In the cause of Reform woman’s help is needed.  From the earliest commencement of the temperance movement, appeals, arguments, and expostulations have been addressed by earnest reformers to woman, because it was felt that on any great social question the power of woman to help, or to hinder, was all-important.  When it is remembered that woman is the greatest sufferer from the vice of intemperance, that she regulates the customs of society, it is apparent that she should seek to abolish bad, and promote good customs.  More than others she trains the young and builds up character, and therefore she should, by example and precept, implant such habits as may be not only a safeguard in childhood and youth, but become fixed as moral principles in those she has reared, when the responsibility arrives; because of these, we find reasons in abundance why woman must help, or aid cannot reach the imperilled and undone.

Again:  Woman needs help.  Addison well said, “Women are either the best or the worst of human beings.”  The very feelings which, rightly directed, prompt her to soar even to the apex of the pyramid of human virtue, warped from their right exercise, precipitate her to the lowest and most grovelling depths of human vice.  Is woman intemperate, she differs from man in the gratification of her appetite.  He seeks the social club.  Woman seeks retirement, and drinks alone and apart.  Her appetite, from this very cause, becomes unmanageable.  Men will stop drinking, oftentimes, when the open bar is closed.  Woman, with an appetite formed, drinks the more, because she drinks in secret.  Because of this fact, woman is in peril if she form an appetite for strong drink.

Woman as a Mother has work to do as a teacher.  “We hear a great deal about education in the present day; but,” said Mrs. Ellis, “my strong impression is that there will have to come a teaching out of the mother’s heart and life,—­herself being taught of God,—­such as alone can save us as a nation and a people from falling from our high material prosperity into a condition of moral degradation, which it is terrible to contemplate.”  Such being the case, every woman should ask, What have I done in those opportunities which God gave me with the young?  What did I pour into that open heart and mind?  Was my influence for Christ or against him?  Which way did I point out to those uncertain feet?  Who can estimate a mother’s influence!  There is a power in a mother’s love greater than any other human power,—­a power to suffer, to serve, and to save; a power which many waters cannot quench, and which is stronger than death.  As she leads, the broodlings will follow.  Does she sanction card-playing, theatre-going, dancing, and what are called innocent recreations, or does she set herself against them, and turn the thoughts of her children to books that treat of science, of philosophy, and of religion?  Upon the answer to this question the future of children and the young depends.  Many a boy has been checked in a career of shame by a mother’s sad look; many have been encouraged by a mother’s smile.  God help women to know how to use their power for home, for woman-kind, for man-kind, for country, and for God!