The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1881-03-24
Chancellor Crosby's "Calm Yiew' {
Temperance.
A REPLY, BY WENDELL PHILLIPS.

| am to offer you some remarks OF
a! lecture delivered here a fortnigh
ago by Chancellor Crosby. He de
nounced the temperance movement a
now conducted. The address was no
very remarkable for novelty, or weight
of argument, or the correctness of its
statements. Indeed, it was rather
noticeable for the lack of these quail
ties. And it was so well handled, and
so fully answered in several of our
pulpits, that I thought it needed no
further notice. But you thought 9TH
erwise, and perhaps it does deserve it,
considering the source from which it
comes. And when the health Of the
Chancellor becomes the standing toast
in the grog-shops of our city; and
when the journal which publishes
these Monday Lectures is obliged to
print second and third edition, day
after day, to supply that class of Gus
toners, it is evident that temperance
men have text on which an effectual
temperance sermon can be preached
one that probably will arrest the at
tention Of just those we seek to reach.
DR.. Crosby laments the divisions
among temperance men, and lays it
down as a principle that we cannot
conscietiously object to the means en-
ployed by others unless they contain
an immortality" I beg leave to dis
sent from this. We have had sixty
years experience in temperance meth
DDS, and certainly may claim to have
learned something. Now, when these
nursing babies Of grace, misled by
their crude suggestions the temper
ance public, obstruct its efforts and
waste its means, are we bound to sit
silent and make no protest against
such waste and recklessness? The
treasury of reform is not rich enough
to bear such extravaganza on the pre-
tense Of harmony; much less are we
bound to silence when neighbor's
mistake seriously harms and hinders
the movement. lie Boston lived, as it
did in 1896, with no steam fre-engine
(only leather buckets hanging in each
mans front entry), cheerfully would
I stand with DR.. Crosby and a hun
dred more to pass buckets Of water up
to the firemen on burning building.
But in 1881 [ should not obstruct the
engine and crowd it out of it's place,
merely that I and DIR. Crosby might
have chance harmoniously to unite
in passing empty buckets toward the
flames. Life is too short for such
false courtesies; too short for us to
postpone working on our line until we
have educated every new convert up
to our level. This might do very we'll
before the Flood, as Sidney Smith
suggests, when Methuselah could con-
suit his friends for hundred and
fifty years in relation to an intended
enterprise, and even then live to see
the working Of his plan, and its sue
cess or failure, for six or seven centu-
ries afterward.
But life is now limited to an aver
age of seventy years, and practical
men must put their hands to the plow
in the best way they know, and, if
children stand in their way, move
them gently but firmly out Of the
path.
think before DR.. Crosby spoke he
should have studied the history of the
temperance movement. If he were as
familiar with the literature of our
enterprise as he is with that Of Greece,
he never would have repeated criti-
cisms and suggestions that have been
answered over and over again during
the last fifty years. As I turn over
his essay, and find how tediously IA
miliar we all are with his objections, I
am reminded of Johnson's objections
to Goldsmith's plan of travelling over
Asia in order to bring home valuable
improvements: 'Sir, Goldsmith is so
ignorant of his own country that he
would bring home a wheelbarrow, as
a new and valuable invention
The address turns back in it's path
frequently, and repeats It's chief criti-
cisms again and again. If we analyze
it, I think it may be fairly summed
up thus:
1. DR.. Crosby objects to the total
abstinence theory and movement that
it insults the example Of Jesus; that
its advocates undermine and despise
the Bible, while they strain and
wrench it to serve their purpose; and
he asserts that the Bible, correctly in
terpreted, repudiates total abstinence
and such a temperance crusade as has
existed here for the last fifty years.
! 2. DR.. Crosby objects to this move