ber, too, how, before the bar of the General Conference of the church of which he was a member, he was reproved because he dared to pray that the Lord might not descend in wrath upon a slave-holding church.

Ministers of the cross of Jesus, you won't have to go into partisan politics to secure constitutional prohibition, and the influence of the church can be brought to bear upon constitutional law as it cannot upon State statutes. Dear friends, the prophet says: "The government shall be upon his shoulders." It will never be upon his shoulders save as the principles of Christ's Gospel are brought into Christian legislation, and the church of Christ must carry it there. Might I interpolate a question here and ask, "Who compose the majority of the Christian Church?" When the women of the Christian Church shall impress their thought upon the law, then this traffic will go. And I say to you Christian men, to you legislators, to you all, in the language of yesterday's Sunday-school lesson, "Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." Constitutional law remedies the evils of great cities, and we ask, therefore, as the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, for constitutional prohibition.

Dear friends, I had intended at this place and time to make an appeal for the work of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, because the honorable gentleman, Dr. Crosby, has said that the measures adopted by temperance advocates are very objectionable. I did not think it was necessary to defend the methods used by those grand old men of the church, but I did intend to say a few things for our woman's methods of work. But the honorable gentleman who presided here has so beautifully set forth our work and pleaded for it so grandly that why need I say a word? And the President of our National Association has embodied it all in her own sweet self and in her eloquent words, so that it is not necessary that I should say a word. Dear friends, I pause here. The methods adopted by Christian women have been the result of their best thought; they stand for total abstinence, for prohibition, for constitutional prohibition, and for organized Christian temperance efforts to set forth all this.

IN THE SANDS OF EGYPT,

by the shores of the Nile, there stands the great pyramid; for twenty centuries it has stood and looked unwinking at the sun; it covers thirteen acres of solid masonry; it mounts up and up as if it would pierce the skies; it has been the wonder of the centuries, and in its proportions, its angles, its measurements, are hid great truths of physical sciencegeometrical, astronomical, mathematical, geodetical. Discoverers and scholars walk about its base and look up at its huge sides, and say, "We wonder who built the pyramid?" For, though much surmise as to its origin and intended use has been indulged in, history does not tell us. Of late certain Christian scholars, in their studies of this great wonder of the world, have thought they discovered not only physical truth set forth in base and capstone, in measurement and line, but that Scripture truth is suggested also; that in its openings, its passages, its chambers, in the finishing of the stones which pave the floors, and line the sides, and are in the ceilings, in the number and size of these, in their setting here and position there, is written dimly sometimes, but still discernible to the careful student, the history of God's past and present, and his future dealings with the buman race; that it is to physical truth what the Bible is to spiritual-a revelation; is the "altar unto the Lord in the midst of Egypt." Wonderful is the suggestion and bold the faith that grasps and holds its lessons.

Dear friends, there is being built on these Western shores a great pyramid, an altar unto the Lord; its foundations were laid by the church of God; its sockets were set by men brave, and true, and strong; its base is the square of the circle of all the influences that cluster about our homes, about our national life. With great labor was the rubbish cleared away to give it room, and carefully were the first stones put in their places. Slowly has the pyramid arisen.

DO YOU SEE THE BUILDERS?

There comes the Washingtonian throng with pledge, and song, and great huge stones, the Rechabites, the Sons of Temperance, the Good Templars, the Temple of Honor, and many men and women who carry no flag and walk

under no banner, but carry stone and mortar, square and chisel, a d help to build. Then comes a band of little children, with banners and music; they sing,

"I'm glad I'm in the army,

I'm glad I'm in this army,"

and they help to build. Then comes a band of reformed men, with ribbons of red and of blue, clothed and in their right minds. They march solidly up, and

"Hold the fort, for I am coming,"

rings out full and strong, and they help to build.

And, last of those I see, then comes a band of praying women. They walk very slow, for in their company are wounded ones, mothers bereft and wives heart-sick; but calm and strong I hear the tones,

"My faith looks up to thee,

Thou Lamb of Calvary."

And thus they build! And the stones these multitudes haye brought have been kept in place and squared into line by righteous law. And so this pyramid is being built, and by and by it shall be finished, and with singing and shouting the capstone shall be put in place, its crown and glory, its bond of perfectness. What shall the capstone be? National constitutional prohibition! And then the pyramid shall stand, and, though the waves beat upon it, it shall not fall, for 'tis founded on the rock of God's eternal truth. And in the far-off years, when all these builders shall have passed away, a grander civilization shall surge about the base of this great pyramid-grander because they shall be children born of men and women that did not drink-and, looking at its rugged sides and gazing at its perfect crown, shall cry, "Who built the pyramid? who built the pyramid?" Then you and I, perhaps, shall look over the battlements of heaven and see the very stone we set in place, and the shouts of glory will be louder, the halleluiahs longer, ay, the rest sweeter, because we helped to build.

At the close of the lecture many of the audience crowded on to the platform to shake Mrs. Foster by the hand and congratulate her upon her brilliant effort.

JOSEPH COOK'S

PULPIT AND TEMPERANCE.

BY THEODORE L. CUYLER, D.D.

[From the Independent.]

OSEPH COOK has built a Monday morning pulpit in Boston, which is visible over the whole continent and across the sea. In that pulpit he has struck some sturdy and unanswerable blows in favor of prohibitory legislation against tippling-houses and in favor of the principles and practice of total abstinence from all intoxicants. During his absence in Europe his lecture committee have admitted to his pulpit my genial and eloquent friend, Chancellor Crosby, who has opened his broadsides against nearly every position which Mr. Cook has taken upon the subject of temperance. If that pulpit is to become, like certain clubs in Boston, the theatre of "free discussion," then I submit that they might as well invite Prof. Huxley to assail Mr. Cook's positions on evolution, or Col. Ingersoll to assail his views on the inspiration of the Word and the doctrine of atonement.

One of the most remarkable things about Dr. Crosby's discourse is its title. He calls it a "Calm View of the Temperance Question," and then dashes into a heated tirade against the "wild radicalism of teetotalers," whom he denounces as fanatics, as unmanly, as twisters of Scripture, as radical agitators, and as infatuated defenders of a system that is utterly impracticable and is "increasing the drunkenness in the land"! If my friend utters all this when he is calm, what might we expect from him if he were excited?

When I reached the following sentence in his discourse I was inclined to name it a "comical view of temperance," for I could not refrain from the Christian liberty of a hearty laugh. He asserts that the total-abstinence system is contrary to revealed religion and harmful to the interests of the country, and exclaims:

"I charge upon this system the growth of drunkenness in our land and the general demoralization among religious communities; and I call upon all sound-minded thinking men to stop the enormities of this false system."

As soon as I could take breath after this philippic, I began to recall some of the names of the most conspicuous advocates of the total-abstinence movement, and in the front rank I find Albert Barnes, Bishop McIlvaine, Lyman Beecher, Bishop Alonzo Potter, and Theodore Frelinghuysen, among the dead; and Joseph Cook, Charles H. Spurgeon, Dr. Richardson, Canon Farrar, Bishop Lightfoot, and Bishop Ellicott, among its living defenders. These great and good men do not endorse all the weak and extravagant utterances of certain zealots; but they do maintain and practise the "system" which Dr. Crosby so bitterly deWeak enthusiasts often utter crude arguments in favor of the Gospel system; but Dr. Crosby none the less holds to and preaches faithfully that very system. We totalabstainers are ready to stand by the solid principles which such great and godly leaders as I have just named are defending. They constitute our system of doctrine and prac tice; but we are not responsible for every foolish speech of every foolish fellow who sets up for a temperance lecturer."

nounces.

The chancellor's foremost argument against our total-abstinence movement is that it has proved impracticable and is a failure. If he will allow me to use his own frankness, I will say that he is the very last man who ought to utter that taunt. The whole nation knows that for several years he has intrepidly led a movement in the city of New York to enforce a weak excise law which is hopelessly vitiated by a clause that permits endless dram-selling under the name of hotel-keep