Mississippi leader. (Jackson, Miss.) 1892-1895, 1894-11-13

Woulu pe su lLaugnter.
Let us, to begin with, be perfectly
frank and very charitable, but let it be
the understanding that this train will
run into anything that is ION the
track. Truth crosses tho highways of
this world lat grade" neither burrows
nor balloons, rings no bell, blows no
! whistle, has no flagman, semaphores,
block systems nor colored lights, and if
your party balks today on a crossing
you would better dismount, no matter
though it be "a thoroughbred" with a
matchless record" or, if you get your
feelings hurt, lay it, in simple justice,
to your own contributory negligence
The track is laid; did not lay it.
The wire is overhead; l did not stretch
it. l lift up my soul in silent prayer as
trolley; turn on the current for all
there is in it of light and power, set the
rheostat wide open and throw the crank
away.
should offend against your intelli-
gence, insult the church of our fathers
and prove my personal inadequacy for
this task SO graciously assigned and this
privilege so gratefully acknowledged if
in this presence should spend a minute
in the threadbare and obsolete business
Of denounoing the liquor traffic. Com
pared to that it were a thing Of deep
philosophy to carry Goals to Newcastle.
One can almost pity the saloon-it is so
unanimously despised and there is no
depth of its awful work that the Meth
odist church has not sounded. There is
no wound that it has made into which
the Methodist church has not tried to
pour its precious sweet wine and oil.
There is no need to go back of the
record. THE liquor traffic can never be
licensed without sim. - That is the
Methodist Interpretation of the voico OF
God and the finest sentence III the Ian
guage of this reform so far lAp-
plause Of the colors she flies and her
status upon the technically moral aspect
of tho subject, the Methodist church
may we'll be proud. No Methodist man
deals in tho drink, except some very
careful or very negligent physician,
some belated druggist or greedy phar-
meceutical hypocrites, and our homes
are clean in the main. No alcohol sacra-
ment, so far as know, jeopards re-
deemed drunkard i'll Methodist church,
but on election day the visible
church. becomes invisible" and
drowses like chameleon upon the bar
of a saloon, for saloons are creatures of
license, licenses are creatures of law,
laws are creatures of legislatures, legis-
latures are creatures of political parties,
and the parties that stand for license or
nonintervention contain 90 per cent of
the Methodist vote.
Now, if l were going to use any an
aesthetic, here is tho place to administer
it, for am about to say something very
disagreeable. 1t is easy, tempting, i'll
fact, to say handsome things about the
attitude of the Methodist church upon
this subject. but it is time the truth be
spoken. We have for so long called it Il
prohibition church that we have almost
come to believe it. AS we cannot afford
to believe lie let us take an account
of stock and get at the truth i'll the in
ward parts.
First. The corporation, that soulless,
bodiless, Intellectual phantom, tho legal
fiction that has no voice but its seal and
can speak only into warm wax. while
sincerity means sine cera, without wax,
the technical "church" that might, by
some defective notice or other functional
lapse, die and be dead q Thousand years
and its closest adherent never suspect
the fact, that is for prohibition.
Second The woman membership, the
motherhood, wifehood, sisterhood, the
chief at suffering and praying and pay
ing, the industrially efficient but politi-
cally submerged and voteless four-fifths
of the church, that is for prohibition.
And last and least the small, active,
Intellectual, pestiferous minority who
habitually throw their votes away, that
is for prohibition.
But the great, practical, influential,
respectable, masterful. voting church is
the answering, intolerant, unreason-
ing, incorrigible patron of license in
moral, legal, political, civil and Grim
inal effect.
I should be great fool by making
this statement to cancel my welcome
among you and Danish any hope of good
by my coming if it were not true. and
though it be true / am well aware
shall hardly escape the accusation OF
malignity to the church. but | really
honor her and you by going straight at
the bones of the subject Applause. ]
speak the simple truth when / say
that if the average Methodist man were