The following paper was kindly prepared by Rev. Dr. Potter, by special invitation, for a Parlor Conference, one of a series now being held under the auspices of the National Temperance Society.

It was read by the author on the evening of January 15, 1878, in the parlor of Hon. Wm. E. Dodge, President of the Society, and listened to with profound attention by a large number of guests, including many distinguished representatives of the professional and mercantile life of the metropolis.

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The following paper was read before a gathering of the friends of the Temperance cause, held on Tuesday Evening, January 15, 1878, at the residence of the Hon. Wm. E. Dodge, in the city of New York. The occasion will explain its informal character, and its somewhat familiar style. These peculiarities render it, perhaps, less suitable for publication; but as they could not be eliminated without affecting more or less the continuity of the argument, the undersigned has preferred to allow them to remain, and to invoke in their behalf the reader's kindly forbearance.

H.C.P.

GRACE CHURCH RECTORY,
NEW YORK, January 22d, 1878.

HOW MAY THE

TOTAL ABSTINENCE MOVEMENT

BE STRENGTHENED AND EXTENDED?

The company gathered here this evening is, I presume, of one mind, and has assembled under the impulse of a common motive. They are the friends of the Total Abstinence movement and the friends of Temperance, only as that term stands for Total Abstinence.

If this be so, it will be hardly worth while to dwell much or minutely upon the evils of Intemperance. In this company a clear and profound conviction as to those evils may safely be taken for granted. And if it were otherwise, the papers and addresses which have been delivered here or at more public gatherings, under the auspices of the Association of which our host is the head, furnish an artillery of weapons of which the friends of Total Abstinence certainly need not to be ashamed, and which cover every aspect and every detail of the general subject.

But there remains another department of the general subject which, so far as I know, has not [5/6] been generally discussed, and which is, at any rate, open to debate. Given an earnest conviction that the Total Abstinence movement is the true Temperance movement, and that the safety of the individual and the welfare of the land demand that this movement shall be steadfastly maintained and carried on, the question still remains, what are the best means of multiplying its friends and enlarging their influence? I shall undertake, in the few moments which belong to me, to answer these questions.

In a public assembly, not long ago, a speaker of singular reserve of temperament and precision of language used these words: "The sin of the Temperance movement in America has been untruthfulness. Its blemish has been fanaticism. The fanaticism has grown out of the untruthfulness, because the moment that men find that their position can not be defended on the ground of right reason, they naturally begin to grow womanish and screamy. The untruthfulness of the Temperance movement has lain here, in affirming positions that can not be reasonably or truthfully maintained: in saying, for instance, that Temperance and Total Abstinence are one and the same thing, which they are not; and in saying that Holy Scripture teaches us that any use of stimulants is sin, which Holy Scripture does not teach."

[7] With the positions taken in these words, I have, at present, no concern. Whether what is said about the distinction between Temperance and Total Abstinence, and about the teaching of Holy Scripture be true or false, is a question which, just now, I do not propose to discuss. It ought to be said, however, to prevent a misapprehension which is not always born of that charity which thinketh no evil, that the speaker from whom I quote was himself, both by precept and in practice, a Total Abstinence man--and that I am.

But I have quoted these words because they open to us the whole question of methods in connection with the Total Abstinence movement. There are some of us who, just now, are watching with something of sympathy and with something more of apprehension, a movement going on in this community in the direction of restricted license and fewer grog-shops. There is no one of us, I presume, who does not believe that the city of New York will be better off for every corner-grocery that is closed and for every unlicensed dealer who is estopped from the illicit selling of liquor. But there is no one of us, I imagine, who does not recognize the fact that such a method of dealing with the evil of intemperance is not essentially curative; and has in it no feature which is genuinely preventive. It is restrictive, [7/8] but, in the social gamut, it is mainly restrictive at the wrong end of the scale. Every club-man, every lounger in a fashionable hotel may have what he wants, but the man whose only club is the gin-shop, and whose only hotel is the nearest groggery, must often go without what he wants. Such a movement lacks in it, therefore, whatever may be its merits (and I have no mind to ignore or belittle them), one element which is fundamental to success, and that is this: it does not appeal to the popular sympathy. It is in the interests, after all, of the spirit of caste, of a privileged class or set, and it concedes to those who are in all respects, as the world estimates such things, most favored, privileges which it withholds from those who are least favored.

This aspect of the matter has a lesson for us who are here. Whatever may be the appeals which we make to those who now stand aloof from us, they must be appeals which speak to something in the human heart which is responsive. If we would win others to co-operation in the movement for Total Abstinence, we must do so by means which shall speak to that in them which is susceptible to such appeals.

And if this is so, we will not be eager to urge what I may call the scriptural or the scientific arguments. I know that there are many good men who insist that there is no proof that Christ [8/9] ever made wine, as we understand the term, or used it. Perhaps not. If there is learning on the one side, there is undoubtedly learning on the other. And though I may think that any student with a knowledge of the two tongues in which the Testaments are written ought to concede the question of the use of wine--in the customary and accepted sense of that term, by Christ and His disciples--as a matter beyond dispute, there are others who do not think so.

But what, after all, does it matter which of these views is right? What have the habits of the pastoral communities of tropical countries two thousand years ago, to do with the habits of people in our northern latitudes, in this nineteenth century of the Christian era? Dr. Bowditch, of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts, has lately called attention to what, with a happy generalization, he calls the cosmic law of Temperance. In other words, he has shown that "the tendency of drunkenness increases as we go from the equator toward the pole, the intemperate countries being the northern countries. The explanation of this was found in the effect of climate, which intensifies in cold regions the instinct to stimulation." Now, then, if this be so, and any one who has traveled from Naples to Stockholm, or from Seville to St. Petersburgh, must needs recall an ever-recurring demonstration of it, as striking as it is [9/10] consistent; then we who live in these northern regions have no warrant for making any Biblical custom our custom because it is a Biblical custom. In Egypt one sees young girls with a single garment, having in it little more warmth than a gauze veil, and babies of all ages and sizes without any garments at all. But the customs of dress in that tropical land are no rational law for the streets of New York or the winters of New England. And it is as irrational to decree what a man shall take inside of him, from what obtained under other skies and amid other temperatures, and, above all, under the conditions of an essentially different civilization, two thousand years ago, as it would be to decree from such premises what he shall wear outside of him.

And thus we see that common-sense, if there were no other warrant for doing so, rules the appeal to scriptural customs of wine-drinking substantially out of the issue. Let scholars prove to us as conclusively as they please that Christ made wine--wine of such a sort that it could rightly be denominated an intoxicant--that He himself drank it and they who were His chosen associates, the fact furnishes no warrant for a similar custom with us. We are not in Palestine, but in New York, and a rational usage in Judea may easily be a rash and perilous indiscretion in America. Christ lived and slept in the open air. Shall [10/11] you and I be wise in attempting to imitate Him in this particular, with the thermometer, as a week ago, standing at 10° below zero? If the Biblical argument from Christ's customs, and the like against any use of wine, goes, as some affirm, but a little way, it is, at any rate, equally obvious that the argument from the Bible for drinking wine, goes but a little way also. Is it quite worth while, then, to spend our strength upon a dispute concerning which it must be owned that the Christian world is in nowise substantially nearer agreement than it was fifty years ago?

And so, on the other hand, of what may be called the scientific argument; I mean the argument derived from the nature of alcohol and alcoholic beverages and their effects upon the human system. It was my fortune, not long ago, to listen to two earnest and gifted men, as in turn, and from their several standpoints, they discussed the questions of Temperance and Total Abstinence. Said one of them: "While the physiological action of alcohol remains still in much obscurity, it is not, I believe, debatable that the careful investigations of Dr. Anstie and others have disproved the chief statements of teetotalism as to its injurious effects--have shown that alcohol is not ejected unassimilated from the body to any considerable extent; that it does come under the category of food as a force supplier; that it acts essentially [11/12] unlike in different doses, so that it may be a food in moderation, and yet a poison in excess; that in disease it is often positively useful, and for dietetic purposes is not proven to act, when used in moderation, otherwise than healthfully and beneficially."

Said the other speaker to whom I refer: "I would not ungenerously throw back upon a sister profession any taunt. But my subject compels me to remind you that the latest word of the science of hygiene on this subject is unequivocally and flatly in favor of total abstinence for those in health. I refer to the words of Dr. Richardson, the speaker whose paper before the recent Social Science Congress of Great Britain commanded more attention and has enlisted a more general interest than any paper ever read before that body. I refer especially to his last utterance on this subject, in which he plants himself fairly and squarely upon the ground that Total Abstinence is God's normal law for man."

In quoting these antagonistic testimonies, I am but reminding you of what you are all abundantly familiar with; namely, that as yet the scientific world is far from having reached anything like a general agreement or consensus on this point, and is farther still from being prepared to range itself in regard to the broader question which lies behind upon one side or the other.

As a consequence, the Total Abstinence argument, [12/13] so far as it has rested itself upon one or other of the grounds which I have referred to, has produced much heat and very little conviction. It is a characteristic of all discussions relating to questions of science, that assertion is sweeping and dogmatic in precise proportion as it is unlearned. It is those who have looked most closely into the subject of the relation of alcohol to the human system who are wont to speak with most caution and reserve.

And so also in relation to the scriptural argument. Ah! how these appeals to the letter (forgetful that the letter killeth and that the spirit alone giveth life) have rent and torn Christendom, and divided those who ought to have been brethren. The history of theology is a history of dissensions; and there is something in human nature that makes our disputes concerning the meaning of a text almost fiercer than any others. When, therefore, we undertake to make the argument for Total Abstinence a question of exegesis or Biblical interpretation, we are inviting a spirit whose end is not always peace, nor whose aim always the truth. The result of such appeals has been too often to fill the air with disputation, in the midst of which strong drink pushes forward its conquests, and ruined men and women go down to disgrace, disease, and death.

[14] And yet all the while the Total Abstinence movement, though grounded exclusively neither upon any scientific nor any textual basis, does draw its grandest and most persuasive argument from what we find in the Word of God; for, when we open that Word, we find there one supreme, central figure, who, whatever may have been the gifts and graces of patriarchs and prophets, apostles and martyrs, dwarfs and overshadows all the rest. It is the figure of One who, looking forward amid the thickening shadows of His earthly ministry toward the deeper darkness and treachery that gathered about its close, said, with the simple majesty of a divine self-forgetfulness, "No man taketh my life from me. I lay it down of myself." It is the figure of One toward whom the eyes of the aged apostle to the Gentiles are turned, as he writes in his letter to the Galatians: "The Son of God who gave himself for me." This is the figure that is central to the New Testament and to all human history ever since. And what is the spell of this wonderful Being over the hearts and the homage of men, through all the changing customs down to this hour, but this--that, in the spirit of the words that I have quoted, He lived among men, and finally died for them--not in the assertion of personal rights and a personal prerogative, but in utter and incomparable self-abnegation. [14/15] As He goes to and fro in the world, He is not plotting and scheming how He may aggrandize Himself and build up a personal party or establish a visible kingdom. He is simply longing and striving to save men and to win them from a life of selfishness and sin to a life of purity and love.

And this, as it is the spirit of His life and His Gospel, so is it the clew to the ministry of His foremost apostle. We hear him say, in words that to my mind are the strongest Total Abstinence argument that was ever written, "If meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no meat while the world stands;" and we catch in them the echo of that spirit of utter self-forgetfulness that ennobled his whole life. I know that when we use those words to-day, we are told that they have no more to do with the question of Total Abstinence than they have to do with a problem in Euclid. We are told that the apostle is discussing the question of meat offered to idols, and is making a generous concession to the unenlightened scruples of a semi-pagan or semi-Judaized conscience. Undoubtedly he is; but the spirit which inspires that concession is neither pagan nor Jewish, but supremely Christian--nay, Christ-like. It is the very spirit of the Cross; and I venture to affirm that he who would win others to come up upon the ground [15/16] of Total Abstinence must live it and illustrate it. Says the friend to whom you go, asking him to come out and take his place distinctly with those who abstain: "Why should I abstain? I have been drinking a glass, or two or three glasses of wine, at my table or at other people's tables for ten, fifteen, twenty, thirty, forty years of my life. Look at me! is not my hand as steady as yours, my eye as bright, my brain as clear, my pulse as even?"

"Yes, unquestionably."

"Very well, then, why should I abstain? Is my wife a drunkard? Are my children tipplers?"

"No, thank God, they are not."

"Well, then, produce me some argument from the Bible, from science, from the testimony of the learned, that shall inculcate Total Abstinence."

"No; I will not do that. But I will produce an argument from your personal experience. Last week you accepted the hospitalities of a neighbor whose house, for the evening, was thronged with guests. Among them was a youth accustomed to look to you as an example. Something in you had attracted his admiration, or enlisted his sympathies, or you were placed at some prominent post where your example came to be a thing to be quoted. In accordance [16/17] with the detestable custom of our modern society which sometimes permits men and youths to herd together in a refreshment room after their mothers and sisters have departed, this youth lingered with others of his own age, who proposed to drink champagne by tumblerfuls in the corner of the room. This young friend of yours had manly and refined instincts, and he shrank instinctively from a usage so boorish and vulgar. He had other reasons, too, for letting wine alone. He had a dishonored ancestry dragged down to ruin by intemperance. But in the moment of hesitation he caught your eye. Oh, if there had only been in it one loving ray of tender, pleading remonstrance; but you were holding up a glass of old Madeira to the light, and listening to your host as he remarked, with a whisper of bland complacency, 'Habersham, vintage of 1844.'

"One glance was enough for your young friend. If you could drink Madeira out of a wine-glass, why should he not drink champagne out of a tumbler? Well, he did. I will not tell you the rest. But when you meet him next, with bloodshot eye and unstrung nerves, ask yourself whether your glass of wine was worth--not what it cost you, but what it cost your weaker brother."

For this, as I conceive, is the gist of the [17/18] whole matter. We can not separate our drinking-customs, innocent as we may deem them, and as they may be in themselves, from their influence upon those about us. And if this be so, it is impossible to separate this question of Total Abstinence from the question of personal unselfishness. The question is not, what is permissible, what is justifiable, but, what is Christ-like? Nay, even if a man be not a Christian, the question is not what is pleasant, or wholesome, or companionable, but what is generous, what is unselfish, what is magnanimous? The Total Abstinence movement must plant itself supremely upon these considerations, and appeal from them confidently to the nobler and better, ay, the diviner, side of human nature. Above all, to every one who owns himself a disciple of the Master it must appeal in that Master's name and to that Master's example. "Bear ye one another's burdens," writes St. Paul, "and so fulfill the law of Christ." The law of Christ. What is that law but the law of a Life that loved not itself, but gave itself for you and me! In a volume for which I am indebted to the kind thoughtfulness of our host of this evening, occurs the testimony of a man, who, in a neighboring city, in consequence of the labors of Mr. Moody, had been won from a life of intemperance to one of self-respecting total abstinence. [18/19] He was speaking of his experience since his reform, and with touching simplicity he concluded: "There are some here who have spoken of their craving for drink as having, since their conversion, wholly ceased. I can not say that. I have learned, I trust, to love Christ, and to believe that He loves me. But the old appetites are not dead in me yet. I feel the old craving sometimes; but by the grace of God, and the help of my brethren, I hope to resist it." "The help of my brethren." Dear friends, let us try and make the world, your intimates and mine, the men and women whom we know and whose rule of life in this matter is not ours--let us try, I say, to make these understand that there are multitudes of weaker ones who can only hope to triumph as they see Christ's pity, Christ's compassion, Christ's self-forgetting love and help incarnated in "the help of their brethren." Let us ask them frankly and fearlessly, "What is your personal indulgence worth to you compared with the inestimable privilege of strengthening the steadfastness and steadying the feet of some weaker brother? Let who will come to you on other and lower grounds. We ask you to take this stand, because it is the noblest and most unselfish, and most Christ-like stand." Believe me, such an appeal will not be made in vain.

[20] And in the spirit of such an appeal, let me add, may not we who are the friends of Total Abstinence, wisely accompany our efforts for the spread of Total Abstinence, especially among the poor and neglected, with a more thoughtful consideration and a tenderer sympathy for their many-sided humanity? Who that knows the lives and homes of the poor can wonder that they drink? I confess that when I have come out of one of those wretched tenement-houses in which some hundreds of thousands more or less of the people of New York are lodged, my wonder has been, not that the poor creatures who live in them drink so much, but that they drink so little. It is not hard for you and me to practice Total Abstinence. We have so many things to make home bright, and to relieve the monotony of life. Books and pictures, music, cultivated and congenial companionships, these are within the reach of all of us. Above all, our dwellings are not devoid of sunshine and pure air and abundant water and light. But a poor man's home, what is it? too often but at best two or three rooms, with scanty light and imperfect ventilation and an utter absence of wholesome conveniences. Is it any wonder that men, and sometimes women too, turn from such places to saloons and dance-halls, not, first of all, for the drink that is dispensed there, but [20/21] learning to drink, quite as often as otherwise, because drinking is a condition of admission to them? It is well to make the laboring man take a pledge; but it would be better sometimes to make the landlord of the laboring man take a pledge also--a pledge to build better tenements with a less exclusive aim to an exorbitant percentage, and a more humane reference to the well-being of those who are to live in them. If we hope to make a man permanently temperate, we must recognize that wisest economy which aims to diminish his motives for intemperance. Drunkenness means crime; crime means the destruction of property and the increase of pauperism. The destruction of property and the increase of pauperism mean increased taxation and shrinking values. It ought to be a tolerably easy sum for the capitalist to reckon how largely and genuinely improved homes for the poor stand for improved habits of the poor, and so for diminished taxation and increased security for the accumulations of the rich.

Again, the Temperance movement should aim to give men more sunshine. It was an Indian, driven from his old hunting-grounds, and pursued from place to place by the ever-encroaching white man, who justified his use of the "fire-water" by saying that he took it "not for the drink-ee, but for the drunk-ee." His life [21/22] was cold and bare. He had exchanged the freedom and exhilaration of life on the prairies for the wretched dependence of a bastard civilization. What wonder that he drank! He had learned from the white man to long for the false and feverish glow that comes to the brain from strong drink; and he drank and drank again to drown his poverty and misery. It is not an exceptional experience. There are men and women all over the land whose lives are dry and colorless. They lack the satisfaction of the play-element in their natures, which is just as divine in its origin as the work-element. And if we want to make men temperate--if we want to save them from seeking in opium or strong drink the exhilaration which they can command in no other way, those who have wealth and taste and influence must meet the question, How shall we brighten the lives of such persons with wholesome and simple pleasures? The annual consumption of opium has increased in this country seventy percent in ten years. Have we reflected upon the dismal meaning of such a fact? Are we ignorant of the mental and moral ruin that it stands for? Surely it is worth while to arrest it, not by prohibition, but by the way of counter-attraction. You can not seal up certain instincts of human nature by a vow, whether of celibacy, or monasticism, or total [22/23] abstinence, without recognizing the healthy wants--the want of companionship, of variety, of healthful and innocent recreation, which intemperance so foolishly and wrongly aims to gratify.

And what is this but to say that our efforts to promote the cause of Total Abstinence must be saturated with the spirit of personal sympathy? We must, somehow, come closer--those of us who have wealth and culture, and influence and personal gifts--to that vast majority who are less favored. Our life in America is too isolated, too unsympathetic. We have a fine scorn for the feudalisms of the old world, but the distance, among us, between the rich and the poor, is often far greater and more impassable than the distance between a peer of some European realm and the humblest peasant upon his estate. In such a relation there is, oftener than otherwise, much of the old patriarchal familiarity and mutual interest. But with us, the relation between the rich and the poor, the prosperous and the unfortunate or intemperate, is too often one of mutual suspicion and alienation. We think too little of the lives which the poor lead, and we do too little to brighten those lives. The remedy does not lie in organizing societies for reform or for relief. There must be an, individual endeavor to understand our fellow-men and women, to feel, not for, but with [23/24] them, and in those thousand minor ways which love will most surely dictate, to do what we can to improve their homes, to brighten their workday lives, and to win their confidence and affection. Doing this, we may hope, sooner or later, to persuade them that there is a worthier use to make of their powers than to drug or inflame them with drink; and, best of all, that a temperate and self-respecting life has a purer and nobler joy to offer them than any that is to be found in the stupor of beer or the mad delirium of gin.

Such are some of the ways in which, may we not confidently believe, the Total Abstinence movement may most effectually be strengthened and extended. May those who are its friends have the faith and patience and courage that are needed to make trial of them.

[25] Temperance Among the Children

The following are among the publications of the NATIONAL TEMPERANCE SOCIETY specially adapted to the Temperance instruction and right training of the children in Sunday-Schools, Juvenile organizations, Bands of Hope, Concerts, etc.

CONCERT EXERCISES

The Two Ways--By George Thayer--16 pages.--6c. each--per dozen .60
The Cup of Death--By Rev. W. F. Crafts--16 pages.--6c. each--per dozen .60
The Two Wines--By T. R. Thompson--16 pages.--6c. each--per dozen .60
The Alcohol Fiend--By Rev. W. F. Crafts--16 pages--6c. each--per dozen .60
Temperance Exercise--By Edward C1ark--36 pages--l8mo--per dozen .60
Scripture Testimony--By T. R. Thompson--16 pages--6c. each--per dozen .60
The Catechism on Alcohol--By Miss Julia Colman--36 pages--per dozen .60
The Temperance Catechism--By Rev. Jas. B. Dunn--per dozen .60
Temperance Lesson Leaves--By Rev. D. C. Babcock--8 pages--per hundred 1.00
No. 1, General Questions on Temperance;
No. 2, Alcohol--its Nature, Source, etc;
No. 3, Brewed, Fermented, and Distilled Liquors.
No. 4, Paul's Temperance--By Miss Julia Colman--4 pages--per hundred .60
No. 5, Samuel's Beautiful Life--By Miss Julia Colman--4 pages--per hundred .60
Band of Hope Manual--36 pages--per dozen .60
Roll of Honor Illustrated--With triple or single pledge, size 20x28 in., space for 240 names .25
Certificates of Membership--per hundred 3.00
Children's Band of Hope Pledge and Certificate combined--per hundred 4.00
The Pledge includes tobacco and profanity--Size, 12 x 9 1/2 inches, in colors.
Chromo Pledge Card--Containing either the single or triple pledge, per hundred 2.00
Pocket Pledge-Book--With space for 80 names--.10
Sunday-School Pledge-Book--Space for 1000 names--1.50
The Temperance Speaker--By J. N. Stearns--288 pages--.75
The National Temperance Orator--By Miss L. Penney--12mo, 288 pages--1.00
Band of Hope Melodies--48 pages--l0c--per hundred 10.00
Juvenile Temperance Speaker--72 pages--.25
Ripples of Song--64 pages--Single copies--15 cents--per hundred 12.00
A new collection of Temperance hymns and songs designed for children and youth
in Sabbath-Schools, Bands of Hope, Juvenile Templars, Cadets of Temperance, etc.
Readings and Recitations--l2mo, 96 pages--Compiled by Miss L. Penney, Editor of "National
Temperance Orator"--Paper covers, .25; cloth .60
A collection of new and first-class articles and selections, both prose and verse, embracing
argument and appeal, pathos and humor, by the foremost Temperance advocates. Suitable for
Declamation, Recitation, Public and Parlor Readings.

Packet of Children's Tracts, No. 1. Containing 724-page illustrated tracts .25
Packet of Children's Tracts, No. 2. Containing 724-page illustrated tracts .25

THE YOUTH'S TEMPERANCE BANNER.

The National Temperance Society and Publication House publish a beautifully illustrated Monthly Paper, especially adapted to Children and Youth, Sunday-School and Juvenile Temperance Organizations. Each number contains several choice engravings, a piece of music, and a great variety of articles from the pens of the best writers for children in America. It should be placed in the hands of every child in the land.

Terms, Cash in Advance, including Postage.
Single copy, one year .35
8 copies to one address 1.08
50 copies to one address 6.75
100 copies to one address 13.00

Address J. N. STEARNS, Publishing Agent,
58 Reade Street, New York.

SCIENCE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY

The following valuable books, by some of the foremost writers in the world, have been published by the National Temperance Society, and which should have a wide circulation:

Our Wasted Resources, or the Missing Link in the Temperance Reform. l2mo, 201 pages, paper cover, 50 cents; cloth, $1.25. By Dr. WM. HARGREAVES, MD.

This book presents in a new and striking light the economic aspect of the temperance question. It includes a series of fourteen elaborate and carefully prepared tables, the result of many months of painstaking labor, which give from official sources an exhibit of our immense agricultural, manufacturing, and mining resources; the yield of our fisheries; the extent, value, and receipts of our railways; the growth of our exports and imports during the last fifty years; the number of persons employed and the wages paid in connection with our varied industries, etc. The book also presents, in a more complete form than they have ever before been given to the public, well-authenticated statistics of the liquor traffic, showing the quantity and cost of intoxicating drinks; the number of persons employed in the manufacture and sale of liquors; the expenditures for crime and pauperism caused by the drink-traffic, and the material benefit which would accrue, especially to the laboring classes, to the cause of education and religion, and the ease with which our national debt could be paid, if the great drink-waste were stopped.

Alcohol and The State. A Discussion of the Problem of Law as Applied to the Liquor Traffic. l2mo, 406 pages, $1.50. By ROBERT C. PITMAN, LL.D., Associate Justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts.

This is one of the most valuable and important contributions to the literature of the economic and legislative aspects of the alcoholic discussion, as a question of statesmanship, ever given to the public of our own country or of Europe. It treats, with great conciseness and marked ability, of what the State loses in various ways through alcohol, and in turn, of what is the duty and proper function of the State concerning alcohol. It is of a high order of literary merit, and is a book for statesmen, legislators, and all intelligent, thoughtful temperance men and women everywhere.

On Alcohol. l2mo, 190 pages. Paper covers, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00. By BENJAMIN W. RICHARDSON, M.A.; M.D., F.R.S., of London, with an introduction by Dr. WILLARD PARKER, of New York.

This book contains the "Cantor Lectures" recently delivered before the Society of Arts. These justly celebrated lectures, six in number, embrace a historical sketch of alcoholic distillation, and the results of au exhaustive scientific inquiry concerning the nature of alcohol and its effects upon the human body and mind. They have attracted much attention throughout Great Britain, both among physicians and general readers, and are the latest and best scientific expositions of alcohol and its effects extant.

Bacchus Dethroned. l2mo, 248 pages. By FREDERICK POWELL $1.00.

This is a prize essay, and is one of the ablest and most convincing works ever issued. The question is presented in all its phases, physiological, social, political, moral, and religious.

The Prohibitionist's Text-Book. l2mo, 312 pages.

Containing the most valuable Arguments, Statistics, Testimonies, and Appeals from twenty able writers, showing the Iniquity of the License System and the Right and Duty of Prohibition.

Alcohol as a Food and Medicine. l2mo, 137 pages. By EZRA M. HUNT, M.D. Paper, 25 cents; cloth, 60 cents.

This work discusses the subject of alcohol as a food and also as a medicine, and demonstrates that it has no value used as the former, and may be substituted in the latter. Every one should read it.

The Medical Use of Alcohol. l2mo, 96 pages. Paper, 25 cents; cloth, 60 cents. By JAMES EDMUNDS, M.D., of London.

Three Lectures upon the Medical and Dietetic use of Alcohol, together with the use of Stimulants for Women and Nursing Mothers.

*** Sent by mail on receipt of price. Address J. N. STEARNS, PUBLISHING AGENT, 58 Reade Street, New York.

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