Watertown republican. [volume] (Watertown, Wis.) 1860-1906, 1889-10-02
The Church and Reform,

At the convention of Congregational
| churches held at GAINESVILLE last week,
Rev. J. M. Campbell delivered the ad-
dress Thursday evening, upon ''The
Relation of the Christian Church to
Social and Moral Reform Following
is synopsis of the address:
The speaker was clear, forcible and
logical. The church, he said was Christ's
great reforming agency; active, open
and aggressive against all the evils of
the world. The mission of the chuIch
should be spoken of in broader sense
than that commonly used It's mission
was to save the world, and as such an
agent the church is home, house
hold of faith house of prayer and a
center of aggressive agencies. The
purpose of the church was to destroy
evil. Christ came to destroy the works
of the evil one, while the work of the
followers of Christ was the building up
ofthe kingdom of God here in the world.
The church should take a position as
regards some of the great moral and So
clal reforms; and in doing SO several
problems press themselves forward at
once. Foremost among them is the
great problem of temperance reform.
The church, to accomplish her purpose,
must turn herself actively into the
open channels of work and deal with
evils according to the divine plan The
work of moral reform should begin with
the individual. The individual changed,
society is reformed; moral reform does
not come with outward pomp and
show-not the abstraction of outward
forms of sin, but the inward cleansing
of the heart, and moral reforms fail be-
cause they depend upon the outward
washing and not making the fountain
pure. In all the years since drunken
ness became an evil, God has not been
silent He has constantly been at work
for the tearing down of the stronghold
of Satan and upholding the kingdom of
God. Little progress is ever made in
appealing to Caesar to perform Gods
work; in doing this, legal methods have
been used when moral reform should
have been. There is a limit to the power
of law in temperance reform. Prohibi-
ton is no longer magic wand that
needs simply to be waved over society
to reform it. The saloon was created
by law, therefore people look for the
law to abolish it. We cannot leap into
reforms, but grow into them, and in
view of the fact that many of the states
that have had prohibitory laws have re-
pealed them, many others refusing to
pass them, the question comes, what
can be done? The position of the church
should be everywhere. The saloon is
monster evil, and ought to be sup
pressed. 1fprohibition can not be Sc
cured, then local option, if local option
is beyond our reach, then high license.
"God pity the man who will vote with
the saloonkeeper for no license rather
than for high license" It is not in the
scope of the civil law to determine
what is ideally right, hut what is capa-
BILE of being enforced. In this great
work of temperance reform the ag-
gressive prohibitionist must exercise
charity for the milder temperance
worker, and the milder temperance
worker must exercise charity for the
| aggressive prohibitionists.
Mr.. Campbell spoke upon the Divine
methods of Sabbath reform, and of the
strong effort being made to sweep away
| the Sabbath as Divine institution, and
said he considered the Sabbath re-
garded in this light as one of the great
est bulwarks of christianity. The Sab
bath is engraved upon the constitution
of man by the finger of God. Take it
away from him and you lower him to
| the level of beast of burden.
He further demanded reform in our
divorce law, the looseness of which had
come to be crying evil all over the
| land. The ratio of divorces to mar
riages being one to ten. Mr.. Campbell's
paper created a lively discussion,
| opened by Rev. Ellsworth. It was cyl
dent that all were temperance workers,
but some differed in the method to be
pursued in obtaining temperance re-