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Show FATHER MATKEW. Abstainers Honor the Memory of the Apostle of Temperance. The Catholic Total Abstinence union of Philadelphia celebrated Father Mathew's birthday on Friday evening of last week at the Academy of Music. Mu-sic. Referring to the time shortly before be-fore this great apostle died. Rev. Joseph Jo-seph J. Kirlin, the orator of the evening, even-ing, said: In 1851 Mathew returned to Ireland, but he was a broken man. His strength had at last given away before be-fore the superhuman tax he Imposed on it. The remaining five years of his life were spent in futile efforts to regain re-gain his health. Desultory speeches were made, the pledge administered to those who sought him, but he was broken, and the death that came to him in 1856 was the death of a martyr, mar-tyr, and he went to the reward which God holds for his saints. Mathew's collapse was due not more to physical ailment than to weariness of soul and mental worry. Like all great men, he had enemies: like all reformers, re-formers, he was thoroughly hated, and as his reform struck at the sensual gratification of men and at the financial finan-cial interests of the great power, he was hated with hellish intensity. They who should have stood shoulder to shoulder with him in his fight against strong drink gave him but half-hearted encouragement or openly or secretly ranged themselves with his enemies. He lived to see his work almost undone un-done by the terrible typhus plague of '45 and '46, and what was still more dreadful, the famine of the years that followed. He lived . to see the floodgates flood-gates of emigration open and his people peo-ple scattered to the ends of the earth. Of the countless numbers pledged, many indeed did not remain faithful, but the energy and zeal of the faithful ones compensated for the defection of the many. Mathew's work never died. His mission never failed, and it never will. Mathew gave an object lesson to the world that can never be forgotten. He stamped his individuality on the world. He taught the great lesson of self-control practically ; when he reclaimed re-claimed a nation. Where go the Jrish, there goes the name of Father Mathew, and all the name stands for. They who spread his fame may not as,a people live out the fruits of his mission, but just as the unfruitful wind and wavs carry fruitful seeds to far parts where they ripen and bear fruit, so the Irish have been the messengers of Mathew's spirit to those who put it into practice. prac-tice. To us Mathew and his work are a memory, to most of us, but a history, his-tory, and yet his spirit has come to us and his work is ours. He was the apostle apos-tle preaching a new doctrine, we the professed of that doctrine. He was the pioneer blazing the way through rugged forests of prejudice, we that follow must make that way a broad and traveled highway. |