AFTER FIVE YEARS.

Writing to Mr. Samuel P. Godwin, President of the Franklin Home, an old inmate, five years after his reformation, says:  “I received your kind letter and recognized in it the challenge of the ever-watchful sentinel, ‘How goes the night, brother?’ I answer back, ‘All is well.’  I am delighted to hear of the continued success of ‘my second mother,’ the Home, and the Association, my brothers; and I thank God, who is encouraging you all in your efforts for fallen men, by showing you the ripening fruits of your labor—­efforts and labors that are inspired by a love of God that enables you to see in every fallen man the soul made like unto His own image.  The Home and all its workers, its principles, the endless and untiring efforts made, challenge the wonder and admiration of every Christian heart.  Its grand results will admit of but one explanation, that ‘It is God’s work.’  We, the reclaimed, can never give expression to the grateful emotions of our hearts.  We can only let our lives be its best eulogy.  We hope to vindicate in the future, as we have in the past, (by adhering to its principles) the great Christian truth, the grace of God is all-powerful, all-saving. Oh! what has not the Home done for us all! It sought us amid temptations, misery and sorrow, and took us into its warm and fond embrace, clearing away the debris that intemperance and misfortune had piled up, tearing down all false theories of disease and seizing our convictions.  It reached down into our hearts by its admirable practical mode of imparting its principles, impressing all its lessons with the examples of living, active men, who, through its aid, accepting its teachings and practicing them, have become reformed men—­in a word, conquerors of self.  By its love, fostering care and ever-watchful solicitude for us, it has awakened the lessons of love and faith learned at a dear mother’s knee in childhood, which, if forgotten for a time, were never entirely dead, and required but just such an influence to warm them into life.  It enables me to say to you now, at the end of five years, I have been a total abstinence man for that time, and by and with the help of God, I will die that.”

But enough has been educed to show the importance of this and other “Homes” for the recovery of inebriates, and to direct public attention to their great value.  Those already established should be liberally sustained by the communities in which they are located, and similar institutions should be organised and put in operation in all the larger cities of the Union.  Thousands of outcast, helpless, perishing men, who, but for the fatal habits they have acquired, would be good and useful citizens, might, if this were done, be every year restored to themselves, their families and to society.  If we cannot, as yet, stay the curse that is upon our land, let us do all in our power to heal what has been hurt, and to restore what has been lost.