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394 AMERICAN CATHOLIC HISTORICAL Socrsrv.
6, I870,)"‘ whereof a hundred and eighty members were
present, I have been told, at the exequies of their vener-
able patron and founder at St. Augustine’s, on Wednesday,
July 14, 1875;)? and the “ Sacred Heart Total Abstinence
Society”, founded about I873, which though bearing the
names of eighty members on its lists, on account of the too
heavy drains on its treasury (through illnesses and deaths)
was constrained to dissolve nine years later, in 1882.
While under Father McEvoy were formed the follow-
ing guilds: the “ Sacred Heart Society” about 1874;:
“ The Father McEv0y Beneficial Society of Chestnut Hill”,
incorporated April 5, 1879, with Arthur Rodgers, president,
and twenty-seven charter-members; and a “Total Absti-
nence Beneficial Society” founded in the spring of 1884
for women. '
But fateful alike seems to have been the ending of several
of these Total Abstinence guilds, that had been re-founded
in the ’70s through the energy chiefly of two Philadelphians,
the late John H. Campbell and Philip A. Nolan, enthusiasts
both of them in the temperance movement, who soon got
through experience another proof,--had any been needed,
-that apart from some singular, or (may we not better
say?) special vocation and blessing of the Most" High, the
Christian sense that finds it not hard to live up to the laws
of God and Holy Church, rarely is heroic-strong-willede
enough to maintain guilds whereof the leading principle
aims merely at self-denial in matters too that of themselves
‘t The Constz’tutz'on and By-Laws of this society (printed in 1870) name fifty-four
members, among them Edward Mccloskey as president (still living at F lourtown). In
January, I898, this society disbanded with forty-seven members on its rolls.
1‘ From information from James Weir, late secretary of the society.
1 Following the rise of this new devotion in the United States, which charming the
Catholic heart resulted in the creation of so many coniratemities of the Sacred Heart of
Our Lord, Chestnut Hill parish and convent were formally dedicated to the Divine Heart
on Sunday, October 19, 1873, Doctor Moriarty being consecrator of the parish in the
morning, Rev. Doctor Neno (of Villanova) of the convent in the afternoon, while the
writer of these lines preached on both occasions.
We may add that on the above day the Augustinian head-mission at Villanova was con-
secrated too to the same Sacred Heart. with Commissary-General Galberry as celebrant.