CHAPTER I.
Table of Contents
SUFFERING.
It has been said "Woman has a capacity for suffering," and duringall the years of the past, in all countries and among all nations,woman has been proving this true. Since the dark day when "therestood by the cross of Jesus, his mother," and there came to thatmother's heart the agony of bereavement, the human disappointment andpangs, whose torture only the Father God could understandfrom thatday till the present, disappointment, trial and sorrow have enteredlargely into the life and experience of women. But of all clouds thathave darkened their lives and among all sharp swords that havepierced their hearts, the cloud of the liquor traffic has been thedarkest, and its blade the keenest. Myriads of women have looked withanguish on sacrifices offered and loved ones slain, not to savehumanity or to draw men nearer to God, but destroyed at the hands ofa tyrant as relentless as death, and as pitiless.
In heathen countries, children have been left to float out ofexistence, an offering to the gods, while the mother has turned sadlyand sorrowfully away; in Christian countries, children have driftedwith the tide of social customs, or inherited appetites for strongdrink, out of the boundless sea of evil and wretchedness, while womenhave wept and wondered, have pondered and prayed.
Mothers have seen their sons, strong and brave in their youngmanhood, venture on this stream of rapid currents, have watched themwith sad eyes, and called to them in pleading and terrified tones, asthey were carried on and on by the rushing waters. At last, it wastoo late even for mother's love to save, and they were drawn intothat terrible vortex, from which there is so seldom escape,despairing hands have reached out for help, the cry of the soul hasbeen an appeal for mercy, and another loved one has gone down avictim to the nation's greed and a sacrifice to the nation's sin.
Out from a sheltered, sunshiny home has gone the tender, trustingdaughter, in her glad girlhood, her heart all aglow with truehallowed love for him, by whose side she has chosen to spend thecoming years. The future has looked so bright, as together they havethought, and planned, and built their airy castles; but the cloudshave come and passed, and come again and more frequently, till, atlength, the young wife has sat continually in their shadow, thebrightness and the sunshine all gone out of her life, as her husbandhas yielded to the influence of strong drink. She has realized thatshe was a drunkard's wife, her place by a drunkard's side, and, withwhite lips and breaking heart, she has moaned out her prayer to Godfor deliverance. And who will say that the fond mother, sitting inthe old bright home, has not felt every pang, every blow that reachedthe daughter's heart as she saw all that the dear one in loyalty toher husband would fain have concealed. This experience comes home tomost of us, and we easily recall not one case but many in which wivesand daughters have suffered at the hands of this cruel destroyer.
Homes have been invaded, not with noise of drums and clash of arms,but silently as by the stealthy step of death. Their purity and peacehave been destroyed, their idols laid in the dust, and the place thatwas designed to be a sanctuary for humanity, a rest from theweariness of life and a refuge from its storms, has become, instead,a dreary abode of waiting and watching, of enduring and weeping,often a very Gethsemane to patient loving souls. In time the domesticlife of families is destroyed by this enemy, so strong, cruel anddetermined; in many cases, the elegant abode gives place to a poorerone; the comfortable dwelling is exchanged for all that iscomfortless and forbidding, and there is no longer a home. CardinalManning, in his address at the temperance congress recently held inEngland, says: "As the foundation they laid deep in the earth was thesolid basis of social and political peace, so the domestic life ofmillions of our people is the foundation of the whole order of ourcommonwealth. I charge upon this great traffic nine-tenths of themisery and the destroyed and wrecked homes of our joyless people."What is true in England is also true in our young country. The "Boys'Homes" and "Girls' Homes" in our large cities furnish evidence of ourdestroyed homes. It is safe to say that nine-tenths of the inmates ofthese institutions are there provided with a home at the expense ofthe public, because strong drink has robbed them of the love and careof father and mother, or both, and taken from their innocentchildhood all the delights and happiness of home life. As women, ageafter age, beheld their loved ones thus taken from them, and sawtheir homes in the hands of this destroyer, it was not strange thatat last there arose from their hearts a cry almost of despair. It wasa cry that entered into the ear of God and brought a dim sense ofcoming help, a consciousness that God knew and cared and hadsomething better in reserve. The plough of pain had torn up thefallow soil of woman's heart; the harrow of suffering had mellowed,and tears of agony, wept for ages, had moistened it; now the seed ofthoughtful and determined purpose was ready to be sown, out of whichwas to spring the plentiful harvest of action.
Behind were the long dreary wastes of agony, marked with the myriadgrave mounds of lost loved ones, over which woman's face had bowedlow, while the heart within was breaking; before stretched the wideunknown, full of possibilities. Should it unfold the same sad storyof patient, passive' suffering, or grow bright with the burnishedarmor and glad with the hopeful songs of women gathering to thebattle, filed against the fell destroyer of their hopes? As theSpirit of God brooded over the primeval void and brought therefromorder, light, beauty and life, so the spirit of suffering broodedabove the torn and saddened heart of womanhood, till at last theangel of awakening appeared, and the heart that had dumbly, patientlyendured, stirred to the impulse of defence, and opened to the thoughtof freedom. The hour had struck, the call had come. The "arrow hadbeen hidden in God's quiver," waiting His time. When His ringersguide to the mark, what can the arrow do but fulfil its mission?
