PALPABLE ABSURDITIES.

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dication of non-compliance with this all-important temperance seal of a covenant which binds the whole temperance fraternity in one common bond of brotherhood and sisterhood affection, on the only platform of safety from the accursed practice of liquor drinking and drunkenness in this world of iniquity, are in amount of justification as follows: We e can be temperate without signing a pledge to be so. And if we sign no pledge, then, surely, we shall break no pledge if we find it to be absolutely needful for our health and comfort to drink intoxicating liquors temperately.

To prove the fallacy and danger of such a substitute for a good temperance character and standing during an exterminating war with the POWER OF INTEMPERANCE, let the following parallel cases of palpable absurdity be duly con. sidered. Suppose a contract is made between male and female parties for the companionship of husband and wife during their earthly existence. The marriage covenant is here approved and agreed upon; but the pledge of their agreement by a public ceremony of joining hands, and promising fidelity to each other, before legal authority, is considered by them both, to be unnecessary, for two reasons—one is, that they can keep and observe the conditions of their private agreement as well without public ceremony as with it, and hence the trouble, expense, and blushing perturbations of a wedding are not only needless, but honorably dispensable. The other reason is, that if, at any subsequent period, one or both of the parties should become sick of their original contract, their marriage legal ceremony would be a bar to their united agreement to separate, or to their separation if but one of the parties wished

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A NOTE WITHOUT AN ENDORSER.

a release without legal reasons for such separation. The amount of such a vague union would be, that if no law bound them together, no law would be broken if they separated at the wish of one of the parties, whatever damage the other party might sustain. The absurdity of such an agreement, without any pledge to bind the parties to a fulfillment of stipulated terms, must be evident at first sight. By such an evasion of Divine law, children would be illegitimate, and could never obtain the right of lawful heirship to parental inheritance; nor the mother, female party thus left at the death of a rich illegal paramour, could never obtain a legal widow's dower, for no legal marriage in such case could ever be proved.

And this is but an instance among many absurdities that might be named of parallel import with that of refusing to sign the temperance pledge. All contracts for money, goods, chattels, or agreements for any services, bargains, agencies, or conditions whatsoever, in the whole system of human transactions of dealing man with man, can be conducted with any degree of safety short of a pledge of legal note of hand, or other legal security which can be made to appear in witness to sustain the right of an honest claim. For want of such a pledge, all the business of life would be thrown into utter confusion, which no law nor equity could ever control in a manner to secure prosperity in any department of the regular business of human life. And no less disastrous to the prosperity of the temperance cause would be the vague, foundationless plan of procedure without a temperance pledge of total abstinence from the use of all intoxicating liquors.

INDELIBLE MEMORIALS.

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Hence, we see the importance of the temperance pledge, and the futility of all objections to the absolute necessity of its existence as the indispensable bond of temperance union and prosperity, without which, no one can give evidence of true friendship to the temperance cause. On the correctness of such principles, we express the earnest wish that not only tens of thousands, but that many millions of devoted females now living, and those of unborn ages and generations yet to come, may be inclined to add their names to the pledge of total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors. Ladies of the present generation, do all in your power of influence, both by precept and example, to persuade all the members of your respective households, from oldest to youngest, who are capable of understanding and performing the duty, to sign the temperance pledge in the Family Bible, neatly prepared and written, to be preserved as memorials for generations following, when the subscribers to the pledge shall be dead and gone.

Parents, mothers, and all who may be mothers of the next generation, pause, and reflect for a moment on the importance of a single act of your life, which may be performed in one minute, and be a lasting memorial and example worthy of imitation, and be joyfully followed by thousands yet unborn, who may see your names to the temperance pledge of the nineteenth century, once written by your hands in the Holy Bibles which you now delight to read; the property of your lawful heirs when you die, and left in their hands for their perusal and guide in wisdom's pathway of duty and the way to heaven and glory, when you are dead and gone, to find your peaceful and

350 READERS OF THE TEMPERANCE PLEDGE!

eternal home in the place prepared for you in the mansionhouse of God, the Father's kingdom of glory. O think for a moment what joy it will give you in the eternal world of glory, to look down from the celestial abodes of angels and the spirits of the just of Adam's lost race, made perfect in glory through the grace of the gospel of the Lord Jesus, and there witness the improvement and use that may be made by your offspring on this earth in hundreds round their firesides, with your old Bibles open before them, reading your names once signed by your own hands in your much-loved Bibles, while thousands of other Bibles, the property of your offspring on earth, have their names written to pledges of total abstinence after your example, to go into the hands and possession of their heirs; and thus onward in succession, after the example of ancestors, while time shall last, and be lost in eternity.

O that every female in our land and world, from the queen on the throne of national power, to the housewives and daughters of farmers, mechanics, manufacturers, merchants, and professionalists of every rank of useful business of life, would sign the temperance pledge of total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors, and thus give example and influence to the promotion of the Temperance Reformation, which is providentially transforming this generation of human beings into a sober, industrious, prosperous, and happy world, as soon as intemperance, and all antiChristian principles, influence, and practices shall be purged out of it, and the predicted reign of the Glorified Redeemer shall extend from the rising to the setting sun, unmolested by the influence of any adversary.

CHAPTER XIV.

Effects of the Power of DIVINE PROVIDENTIAL MORAL SUASION, in one Neighborhood, by the Reformation of some Hard Drinkers and Drunkards, and the sudden and alarming Death of several other incorrigible Drunkards, personally known to the Author, who witnessed the remarkable Results recorded in this Chapter of the POWER OF PROVIDENTIAL MORAL SUASION in favor of Temperance Reform.

PROVIDENTIAL MORAL SUASION.

IN one of the counties of the State of New York, there is a neighborhood which comprises a portion of three towns. Its settlement commenced some years before the war of the American Revolution, by emigrants, principally from some of the New England States, some of the lower counties of the State of New York, and various other places after the Revolution, comprising a community, in the new settlement, of such families generally as had been accustomed to the enjoyment of religious privileges. Consequently, soon after the peace of the Revolution, they organized into a religious congregation of church and society; unitedly erected a house of worship, settled a faithful and much-loved gospel minister, and for a series of years enjoyed union, peace, and prosperity in attendance on the ordinances of religious worship.

But an adversary was permitted to mark them out for a prey. The whole society was without a village; a neighborhood of plain country farmers and mechanics, scattered over an area of from two to three miles distance, in every