pe the moral and
political convictions of the home is far greater than that of the men.
When the women of America say to the saloon, You go! the saloon will
have to go. The moral and political measures of any people are easily
traceable to the sisters and wives and mothers of that people. You and I
and every ordinary citizen of our country had as well try to escape our
own shadow, as to try to escape the responsibility that rests upon us
for the drunkenness of our people. To help us to do our whole duty in
our day and generation in this matter is the purpose of our message.

II. BEWARE OF THE SOCIAL GLASS.

The first and least thing that one can do to destroy drunkenness, is
to be a total abstainer. Beware of the social glass! But quickly one
replies, "Why should there be any social glass?" "Why allow sparkling,
attractive springs of refreshing poison to issue forth in all of our
social centers, and then cry to our sons and daughters, to our brothers
and sisters, Beware?" My friend, we must deal with facts as they are.
There should not be a social glass; but what has that to do with
the fact that the social glass is here? You answer, "Why allow these
fountains of death to exist?" while we cry to our loved ones, "Beware!"
We do not advocate the presence of these fountains; but while we seek
to destroy them beseechingly we cry, "Beware!" The social factor in the
liquor traffic is its Gibraltar of defense. Rare is the young man who
has the intellectual stamina and moral courage to resist the invitations
to take a social drink. And in our frontier and foreign towns many of
our bright and respected girls use the social glass. But in its use is
the beginning of a fateful end. The subtlest thing in this world is sin.
Listen!

"Sin is a monster of so frightful mien;
To be hated needs but to be seen;
But seen too oft, familiar with the face,
We first endure, then pity, then embrace."

The subtle thing about it is, that the first embracing of any sin seems
to be but a trifling, an occasional affair. For one who lives in an
ordinary city of a thousand inhabitants or upwards, unless he is an
"out-and-out" Christian and selects only associates like himself, it
becomes a real Embarrassment not to indulge in a social drink. It seems
polite, clever, the kindly thing to do. And the sad fact is, that the
majority of unchristian young people and many older ones do not decline.
To prove this we have but to look a