The semi-weekly messenger., 1907-12-03
cHURCH'S TEMPER
AACE Duties

| In his address TO the Annual Con
yention of his Diocese On Septembec
! i, 1902. Bishop Potter said:
! The law of the church binds upon
me duty which | feel 10 be definite
| obligation; and in its performance |
| will ask your attention this morning
| to a charge upon the subject OF tenn
perance. | do this because | regard
the church's attitude TO this subject
as OF primary and preeminent import
| ance and because | hold that she IS
: in the world as a guardian both OF
t faith and of morals. | do it. becaus
! there is, | believe, at present, and
what is worse, widespread apathy.
The Christian Church has undouD-
! tedly wasted much energy, and we'll
| intentioned Christian people are still
wasting much activity. in the pursuit
j of methods and maxims concerning
the drink habit, which have earned
for them the ridicule, if not the re-
sentiment, of reasoning and rejecting
people; but those of us who judge
such persons harshly are often will
ingly ignorant of situations and incl
dents which are peculiar to our mo-
dern civilization, and which have, and
had, no parellel in oriental times and
customs.
Let me make my meaning quite
plain If the dangers from drunken
ness had been as great or as imml-
nent in the tropical countries in which
the first missionaries of Christianity
lived and to which they wrote as they
are in ours, | believe that their lang
uage would have been much palmer
and stronger, though | believe that
they would not have departed from
the wise law by which they were gov
erned, which did not lay down rules,
but which enunciated principles. For
modern life is not ancient life. The
modern strain of bread-Winning is not
at any rate with us, the easy task Of
earlier or later tropical existence.
With our conditions, in other words,
have arisen a whole family Of perils,
of which the men and women Of St
Pauls time could have little or no
knowledge.
I'VE resent, alas, most of us to
whom I speak this morning. as an in
tolerable impertinence a reference to
those conditions, as though they were
all Of nature for which we were in
rO wise responsible, and to which we
! could bring no amelioration but, in
fact, no one who is reaping the bene-
fits of any single one Of the enrich
ments of our Notwithstanding civf"
liZation has a right to do without
asking himself the question: What
are modern cheapness and invention
and machinery, and all the multitude
of inexpensive conveniences which
make my life so different from the
life of my forefathers-what are these
things cOsting-nOt the employer who
produces them, nor the tradesman who
sells then1-but the mechanic who
makes them? And how can I blame
him, whose task is so narrow, so con-
fning and SO monotonous, if now and
then he 'evens up as he says and in
PRODUCES a little variety into life by
getting drunk.
I'VE have had, and still have. as
pointed out not long ago, school OF
reformers, whose shibboleth is at this
sibility which, since then, has found
it's echo in denunciations and in 1egis-
1ation equally impotent and futile
Mr.. John B. Cough was the father OF
this school reformers, whose ship
boleth is that the drunkard is a victim
and not a transgressor; and who, in
consistent forgetfulness of the apostle
lie maxim that every man shall bear
his own burden have undertaken tC
create for us a new earth if not a
I new heaven, by penalties which strike
at the man who sells an intoXicant
rather than the man who buys and
drinks it.
"It was not unnatural that, confront
ed by such questions as these an un-
rejecting public sentiment should have
taken refuge in legislation which il
it refused to face the issues which ii
raised brushed them aside with sweep
ing enactments, that at one blow pro-
posed to destroy a traffic which il
could not control. Nothing could have
demonstrated more clearly the utter
failure of that attempt than the hys-
terical and vituperative denunciations
with which the disclosure of that fail
ure has been met. In this connection
the association of the principle of local
politics, whether municipal or nation
al, with that of prohibition has notes
which are alike pathetic and alarming
l-pathetic because it reveals how
weak they may be whose great place
forbids that they shall speak the truth
as they know it, and alarming because
1t discloses to us how little represen-
tative, under the dominion of this
cowardice, are even the best minds a.
mCng rs