Only thus prohibition could be brought to answer its whole purpose, for we should remember that the practical efficiency of all government laws depends on the consensus of the governed. Without the coöperation of the teacher the mandates of the legislator fall short of their aim. But it is equally certain that in the field of social ethics the teacher can not dispense with the aid of the legislator, and that our lawgivers can not much longer afford to ignore that truth, for the penalty of the neglect already amounts to the equivalent of the average yearly income of _seven million working people_. In the South a million men, women and children of farm laborers earn less than a hundred millions a year, _i. e._, $500 for every family of five persons. In the manufacturing districts of the North they would earn less than $200,000,000. We can therefore again be wholly certain of not overstating the truth, if we assert that in the United States alone the poison vice devours every year the aggregate earnings of more than _fourteen hundred thousand families_. In one dollar bank-notes of the United States Treasury, one billion dollars could be pasted together into a paper strip that would reach up to the moon. Stacked up in bundles, they would form a paper pile a hundred feet long, fifty feet wide, and fifty feet high. If the equivalent of so many creature-comforts could be employed for the benefit of the poor, it would almost realize the dreams of a Golden Age. But even if we could save it from the hands of the poison vender by burning it on the public streets, all friends of mankind would hail the conflagration as the gladdest bonfire that ever cheered the hearts of men. For its flames would save more human lives than the perpetual peace of the millennium; it would prevent more crimes than the civilization of all the savages that infest the prairies of our border states and the slums of our large cities. Nay, it would save us from evils for which mankind has thus far discovered no remedy, for intemperance robs us of blessings which human skill is unable to restore. SUNDAY READINGS. SELECTED BY CHANCELLOR J. H. VINCENT, D.D. [_January 4._]