It

United States mails and render the editor liable to prosecution in the federal courts. The conscience of the editor is steel-clad. can be penetrated by nothing but the fear of fines. Imprisonment has less terrors to him than the lessening of income to stockholders of the corporation that owns and controls the "Daily Booster."

Public opinion alone can cure this evil, as it alone can curb the hog-greed of Chautauqua managers and prevent the desecration of the Sabbath, as when Senator Tillman of South Carolina was set up a drawing card in Des Moines. We must think of the rising generation and of the duty every one owes society of being, in his or her own daily walk, exemplary. Every one should be as devoted to the common welfare and as ready to give his all to the work of doing good as, theoretically, were the self-sacrificing priests, monks and nuns of old and as are the blessed Sisters of Charity of today and the Salvation Army workers. We must live solely to do good-to "go about doing good" as did the Master and not to show off our wealth and "have a good time" playing golf. We are placed on this planet to leave it improved by our having lived on it. He that fails in this would better have never been born. But the common belief is that he is a success who has got more out of the world than he has given to it and dies a millionaire.

YE 27TH LESSON.

Precept and Example.

The future of the people is in the hands of teachers. But who are teachers? If we think the young ladies in the school-room are the teachers who mold the destinies of our boys, we are greatly in error. Boys and girls are taught by example. Men and boys are examples to boys; women and girls are examples to girls. Men of this generation form, by example, the character of the men of the next generation; and so with women of women. Boys over twelve years of age should have no other women-teachers but their mothers; and girls above that age no other men-teachers but their fathers. They have in fact no other, for they heed no other.. When a boy reaches twelve years of age he then begins to pride himself on his muscle. "Why," he says, "girls don't amount to anything. I can chase a dozen of 'em and they're afeard of garter snakes." He treats his mother with respect, but her influence over him is often not as great as is that of "Peck's Bad Boy" or any other bad boy, especially if his father is "strenuous"-smokes, drinks his beer, treats his wife indifferently, and is a "jolly good fellow" everywhere but at home. He has then, too often, great influence over his boy of twelve, who will be a "chip off the old block," unless he have his ambition and his moral nature awakened by an earnest praying mother's influence or the example of some grand man who gains the boy's esteem and confidence. The teacher is this man pre-eminently, having been fitted for his work in the great school of "Devotion to Humanity." He believes that every boy in his school will become a future Washington, Lincoln, or John Brown, and he leads every boy to believe it, too. Not one of his pupils would touch a cigarette any sooner than kiss a rattlesnake in the mouth. He gives the boys protection against evil by imparting to them ideas enforced by his own example-the only real protection for boys that there is or can be. The worthy teacher is what every man ought to be, and all will be when men are civilized and not savage-exemplary, model men. If not such, he is out of place in the school-room. Yes, no man is fit for the office of teacher of youth in the school-room, or out of it, or of that of father of sons or citizen of a free republic like ours, or of the world

AN APPEAL TO YOUNG MEN.

53

who does not feel an ever-binding responsibility that he cannot shirk, of setting a good example before the young, and especially before his own sons, as the mother before her own daughters and the daughters of all other mothers.

All teachers should have equal and adequate support, since all have like needs, as a rule. But the teacher should have no other motive for his work than had the Great Teacher. He should say: "While I accept gratefully what is freely tendered for my support, yet I must live and die believing that I have never worked for money any more than did Jesus Christ."

"Am I my brother's keeper?" Yes, indeed. We should realize this, and seeing any one going out of the way, we should try to lead him back into the path of right-doing. But we should ever keep silent, unless we are the very kind of person we would wish all men to be. The father who is not the kind of man he would have his sons be is, in his make-up, a degenerate. That is what the pres

ent age demands every man really a "priest and king and son of God," believing that the only way of making the world better is not so much in giving great sums of money to build up institutions of righteousness and learning as in being righteous and learned himself. And let me not say I want a better preacher for our church and to that end am willing to increase my pew rent a hundred per cent.. But rather let me say: "I want to be a more exemplary man." Let all be tetotalers and all the saloons will close without any prohibitory laws. Let all men give up the use of tobacco and its cultivation will cease and more corn will be grown. This it is to lay the, ax at the root of the tree-be exemplary.

1

YE 28TH LESSON.

An Appeal to Young Men.

The young man who is not conscientious would better never have been born. He that does not feel that it is his bounden duty to protect the weak is not conscientious. Here is a young woman that confides in a young man. Nature is strong in her-too strong for conventionality without a protector-without the protection of this very young man into whose power she has fallen. He says, "I will protect her, for God has given me superior strength for this very purpose to protect and help others as well as to be master of myself." When this resolution is taken, what a thrill of happiness passes through his being! If he had ever been tempted the tempter at that moment bids him farewell forever. He at that moment receives the baptism of the Holy Ghost. His character is at that moment fixed and he takes his stand among the great men of the earth. He is unworthy the name of man if he stand not ready to protect, if need be, with his life, her that must be lost without his protection-if he do not say at all times, "I will not wrong the pure and innocent; neither will I tarnish my soul with, nor share in the guilt of the impure; but I will lift up and place on her feet the downtrodden, I will go out after the lost lamb until I find it and, having found it, I will restore it to the fold."

I am convinced that this one quality is the one superior and saving quality of human nature the uncontrollable passion to "lend a hand" wherever help is needed, and that, too, without fee. But this quality can never be his whose self-respect does not compel him to be free from the unnatural appetites for strong drink and narcotic and nicotine poisons-to be unalterably determined that no blemish shall be acquired by him. What hope can there be for a cigar or cigarette fiend, not to mention a beer guzzler? What innocent girl is

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THE SCHOOLMASTER AND THE PREACHER.

safe in his society? Who has no respect for himself has none for others. There is no middle ground betwixt savagery and manliness. The time will come when mankind will look back on the present age of insane inebriety and disgusting filthiness of habit as one of utter barbarism-as a time when human beings had so little self-respect as to pollute their bodies and weaken both body and mind by the tobacco and cigarette habits and the mania for intoxicants.

Two thousand years ago our forefathers and foremothers in the woods of Britain, Gaul, Germany and Scandinavia stood by with folded hands and beheld their own children or parents or sisters or brothers burnt in colossal baskets-wicker images of Thor and Odin. Today let such savagery be attempted by the priests of Paganism and the victims would be rescued by the indignant populace and the priests be slain. How are our children, brothers and fathers sacrificed on the altars of the god of inebriety and of the nicotine and narcotic habits and we look on, with the same superstitious noninterference as did our ancient foreparents in the woods of Britain, Gaul, etc., on the burning of victims upon the altars of the Pagan gods! But, I repeat, the time will come when the awful sacrifices of today to the rum and tobacco gods will be regarded as the old-time sacrifices to Odin and Thor are regarded by us. Yes, the time will come and speedily, I trust, when all men and all women will be of the same mind in regard to these present day evils with Mrs. Carrie Nation-her destructive hatchet in her saintly hand-a prophetess of God-a forerunner and type of what all, both men and women, will one day be in their indignation against the besetting evils of this heathen age of drunkenness and foul-mouthed rottenness.

So would any

Benighted men call this indignation "fanaticism." plea against the burning of human victims by the Pagan priests two thousand years ago have been called, and the populace would have torn any man or woman to pieces who had raised a hand to save the doomed victims from the flames. Reader! nine hundred million dollars are squandered and one hundred thousand men murdered in the service of King Alcohol yearly in our country, while the misery and squalid poverty produced by this detestable tyrant are incalculable! And I may further add: The cost of the poisonous tobacco consumed in America is greater than that of the bread consumed by all the people and of the support of all the common schools and churches. And yet there are so-called "scientists" who write to bolster up the sale of alcoholic drinks and tobacco by declaring them "healthful." Let us resolutely fight down these dreaded evils. Public opinion will end them-an enlightened public opinion as it did African slavery. Let us agitate to this end.

YE 29TH LESSON.

The Schoolmaster and the Preacher.

The schoolmaster has lost his place, the preacher his importance. If vice and demoralization are on the increase in society it is from this cause. When first the priest became a preacher his influence was not lessened, but today that of both is nil. To speak plain Saxon, the preacher cuts no figure in building character in the young. The tree bears no fruit. Men and women, members of the churches, live uprightly; for that is traditionally expected of them, as do members of the Good Templar order refrain from drink, because it is expected and required of them by the rules of the order a matter of traditionary decorum, like style of dress. One does not give up cigars or cigarettes when he becomes a church member as he does the bottle, because it has not as yet become the rule. And the church is never in the van of reform. It opposed temperance reform until after blic opinion sanctioned it through the efforts of independent tem

CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION.

55

perance lecturers. It will not move against the tobacco vice until, at least, after the "snake has been scotched," if not killed, through efforts independent of church and pulpit.

It is not fear of hell nor hope of heaven that leads men and women to unite with the church now. The church has ceased to be an assurance institution to insure against fire of hell. What, then, influences them to do so? Respectability. He or she that owns a pew and helps with cash to "sustain the ministry" feels a degree of self-respect and is respected by others for so doing. The "house of God" is a fashionable resort on Sundays, where finery is shown off, as at the theater, and an entertainment is provided of good music by choir and organ and an interesting discourse by the preacher.. What is the matter? The world of thought has changed. The old conception of the Cosmos is obsolete. Tell a church member today that "Angels bear thee up in their hands lest thou dash thy foot against a stone" and he will say: "That is poetical language— a magnificent figure of speech-not literal truth at all and was not meant to be so understood by the Psalmist." (Ps. 91:12.) Now, I personally am so old-fashioned as to believe it to be literally and absolutely true that angels do so "bear us up in their hands," etc.

The

But as to the schoolmaster: The office once filled by priest and preacher has become his or it is nobody's today, viz: character building the straightening of the twig so that the tree may stand upright. The boy is at eighteen what he will be all his life. exceptions to this rule are few and far between. Why has the schoolmaster lost his place? Because of the ignorance and stupidity of school officers. No woman can fill his place-can do his work of shaping the characters of boys. Her place is with the young of her own sex, except it may be in the kindergarten. What sort of men are qualified to fill the office of schoolmaster? Ah, that is the important question. Almost any kind of raw material may be worked up into a salaried preacher. Not so with the God-ordained schoolmaster. A schoolmaster! Of all men on this planet, he should be the best. Let the work be open to good men, the salary left out-not mentioned in the call; for any man influenced to this work by salary is unfit for the high office. The most worthless of men are they that demand and are paid the largest salaries in the schoolroom and behind the pulpit. Better teachers and better preachers we would have if no salary at all were offered to be paid. Name the man that has ever done the world good as a teacher of men or boys that was a salary grabber. It cannot be done. The good man says, when asked what he will charge to serve as a teacher of young or old: "I have never asked pay for my work for the public.' "How can he live, then?" does the reader ask? I answer by counter questions: How did Jesus live? Did he die of starvation? Did any one of his apostles? Has any one who lived and labored in a good cause ever been known to so die, from Jesus to John Brown? Not one.

YE 30TH LESSON.

Christian Civilization.

The moral, religious, social, economic and financial condition of all Christian nations is far from ideal. The farther from Nature, the farther from God. The contact of the uncivilized with the "civil. ized" (so-called) has ever been a step backwards, morally, for the uncivilized. "Civilized men" have no regard for the chastity of uncivilized women. And strong drink is the most conspicuous ac

companiment of so-called "civilization." And surely the saloon evil, the tobacco evil, the disorderly house evil, and the gambling-hell evil belong pre-eminently to the present order of so-called Christian civilization.

The religious state of Christendom is not as it ought to be, nor as it will be at no distant day. If a stranger from the planet Mars were to land on our globe and ask where he might find Christianity best represented, how many different answers would he get to the interrogatory? Hundreds. As many as there are Christian sects, each claiming to be the only true Christian organization worthy serious regard, all the rest false and misleading. Now, this is surely wrong. In spite of the anarchy of religions, the church is the best institution existent. How so? Because it stands to represent the highest moral ideals the world has ever known. Not only the highest moral ideals, but, too, the highest social and economic ideals. All three, it is true, are inadequately represented by the church today; hindered, it is, by the commercial spirit of the age. But a better era is near at hand-an altruistic era-when all that Christianity has ever stood for of good it will again stand for, and the good will be realized universally. The social status of our country has deteriorated with the advance of wealth-accumulation by the few. To sit by the macadamized roadway in Washington park, Chicago, and see the many automobiles and fine carriages hasten by, and observe the self-important air of their occupants, men and women, you are compelled to the conclusion that they regard themselves a superior order of beings to the multitude of on-lookers. The people of the northern states of the Union, fifty years ago, were one, society a unit, a democratic unit. But now, people who were born and brought up in the back-woods and in log cabins and have "struck it rich," think it the greatest "find" if they can marry their daughters to titled paupers of England, France, Germany, Italy or Scandinaviathe American spirit having gone clean out of them.

Economically, the Christian world is in the wilderness of Sinai. The land of promise is yet a long way off. The Red Sea has been passed, the quails and the manna have not come, as yet, to bless, nor has the water flowed from the wand-stricken rock. But the Promised Land will be reached; the walls of Jericho will fall before the blasts of the ram's horns of the army invincible; Jerusalem will be builded-if not the old, the new. But the financial condition of the nations is most out of place. It must be remodeled. Artificial wealth (money) must directly represent and evenly balance natural wealth.

The foundation for general prosperity cannot be bottomed on debt. Chattel slavery was no more unsuited than is bonded debt, to be the "corner stone" of the commonwealth. Both were dug from the quarry of iniquity. The ancients created no national debts, even by their great wars. The national banking institutions of the United States (cunning devices for the systematized robbery of the many by the few) are aggregations and segregations of indebtedness. They are Judas holding the purse. What should replace them? Governmental savings banks and scrip based on actual wealth; that is to say, all useful products, "tickets of exchange" as short-lived as are the products they represent-checks for products -convenient in exchanging product for product and legal-tender for debts and taxes, there remaining no interest-bearing debts, public or private. "Pay as you go" will be the rule. Private management of franchises will be superseded by public ownership and control, and no corporations remain but the states and the nation.

There is dawning a new day. Not one stone of the old order will be left upon another. The Sun of Righteousness shall arise

with healing in his wings. When that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away. That is to say, the