The weekly miner. [volume] (Butte, Mont.) 1878-1881, 1880-06-15
ATTACKING SMOKES NEGLECTING
FIRE.

W. IHL
Hereafter aspirants for positions in the
Methodist ministry must choose between the
pipe and the pulpit. At the annual confer
ence lately closed, it was decided that prevl-
GUS to being chosen" or "ordained " or
whatever may be the particular designation of
the act of appointment, the young man who
would a parson be must solemnly and forever
allure tobacco in all its forms. This was the
ordinance passed, and the method of its adop-
ton is of a nature to open our eyes anew to
the immense difference between clerical and
lay legislation. a few years ago when our
congressman undertook to enact a law known
az the Back Pay Grab, those wicked men were
so lost to every principle of honor as to make
it retroactive IN character, so that the increase
of pay established by the law was to extend
backwards, and apply to services already per-
formed. Behold the superiority of clerical
legislation. When our pious pastors in con-
claye assembled enact the Anti Tobacco law,
they carefully expuuge from its provisions
every trace of a retroactive tendency. The
law is for the future, to apply to the men who
may hereafter wish to learn to smoke, but
is not to reach back, like the salary grab, and
take within its scope the men who have al
ready learned to use tobacco. Why they
made the ommission; why they failed to cast
the pipe from their own lips while they
plucked the cigar from those of their youthful
brothers, is not well understood. Perhaps
they thought there might not be sufficient
aside the cherished pipe, or perhaps they
feared that while the spirit was willing to de-
prive others of a pleasure certainly not NOR
ally wrong, the flesh might be weak whenit
came to forbidding themselves indul-
gence in the self same pleasure.
However, according them their choice of
reasons, and laying aside jesting, how sug-
gestive to the thoughtful layman are the posi-
ton taken by leading denominations on such
profound subjects as the smoking of an occs-
sional cigar, or the attire proper for a clergy
to wear, while the whole fabric of religion
is threatened with destruction from the
attacks made on it from Without. While
Ingersoll with his bludseon, Herbert Spencer
with his scalpel, and Darwin with his keenest
Of Sapiers are beating to earth or cutting off
one and then another of the organisms of a
living faith, The spiritual guides in whose
hands Is entrusted the defense of that faith
are busying themselves about minor points of
discipline within the church altogether I'M
mindful of the tremendous attack from
without. Their course is like that OF the
man who would be very particular in arranS-
ing every detail of domestic economy within
doors, and At the same time refuse to pay the
least attention to the rapid river, just outside
his door, whose dark, angry waters were cut
ting away the foundation upon which his
house was erected, threatening himself and
his household gods with overwhelming de-
current of modern thought, Is not unobserved
of lsymen, and when, perplexed and bewil-
derea by tho doubt il has raised III their
minds, they turn to their spiritual leaders and
v~ehemently demand, "Are those things true?''
how edifying it is to find one great denomi-
nation occupied In . squabble about millinery
for to this, ritualisin can in the main be re-
duced, while another would almost lead us to
have faith In the doctrine of evolution, COLI
siderins the pains it takes to prevent man
from developing into a locomotive, a volcano,
or something of that kind through his propen.
slty for smoke.
1t is often bewailed that the presea is the
age of unbelief; that the days of faith belong
to The past from which we are drifting further
and further every day but this is not a fail
statement of the case. 1t would be nearer
the truth to say that at Tie present day the
great mass of men have reached q stage O
intellectual development which renders blind
all. accepting, untlinkinS faith an impossible
ity. Men are quite willing TO believe, Dur
they must think as well as believe. Tn,
present above all preceding, is the age il
which men are trying to reconcile faith witt
reason, striving to bring belief under suhiec
tic of, and into strict accord with. their in
tellectual faculties, to which they find it i'm
possible longer to refuse full play. The tasl
is a hard one and as they grope their way il
the darkness, stumbling now here now there
is it a fitting reply to their demand tor light
to make answer concerning the proper cut t,
give a curate's surplice or to descaut upol
the amount of innate ~silfulness to be foun,
wrapped within the leaves of a fragran
Havanuah?
THE OLD AND THE NEV IN EDVCa
TION.