The Birmingham age-herald., 1907-07-02

that is my letter, "bases it's conclusions upon the premise that any activities where 9 ballot Is cast is purely political function therefore, the local option prin- ciples advocated by the Anti-Saloon league as q step towards the elimination of the liquor traffic from necessity makes the temperance problem, from the league activities, political issue. Sun day schools elect, often by ballot, their superintendents and other officers. CLruehes elect, frequently by ballot, their pastors, or by the same means decide questions relating to change of loeation the erection of a new place of worship or other matters of congregational in terest.n Here the doctor makes q great mistake. He puts up a straw man. knocks him down and then indulges in little growing. l was speaking of a union of two things and not of elections that be- gan and ended in the church alone. It was rot speaking of voting in elections winch had no force or affect as to those not willing to submit. But l was re- ferring to elections that were civil or political and bound everybody in the state. I was speaking of the union of church and state.. The word political as thee used was synonymous with the word civic or civil. Therefore. the illus tratioa of the doctor is wholly out of place. The election of a Sunday school superintendent or vote in the church body as to whether the church should patch an old roof or make new one, Is purely within the church. It does not affect anybody except the church. or those who are willing to be so affected. It suggests the idea of voluntary aequies- cenoe and not the idea of forcing submits sion. IL does not pretend to bind in any way any man on the outside. A vote in a Sunday school $ in no sense a civil law and, therefore. it has no place in a discussion of the union of church and state. vote to patch the roof is not an act which could be enforced by the sher- itI, and the power of the superintendent ends with the school. The difference betweeh the election of d Sunday school superintendent and the election of a pro- hibition candidate for governor, or of a prohibition law which the governor would have to enforce with all the civil and military uower of the state is so clear and so obvious that 1 can hardly think that anyone would fail to see it except Dr. Lawrence. Referring eto political or civil elections l used the following words:
 Anything is in politics on which men are required to vote. Voting Is a polit ical act Voting is a function of govern ment. Voting Is an act by which men seek to control physical force, the phy- scal force of state. Voting on a question shows ipso facto that the question is in politics."
 It will be observed that in my former articles I did not ask the people to take sides between dispensary and prohibition. and that I did not ask the preachers to refuse to preach temperance just as they did for nearly ninety centuries before the prohibition question was ever consid- cred. I did not even ask the preachers not to take part in politics on week days in city halls and other secular places l simply asked that the church as a church be kept out of politics. In connection with this line of thought, permit me to quote, with the exception of few words, the following paragraph from Bishop Doane:
 "The church's work is spirit work. Not to be done amid the heat and noise of controversy, not to be done through the polemc rage of pamphlets and of news papers, not to be done in the conventions and councils of the church. It must be done in private. It must be done in the closet. It must be done in the sanctuary. It must be done in families. It must be done In parishes. It must be done in the room of sickness It must be done in the death chamber
 In speaking of the dispenary contest which took place in this county several years ago. l said in my recent article: At the Sunday service the temperance struggle was not mentioned. On that sa- cred day the eombatants were not invited to take up arms, either in the pulpit or out of it." This statement has a slight error. One or two of the ministers in the county did not always observe the practice above stated. Hence, I make this correction.
 The letters and oral expressions which l have received from persons in various parts of the state have confirmed me in the opinion that the views presented in my former communication are correct. These expressions have come from men of age and experience. Many of them are from men who stand high in their vari- ous churches. l have been struck by the fact that they spoke of the commun- ication as having been timely thus showing that In their opinion it was prop CT for somebody to say something on this line. The recent action of the general assembly of the Northern Presbyterian church gives strength and force to the views I have presented We are in the habit of thinking that the north is the place where fads and isms and new fam gled ideas prevail. But at the recent meeting of the general assembly of the Presbyterian church of the north that body declined to affiliate, to a certain extent. with the Anti-Saloon league, on the ground that the later organization was engaged in legislative or political work. It may be well, therefore, for the southern church to be careful. 1t becomes the southern church, which has always been conservative at this time. The church is too high, too holy and too sacred to enter the arena of politics. Her membership should not be split into polit- ical cabals, nor her usefulness impaired by either dissention or political issues. Let her ministers and her membership IS in dividual citizens, vie with each other in doing and in advocating the things that will exalt their state, their countries, their cities and their towns in civic righteous ness, but let each of them hold the church as his spiritual mother, for guidance in spiritual matters, not in political affairs.