paring his sermon or before delivering it from
the pulpit. At weddings bridegroom, bride, groomsman, and guest
quaffed sparkling wines. At funerals minister, friend, neighbor,
mourner, all except the corpse, drank of the bountiful supply of
liquors always provided. Not to drink was disrespectful to living and
dead, and depriving themselves of comfort and consolation. In every
community there were blear-eyed men with bloated, haggard faces;
weeping women, starving children." (Building of a Nation. Page 271.)

While "temperate" men were grieved at the tide of wretchedness and
protested, they did not think it possible to get on without whisky.
Dr. Prime, for so many years editor of the New York Observer, told of
the meeting of the family physician and the pastor at his father's
home in a case of severe illness. When the physician took his leave
the pastor followed him into the yard, where they had a long
consultation. The pastor was anxiously seeking advice. Three drinks
made his head swim, and the problem was how he could make more than
three calls and not become unsteady. The doctor gave directions and
Dr. Prime said that neither the minister nor the physician thought of
the simple remedy, "not drinking."

It has taken two generations, but the transformation is marvelous. The
minister can now call in every home in his parish and never once have
an opportunity to drink. If Rev. John Pierpont was yet living, who was
put out of his pulpit in Boston by an ecclesiastical council because
he publicly protested against the use of the basement of his church as
a storeroom for whisky, he would see every minister losing his pulpit
who would not publicly protest against such a desecration. Rev. George
B. Cheever, the dreamer, in 1830, woke up the stupid consciences of
the fuddled men and women; he wrote out his dream and published it,
"Deacon Giles' Distillery," and went to jail for it, but even he never
dreamed of the greatness of the temperance reform that has followed.

The overthrow of chattel slavery is complete and the human rights of
the inferior peoples are recognized. Human slavery was of old, as
ancient as history; it was widespread over the world; there was an
immense and profitable commerce in human flesh; luxurious wealth and
ease was secured by appropriating labor without compensation; it was
thought that the Scriptures in both Testaments approved the holding of
bondmen; there was a consciousness of superior gifts; t