a condition of affairs which ought to stir the righteous indignation of every citizen and father.  What is it you are enduring?  An institution which blasts with its poisonous breath every soul that enters it, which ruins young manhood, which kills more citizens in times of peace than the most bloody war ever slew in times of revolution; an institution that has not one good thing to commend it; an institution that is established for the open and declared purpose of getting money from the people by the sale of stuff that creates criminals; an institution that robs the honest workingman of his savings, and looks with indifference on the tears of the wife, the sobs of the mother; an institution that never gives one cent of its enormous wealth to build churches, colleges, or homes for the needy; an institution that has the brand of the murderer, the harlot, the gambler burned into it with a brand of the Devil’s own forging in the furnace of his hottest hell—­this institution so rules and governs this town of Milton to-day that honest citizens tremble before it, business men dare not oppose it for fear of losing money, church-members fawn before it in order to gain place in politics, and ministers of the gospel confront its hideous influence and say nothing!  It is high time we faced this monster of iniquity and drove it out of the stronghold it has occupied so long.

“I wish you could have gone with me this past week and witnessed some of the sights I have seen.  No!  I retract that statement.  I would not wish that any father or mother had had the heartache that I have felt as I contemplated the ruins of young lives crumbling into the decay of premature debility, mocking the manhood that God gave them, in the intoxicating curse of debauchery.  What have I seen?  Oh ye fathers!  O ye mothers!  Do you know what is going on in this place of sixty saloons licensed by your own act and made legal by your own will?  You, madam, and you, sir, who have covenanted together in the fellowship and discipleship of the purest institution of God on earth, who have sat here in front of this pulpit and partaken of the emblems which remind you of your Redeemer, where are your sons, your brothers, your lovers, your friends?  They are not here this morning.  The Church does not have any hold on them.  They are growing up to disregard the duties of good citizenship.  They are walking down the broad avenue of destruction, and what is this town doing to prevent it?  I have seen young men from what are called the best homes in this town reel in and out of gilded temples of evil, oaths on their lips and passion in their looks, and the cry of my soul has gone up to Almighty God that the Church and the Home might combine their mighty force to drive the whisky demon out of our municipal life so that we might feel the curse of it again nevermore.