cause it cannot place it in an ideal Utopia. The most religious and conscientious man will be glad to see men leave off strife and discord, even if they do not act from the highest motives or attain to the heights of a genuine charity. His conscience will not be injured by their improved condition, however much he would like to see them still more enlightened. It is an important point to make clear to the mind this distinction between the conduct of reform and the movement of personal religion, for confusion here has led to much false action. A common argument of the radical agitator is that his conscience cannot stop short of total abstinence in the temperance question, and on that ground he will not have any affiliation with one who seeks to subdue the intemperance of the land by any other method. But his argument is a complete non sequitur. His conscience concerns his own personal habits. In the matter of other people's habits he is simply to do the best the circumstances allow. The conscience that prescribes his personal habits may make him long to see others like him, and may make him work to that end, but it cannot rebuke him if that end is not attained, but only an approximation is gained; nay, it should make him work for the approximation with all zeal.

Too often that which is called conscience is mere obstinacy of opinion and personal pride. A large part of the fanaticism that history records has been made in this way. Men have gone to the stake as martyrs, or sufferers for conscience' sake, when the heresy they professed never went deeper than their sentiment, and might readily have been altered by a free judgment. While this fact does not justify their persecutors or palliate their guilt, yet it certainly detracts from the merit of the martyrdom. In this matter of arresting the progress of drunkenness we may have very different views of the means to be used, and we may conscientiously adhere to our own plan of working toward the end, but we cannot conscientiously object to the means employed by others unless they contain an immorality. Nay, more, we must conscientiously wish them success.

If this principle of sympathy and co-operation on the part of all who seek the abatement of intemperance were once

established, we should see effects that are now thwarted by the divisions and mutual hostility of those who profess to have the same end in view. One of the reasons for this confirmed hostility of the total-abstinence advocates against the reformers who do not adopt that principle is found in the power of a false usage. I refer to the word "temperance."

MEANING OF THE WORD

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TEMPERANCE."

The word has been violently wrested from its legitimate meaning. By a persistent use of a moderate word for radical measures the great unthinking public, so far as they are seekers for the common good, have been led to see in these radical measures the only path of duty. They have learned to consider all that was opposed to the party called by the name of temperance as inimical to temperance, and so have enormously swelled the radical ranks by their unenlightened adhesion. The label has been affixed to the wrong goods, and the unsuspecting purchaser has not noticed the fact. So potent has been this deception that I undertake to say that there are thousands of worthy citizens who have no other idea of the word "temperance" than that it means the total abstinence from all that can intoxicate. With such we have to begin with first principles. We have to show them that the Latin temperantia signifies the moral quality of moderation or discreetness, and that the English word temperance," as used in all good standard English works, means precisely the same thing. We have to show them that the temperate zone does not mean a zone which totally abstains from cold or heat, but a zone that is moderate in both; that a temperate behavior is not a behavior that totally abstains from severity, but one that is steady and reasonable in its course; as Cicero says ("Fam.," 12, 27): "Est autem ita temperatis moderatisque moribus ut summa severitas summâ cum humanitate jungatur." And while quoting Cicero I may quote his definitions of temperance as given in his "De Finibus "-first, "Temperantia est moderatio cupiditatum, rationi obediens" (2, 19, 60); and, secondly, แ Temperantia est quæ, in rebus aut expetendis aut fugien

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dis, rationem ut sequamur monet" (1, 14, 47). Now, what a fearful prostitution of a noble word is seen in the popular use of the word "temperance" to-day! And this prostitution is a work wrought within the last fifty years. From its high position as signifying a grand moral subjection of the whole man to the sway of reason it is degraded to the maimed and mutilated function of representing a legalism that prohibits man from any drink that can intoxicate. To what base uses has it come at last! This false use of a word has had special influence upon that portion of the unthinking public who rightly reverence the Scriptures. They see that temperance is put in the list of Christian virtues; and as temperance now means total abstinence, what can they do, as loyal believers in the Scriptures, but sign the pledge, and, furthermore, count all who do not as aliens from God's truth? They are as honest and as enlightened as the good Presbyterian woman who only needed to see the words "general assembly" in the Bible to know she was right and everybody else wrong.

Now, the use of a false argument always reacts against the user, and, while the ignorant and semi-ignorant multitude will be deceived, the thinking classes of society will shun a cause that rests on misrepresentation. The word "temperance," as seized and appropriated by radical and intemperate souls, is a false flag, and, as a false flag, will disgust and alienate true and enlightened souls. Especially will this be the case when it is found to be only one of many false lights held out to attract the masses. Another of these deceptions (of course I do not say these are wilful deceptions by all that use them; I am only speaking of their absolute character)—another of these deceptions is the circulated theory of an unfermented, unintoxicating wine. There is not a chemist nor a classical scholar in the world who would dare risk his reputation on the assertion that there was ever an unfermented wine in common use, knowing well that must preserved from fermentation is called wine only by a kind of courtesy (as the lump of unbaked dough might be called "bread "), and that this could in the nature of things never be a common drink. Cato ("De Re Rusticâ," 120) shows

how by a very careful method malt could be kept for a whole year, and other Roman writers show the same; but who can pretend that these writers ever looked upon such preserved juice as wine, when their whole object is to show how it can be kept from becoming wine? Yet, with no other foundation than this, the leaders of the total-abstinence cause have published their bull affirming that the good wines of antiquity were unfermented, in utter defiance of chemistry, history, and common sense. Because the grape-juice could, by means of hermetically-sealed vessels under water, be kept grapejuice, therefore the common wines of antiquity, the wine of which writers speak when they use no qualifying phrase, must have been unfermented. This is the logic used by these infatuated defenders of the total abstinence principle.

DISTORTION OF SCRIPTURE.

A third deception in this cause is the twisting of Scripture to its advocacy. No unbiassed reader can for a moment doubt that wine, as referred to in the Bible passim, is an intoxicating drink, and that such wine was drunk by our Saviour and the early Christians. To meet this fatal blow to the total-abstinence system in the minds of those who take the Bible as their guide, the advocates of the cause have invented a theory that is magnificent in its daring. It is no less than the division of the word "wine" by a Solomonian sword, so that the good and the bad shall each have a piece of it. Whenever wine is spoken of severely in Scripture, then it is fermented wine; and whenever it is spoken of in praise, or used by our Lord and his apostles, then it is unfermented wine. And if you ask these sages why they so divide wine-on what grounds they base this theory-they bravely answer that our Saviour could not have drunk intoxicating wine, and God's word never could have praised such, and, therefore, their theory. They start with the begging of the whole question, and then on this thin air they build their castle.

It is not now my purpose to argue with these strange logicians. I only wish to put this Scripture-twisting in the list of deceptive methods used by the representative total-absti

nence reformers to promote their cause. I could add, in this item, the false use of texts and the suppression of parts of texts, but I leave the matter here.

The three elements of deception entering into their cause is, as we have seen, the use of the word temperance for a totally different thing, the fable about unfermented wine, and the violent wresting of the Scriptures. Now, I unhesi tatingly affirm that a cause having such falsehoods as its main support can never be accepted by the public. Simpleminded people may be gained to it, but the thinking people will be repelled.. It is true that some may adhere to it, in spite of its falsehood, for other reasons; but the three great untruths that are flaunted on its banners will disgust most men who have brains and use them.

A second reason why I believe the plan of total abstinence will not be adopted by the people is its unmanliness. To stop the use of anything because of its abuse is an expedient for the weak and diseased, an exceptional plan for exceptional cases; but to assert this principle among men in general would be to degrade the race and remove all the incentives and helps to moral growth. We know in the family how mistaken a method it is to remove everything the child should not play with out of its reach. The wise parent leaves the article in its accustomed place, and teaches the child its rightful use.

SELF-CONTROL.

The other plan only makes the child more and more dependent on external checks, and prevents the growth of self-control. The same reasoning holds good in the human family at large. We are to develop self-control as much as possible. A true civilization always seeks to do this. A barbarous state of society requires man to hide everything valuable in places unknown to others, and to go personally armed to secure himself against attack. But a civilized condition reveals a very different state of things. Men live in houses full of valuables, and walk the streets unarmed and in security. Dependence is placed upon the common self-control, and it is acknowledged to be a far higher and