CHAPTER XIV.

THE REMEDIES TOTAL ABSTINENCE.

Alcohol the Tyrant of all Ages and Races - Are the Chains of the Liquor Habit to be Perpetual? Shall there be a "New Emancipation"? - The Forces of the Temperance Reform until lately a Godinspired Mob-A Great War before us-The Emancipation of Fifteen Hundred Millions - Agencies to be Employed by the Organized Army of Reform Considered: Individual, Associated and Political Personal Total Abstinence a Recent Evolution of Christian Civilization - The Dictum of Science and Duty.

WE

E have now surveyed this monster evil which afflicted. nations, long since personified as the Tyrant Alcohol. The tyrant indeed he is of all ages, and of every race and clime. America, Europe, the world, are now in his chains. There has never been a system of slavery like this which King Alcohol has imposed upon mankind-so full of horrors, so abject and hopeless, in this life, and so portentous only of wailing and despair in the next.

The slavery which for hundreds of years was imposed by civilized (?) nations upon the children of ravished Africa was so dreadful in its origin, and so wicked in its robbery of the rights of man, that humanity and conscience at last have overthrown it, even in those regions where it existed in its mildest and most profitable form. It was, at the worst, subjection of the body only.

"Still, in thought as free as ever," the black victim asserted his own manhood, denied the right of those who bought and sold him, and, appealing to the innate sentiments of love and of justice which unite the whole family of man, to the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of the race, demanded liberty and equality before the law. Such an appeal must be heard. It was heard-in every form of protest and indignant expression in time of peace, and finally on a thousand bloody battlefields and on the slippery decks of naval

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strife, until the high judgment of Earth and Heaven has reversed the foul decree which enchained our fellow-man, and now the body, like the soul, is free.

But the fierce tyrant whose dominion we are now contemplating, worse than the kidnapper of Africa, has lassooed our immortal natures and enslaved the soul. Under the slavery which our century has abolished, it was only necessary to release the body and the whole man went free. But here is a thraldom which, while it is destructive of the body, yet interpenetrates the whole nature, and, by a horrible process of mental and moral, as well as physical, dissolution and degradation, eliminates every quality of nobility in man, and even of the respectable brute. There seems hardly anything whatever of being, of personal entity left; nothing but the essence, the purest quality of debased, besotted, and grovelling servility.

The man is at last absorbed in his own chains; there is no man all shames and crimes, and nothing more. Both body and soul are destroyed in hell; yet the hell is upon earth, and millions upon millions of us are now in it, where hundreds and hundreds of millions of our ancestors and of our kith and kin have already died of the worm which so far dieth not, "the worm of the still." And is there no escape? are these chains perpetual?

Shall there be no "New Emancipation"? With me the millennium is a fact as fixed in the future as the rising of the morrow's sun. To that more than hope, that faith which is the substance of things hoped for, I cling as the fundamental premise in the logic of life. Without this, there is, to my mind, no syllogism, no conclusion at all. If we may not believe-yes, know, as we know that the everlasting courses of universal nature are sure- that there is a higher and better destiny for the race than this mortal existence, a time when" all crimes shall cease, and ancient fraud shall fail," and once more "returning Justice lift aloft her scale," what is there to work for here? If the earthly millennium be impossible, a will-o'-the-wisp, or some miasmatic exhalation of the mind; if there be no certainty of a higher and better state in this world which we have seen, what sensible ground is there to predicate the realization of our hopes in

a world which we have not seen? It is hardly worth while to prolong society unless there is hope of its elevation and happiness here. The sooner we are all the other side of Jordan, and the tragedy of lost Greenland is repeated on the stage of the whole world, the better.

It is this faith in the redemption and elevation of our race to the enjoyment of untold ages of happiness, here in this world, which encourages me to believe in the overthrow of alcohol and in the "New Emancipation." And there is reason for the faith that is within us.

We do know that certain causes will produce certain effects; that, if certain causes result in slavery, certain other causes lead to freedom. We do know that freedom need never be lost, and that when lost it can be regained— not always, for manhood at last goes out and there is nothing left to be made free. But there are conditions which give freedom, hope and joy, and we possess them all when these conditions are complied with. There is a way of escape. It is long and difficult. By a thousand converging and ascending avenues, and through more than forty years of wandering in wastes and wildernesses, humanity must reach the promised land. But there is such a land, and it becomes us to be strong and to go up and possess it.

We are entering upon a great war. The battle is over the face of the whole earth. It is personal, social, national, international. It involves both hemispheres and all racesbody and soul, time and eternity. It has already lasted more than one hundred years. We must not falter because we are to die on the battlefield; only let us fight a good fight. Another century may place alchoholism where slavery now is. That will, indeed, be a new emancipation. How shall we win this fight?

Much depends upon the organization of the army and the plan of battle. Until lately, the forces of the Temperance Reform have been a God-inspired mob. Many a Bastile has been taken, but hardly one has been destroyed, and we almost invariably have lost them again to the inferior but regular troops of the enemy. It is all-important that we comprehend what we are to do. We are to capture the world, to accomplish New and Universal Emancipation, for