The Women's War with Whisky;
OR, CRUSADING IN PORTLAND.
About the middle of last March the news began to reach us here in Oregon that a great Temperance movement, which had been begun in Ohio in the month of February, was meeting with wonderful success. The method of that movement was of a nature at once novel and simple, being nothing more nor less than prayer to God. But you say, is prayer novel? No; but it was something new to see prayer and singing carried into the streets, by people who had all their lives shut their religion up in sacred edifices, to be brought before the public conspicuously only on stated occasions.
It had somehow come to be the received opinion that the name of God should only be spoken from the pulpit, and listened to by respectable people, in their best clothes. No one had ever conceived the idea of "going out into all the world, including those places of wickedness, the liquor saloons, and carrying Christ to those who would not seek Him. Still less had they thought that women should do this work. The first suggestion has been credited to Dr. Dio Lewis; but the idea was not original with him. Since the commencement of the women's work in Ohio, several instances have been related to us of a similar plan having been adopted in isolated communites at different times.
But whose soever may have been the first thought in the present movement the time had come for its adoption. Ever since the close of our late civil war the morals of the country seemed to have been going from bad to worse with frightful impetus, until those who had the good of humanity at heart felt inclined to cry out, that our God was as deaf as the stone gods of the pagans. He was not deaf; He was only long-suffering. Men, it is true, had sinned past the power of redeeming their errors. They had consented to a corruption of public morals and private living that began at last to terrify themselves. In this emergency God breathed upon the hearts of women, and with one impulse and accord they thankfully accepted the trust.
What an electric thrill that was that ran through through the nation! It was as if some great ship had been foundering at sea, and suddenly, in the midst of the despair, a voice cried out: "We are close upon shore! If some one will volunteer to take a line through the surf, we are saved!" And then a prayer had been offered, and the most consecrated person of all that trembling company had launched himself into the stormy surf to try to reach the firm land with the life-saving line. Tearfully all eyes were
