest customer, Rob Tipple, because he had no money, and was bothering me for credit. I was leaning against the bar, and I may have dozed a little. Suddenly the door opened, and Seldrink, the drummer from the wholesale dealer that supplies me, came in. I was rather surprised to see him, for I did not expect him for a week yet, but I welcomed him, and we had a drink together, and sat down to talk over the state of the trade. We were looking over the books and calculating what supplies I'd need, when I turned my head and saw Rob Tipple coming in the door and making for the bottle I had left on the counter. I reached it first, and then he began to beg and whine for a drink, as he had done in the evening. Of course I refused him. "'Just a sip, Sandy,' he said, 'for old time's sake. Consider how much money I've spent with you.'" "'If you have spent your money, you have had the drinks,' says I; 'we're square as far as that goes, barring your account on the books.'" "'It isn't the money altogether. Think of what else I have spent here. Think of the precious time wasted; of the health, honor, principle, and good name—all that makes life worth living, which I have thrown away here. Look at me and remember what I was—look at my home and remember what it was before you opened this saloon; and look at me and my home now. All these have I given for this cursed appetite for drink, which you refuse to gratify. Give it to me! Oh, give it to me, Sandy! 'Tis the only way I can forget what I have lost!'" "'Come, get out of here' I said. 'I don't want to hear any such talk. I sold you the liquor, but it was you that made a sot of yourself. I have nothing to do with that. I pay for my liquor and my license, and run the ordinary risks of business, and if I make it pay, that's my own affair. I sell the liquor, but you drink it, and whether you make that pay or not is your lookout.'" "'Say, you have not mentioned all of our liabilities,' put in Seldrink, looking over my shoulder. 'Our liabilities, I say, for we are partners, ain't we Sandy?'" "I looked at him, and I declare, if I had not known it was Seldrink, I'd have thought it was Satan himself. There were horns sprouting out on both sides of his head, and he looked for all the world like the picture of 'auld hornie,' in the book my grandmother taught me to read in. "'We're partners,' he said, chuckling; 'we both take pleasure and profit from sin and misery. We'll have to pay for it some day, but the lake of fire and brimstone is a long way off yet, and there's time to do any amount of devil's work yet. 'Woe be to him by whom the offense cometh,' that doesn't touch us, Sandy, my boy. We don't make sots or sinners. We only lay the trap, and 'they are drawn away of their own lusts and enticed.' Go ahead, Sandy, and more power to you. Keep your profit. I work for you, but I don't want pay of that kind. Give me the pleasure of exulting in your success. Ta! ta! See you later, partner! Guess I'll see you last of all, if you come to that!'" "And with a fiendish laugh he disappeared, and I—I either fainted or slipped down to the floor and woke up, for the next thing I knew I was lying on the floor, and it was past midnight. "So I have closed the saloon, for I don't exactly like the idea of being the devil's partner. I ain't altogether converted to temperance yet, but I don't feel right about selling liquor." "Well, Sandy," said I, "you have made a good beginning, and I only wish other saloon keepers would see that it is not to their interest to keep up their partnership with the father of evil. As for not being altogether converted to my way of thinking, all I ask of you is to investigate. Come with me; come and see Rob Tipple's family, for instance, and you will agree that I am not as fanatically mistaken as you have been accustomed to think."—W. J. Chase, in Church and Home. IT MAY BE YOUR TURN NEXT.
JUDGE not too harshly, oh my friend,
Of him your fellow-man,
But draw the veil of charity
About him if you can.
He once was called an honest man,
Before sore trial vexed;
He stepped from out the narrow way—
It may be your turn next. Fainting upon the great highway
A suffering soul doth lie;
Go staunch his wounds and quench his thirst,
Nor pass him idly by.
God will not brook the swift excuse,
The thoughtless, vain pretext;
A fellow-mortal bites the dust—
It may be your turn next. You heard one day a single word
Against a person's name;
Oh, bear it not from door to door,
To further hurt his fame.
If you're the man you claim to be,
Remember, then, the text,
To "speak no evil," true or false—
It may be your turn next. The world is bad enough, we own,
And many need more light;
Yet, with true love to all, may we
Help in the cause of right:
Lift up the sinful and the weak,
The soul by care perplexed,
Well knowing that to drink the gall
It may be our turn next. SHE came bounding down the steps, all ready for school. "Come across," called her little friend, Johnnie Bates. "I'll wait for you." Right in front of her were two prancing horses. "I can't come across the street," said Effie, "till the horses pass." "O pooh!" said Johnnie, "clip across. You'll have time: the horses are standing still. They don't mean to go yet. 'Fore I'd be such a coward." Down sat Effie plump on the stone step. "I can't come across till the horses go by, not if they don't go in a week," she said. "My mamma said never to cross the street alone if there is a horse to be seen; and I am not going to." Just then the horses, that a man had been trying to manage, became frightened at a kite that some boys were playing with, and broke from him. Away they went, right over the very crossing that Effie would have taken! Effie's mamma ran to the door, pale and trembling. She had seen those dreadful horses fly by! "O my darling," she said, putting her arms around Effie, "what danger you have been in!" "Why, mamma!" Effie said, looking up at her mother with her eyes full of wonder, "I don't think I was in a speck of danger. You told me not to cross the street when I saw horses, and of course I wouldn't. So how could they hurt me!" "IRENÆUS," in the New York Observer, says: "The stage was full—six on each side. A woman—observe I do not say a lady—entered with two children, a ten-year-old boy and a younger girl. As she could not find a seat, I gave her mine, and the children stood at her knee. Presently two persons left, and the boy and I sat down opposite the mother. Now two ladies entered, and the mother instantly bent forward and said to her son, 'Keep your seat; I paid for you.' This was a lesson in politeness that would probably determine the manners of that boy for life. The mother had just before accepted my seat, compelling me, a man twice as old as herself, to stand up in an omnibus; but the moment when her little son had an opportunity to be kind to ladies, she interfered and bade him keep his seat. * I was coming up-town, and entered the stage in which five elegantly-dressed and fine-looking women were sitting on each side of it. They might be the lady patronesses of some society. There was room for another person on each side, but not one of those ten women moved to make room for me, and I rode a mile or more while those ten women—I do not say ladies—declined to give me a seat, as they could have done any moment, without rising or crowding. The most of them were probably mothers. But as the instinct of good manners—that is, of politeness, which is simply the law of kindness—was not in the breast of one of the ten, what is to be expected of their children? They cannot teach what they do not know, and, as they know nothing of politeness, their children will be boors, and the mothers will never know it." The Minister’s Sermon Notes
A STORY is told of an old gentleman who always took notes of his minister's sermon, and on one occasion read them to the minister himself. "Stop, stop!" said he, at the occurrence of a certain sentence; "I didn't say that." "I know you didn't," was the reply; "I put that in myself to make sense."—Golden Rule. The difference between coarse and refined abuse is as the difference between being bruised by a club and wounded by a poisoned arrow. —The Hartford, (Conn.) public school building was burned on the 24th. Loss $120,000. —Clarkson N. Potter, a prominent Democratic politician of New York, died January 23. —A fire at the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad shops, on the 24th, destroyed $60,000 worth of property. Cause, incendiary. —An emigrant train was ditched January 27, between Los Angeles and Deming. Two passengers were seriously injured, and the express train was delayed six hours. —The large dry goods house of Camp, Morrill & Camp, at Jackson, Mich., was entered by burglars on the night of the 25th ult., and robbed of $12,000 worth of goods. —There is a strong Anti-Mormon agitation in the East. Large mass-meetings have been held in many cities, and public indignation is beginning to be aroused over the matter. —The overseers of the poor in the villages of Walden and Montgomery, New York, brought charges against the hotel keepers for selling liquor, and one was fined $1,000 and the other $500, with all the costs of the trial. —Gambetta's bill for revision of the French Constitution having been rejected by the Chamber of Deputies, by a vote of 305 to 117, he and the entire Cabinet handed in their resignations. —A furious wind-storm prevailed throughout the interior of New York State last week, seriously interrupting telegraphic communication. At Syracuse a school house was blown down, and other damage done. —The Oakland Times calculates that the danger to a murderer's life by hanging is not much greater than the danger of death by a railroad accident. We should say that about the surest course a man can take to insure his life is to kill somebody else. —The Prince of Montenegro has informed the deputation of Herzegovinians who asked for his support in their struggle against Austria, that they must not count on any Montenegrin support, and that if they did not return forthwith, he should imprison them at Podgoriga. —Severe cold weather is reported from the East. At Norwich, N. Y, the thermometer indicated 33 degrees below zero, on the 24th ult. The Hudson River is entirely frozen north of Peekskill. At Newport, R. I., the schools were closed, as it was impossible to heat the buildings. San Francisco stands third among the importing cities of the country. The figures for the year ending June 30, 1881, recently published by the Treasury Department, show the value of New York's imports to be $435,450,395; Boston's $61,960,103; San Francisco's $37,943,695; and Philadelphia's $32,583,106. —After mature deliberation, a powerful syndicate of Paris bankers, among whom are the Rothschilds, have determined to come to the relief of the embarrassed Union General Bank. Stringent conditions have been imposed, to prevent any abuse of the assistance given. Other banks will probably be assisted by the same parties. —A fresh number of the Nihilist journal, The Will of the People, is being circulated among all the officials in Russia. It was probably introduced from abroad. The leading editorial says: "The coronation of the Czar will never take place, therefore make no preparation for it. Many things may occur between this and the 25th of May. Do not throw away your money uselessly. —An uncleanly youngster at Melville, N. J., has been condemned to pay a fine of $13.50 or to suffer ten days' imprisonment, for discharging tobacco juice on the floor of the Methodist Church during service. This is a good move. We hope it may be generally adopted. There are some churches that, should they follow this plan, would have a magnificent income, besides being very much cleaner. —The vineyardists of Switzerland are becoming alarmed. The cause of this is the extent of the manufacture of "pure wine" made without grapes. Under the laws of that country fabricated wines can be sold, the same as any other, and as by the employment of water, alcohol, and tannin, an article can be made which cannot be distinguished by a careful analysis from grape wine, and costs but a trifle, the occupation of the grape growers is liable to suffer. —Captain Eads is making a strong effort to get an appropriation from Congress for his proposed Ship Railroad across the Isthmus, and the prospect is that he will be successful. The question, he says, is whether it will be built under American auspices or by British capital. He says that he was assured while in Europe that the required sum could be raised in sixty days should he apply to them for aid; but he wished to give the United States the first chance. He therefore practically says to Congress: "If you do not guarantee the interest at six per cent. for fifteen years, upon a capital stock of $50,-000,000, you will run the risk of surrendering the Isthmus of Tehuantepec to British hands. THERE has grown up in this country within a half century a spirit of levity, and a leniency toward some forms of vice, and a general loosening of restraint on the young which tend to encourage the sowing of wild oats, regardless of the yield. The old strictness has gone out of our home life. Our young folks are left very much to their own inclinations. And society has let down the bars into all pastures, so that colts prance and browse at will. There is a freedom which verges on looseness and license, and it is looked upon as an indication of spirit and force for young people to kick over the proprieties and even try to knock the "nots" out of the commandments. It seems in many quarters to be taken for granted that youth has a deal of folly to get rid of, and must have its run of fastness as childhood is expected to have measles and chicken-pox. A smoking, swaggering, pool-playing, wine-bibbing boy, turning night into day and sleeping till noon to recover from his carouse, why, he is only sowing his wild oats, which is spoken of as sympathetically as though he were a baby cutting his teeth. Yes, wild oats! And very bad, bitter, blasting, poisonous grain they are. They are sure to injure if they do not kill. They affect the taste and constitution, and leave remorseful recollections like a canker in the mouth. Whoever has the inclination to fast ways and reckless behavior which goes under that name, should bury it under all possible thickness of good resolutions and noble conduct, and let it fertilize the soil for a finer growth of manliness instead of planting it where it will reproduce after its kind. For wild oats grow. They yield a crop of bad habits, of evil companions, of vicious tastes, of disease, and sometimes of crime and death. They produce hundreds of Jennie-Cramer deaths every year. They colonize the prison cells. They bring a heavy aftermath of remorse and wretchedness. There is no crop sown that brings forth such a harvest of sorrow, wretchedness, and shame. Yet at the present time the customs of society and the too lenient judgment of our easy-going people encourage the sowing and furnish all the conditions for raising the crop. The time has come for parents to consider whether it pays them or their children to sow wild oats, when a better kind of seed can be scattered just as well. All possible joy to the young; all possible innocent pleasure to young people; all the freedom compatible with safety. But the lines drawn across the world by the finger of the Eternal, which cannot be crossed, should be pointed out, and every precipice should be fenced against the feet of inexperience.—Christian at Work. —In ten years the number of churches in Chicago has increased from 156 to 218. —President Robinson, of Brown University, will deliver the Yale lectures on preaching, this year. —It is proposed to start at Little Rock, Ark., a college for young men and women, under the control of the Methodist Church. —Of all the arrests made in Oakland under the Sunday law, only two were made by Home Protection Association. These were the proprietors of the Opera Garden, who have been twice arrested. The remainder of the arrests, together with all those made in San Francisco, were made by the League of Freedom. REVISED EDITION--JUST ISSUED
Being an examination of its
ACTIONS, SUBJECTS AND RELATIONS.
Also, a brief consideration of the
Historical Evidences of Trine Immersion.
Second Edition, Revised and Enlarged.
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NEW EDITION, octavo size, 1,200 pages, with many important additions and improvements from the works of the most eminent scholars, commentators and travelers. It is designed to be In regard to the pronunciation and signification of Scriptural names; the solution of difficulties respecting the interpretation, authority and harmony of the Old and New Testaments; the history and description of Biblical customs, events, places, persons, animals, plants, etc. In this book it is designed to make everything intelligible to those who understand only the English language, and to place them as nearly as possible on a level with the scholars who are familiar with the original languages of the Scriptures. All the words in the vocabulary are pronounced and divided into syllables, and words or parts of words are respelled whenever this is necessary to indicate the pronunciation. The book contains numerous maps, and is abundantly supplied with superior engravings, which are of real utility to the student. No one who desires to study the Scriptures intelligently will be without a copy of this most excellent book, as its price is within the reach of all. Price, in cloth .....................................................$5.00
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