The Washington times., 1921-01-23
F|GHTSfDEVL
F0R40 YEARS
Dr.. Wilbur r. Crafts Takes
Hand In Every Great
Battle for Morals.
(Continued from First Page,

NSOuunOco Fuot
nrs- on the personal side. and ''the
strenuous life" on the public side
They say every life would make a
good story II frankly told. IL there
10 anything In mine to instruct 9TH
ers. whether by way of warning or
otherwise. ought not to withhold
u
Well for one thing. i am quite con-
tent with the places where. and the
times when. I have lived. What bet
ter birthplace could future pro-
htbition leader have chosen, IL he had
been consulted. than Maine In the
days of Neal Dow7
When could boy have been intro
duced to Christian politics more
favorably than In the civil war, when
tho appeal to voters was not TO support
the Republican party In order TO save
tho ''full dinner pair and increase
pronts and wages. but to save the
Union and emancipate the SLAYER
That was the, high meaning of politics
as first saw II at eleven to fourteen
years of age. The same Purltanism
that had impelled my Mayfiower an
cestor to fight King George was inn
pelling the Puritans' descendants to
night King Alcohol and King Cotton.
Let the impuritans who sneer at the
Puritans take note that these supreme
crusades against enslaving forces
were OF Mayfiower origin. And let
them show achievements for hurr an
progress by the Puritans critics that
are even half as useful. Whatever
or good there has been in my work
has been largely due to Puritan
heredity, supplemented in boyhood by
Puritan training in home and school.
STARTS IN BOSTON.
when i was old enough to under
take literary work, where in all the
world could have found an environ
ment so favorable as Boston, then in
its golden age. with such stars In It's
galaxy as Wendell Phillips. Longfel-
low, Whittier, oliver Wendell Holmes
and Mrs. Mary Livermore? These
were my teachers in literature and
in reform.
When 1 went West in 1915 found
New England Puritan. Dwight l..
Moody, the acknowledged religious
leader of Chicago and the whole West
in church evangelism, in Sunday
school work, and in Y. M. C. A. activ-
tiles. And when 1 returned East I
found another New England Puritan,
Henry Ward Beecher, the acknowl-
edged leader of New York and the
whole East in religion and reform.
And going later to Washington /
found Reed and Dingley and Frye and
Hale, all from my native Maine, DOM
mating the national congress. Again
1 challenge the sneering impuritans
to match the story in any field of
high .ndeavor.
Travelling abroad in 1873 and later
I found the "nonconfirmist conscience"
leading in London, impersonated in
Gladstone and Spurgeon. 1 found the
same dominant type in mission fields
in the Jessups, the Scudders, the
Gulicks, and many more. 1t was such
people that l met as a traveller and
lecturer in forty-nine American and
Twenty-Five foreign commonwealths-
men of vision and passion and reg
nant conscience-that enriched my
life more than art or scenery.
The ancient Puritan shared the
faults of his age on the side of sever
ity. but Puritanism softened into true
Americanism in the nineteenth CEN
tury New England type OF, character,
that would tolerate neither the slave
traffic nor the drink traffic, was a
consummate type of manliness and
womanliness. These softened Puri-
tans were serious, but far more happy
than the revelers who reviled them,
whose -ounterfeit joys were mostly
transfxed faults. The Puritan knows
that nothing is true pleasure that is
not pleasant to remember"
"FAR FLUNG BATTLE LINE.
Shortly after the civil war. in 1867
midway in my college course,
started preaching with a sermon on
Faith and Works." and lecturing