Not the Church’s Business.
SOME time ago a prohibition paper quoted a lot of statistics concerning the last presidential election, and made the following comment and calculation:— “There are in the United States 15,210,141 church members. The vote for President in 1884 was . . . St. John, 151,809, or about 10 to 1,000 church membership. Had the church been united on the question of prohibition it might have polled instead . . . about 3,042,028 votes.” To this the Interior, in its issue of March 24, 1887, responded as follows:— “This is very pretty arithmetic, no doubt, but it offers no help to prohibition. When telegraph wires can carry merchants’ circulars with samples of goods inclosed, then may ‘the church’ be expected to bear the burdens of statesmanship. ‘The church’ is so handy—for tired people to growl at. Every energetic soul with a scheme for the public good on hand, wants ‘the church’ to load up with his particular cargo. The church wasn’t made for this sort of business. As well might the victim of pneumonia ask his heart to pull him through by doing his breathing for him, or the bankers in time of panic whine because the public-school system does not go to work to restore public confidence. A pretty mess these well-meaning but inconsiderate reformers would make of it—mixing up the nation’s brains and bowels in this fashion! ‘The church’ has one business in relation to the commonwealth, and one only—to produce a high type of manhood. Statesmanship belongs to an entirely different department of public effort. We sympathize deeply with the temperance cause, and we spare no pains to advocate prohibition; but we are bound to say that a census of church members’ votes in any particular issue is a piece of intolerable impertinence; and it will be a cold day both for the church and for prohibition when the church can be counted as solid for any prohibition candidate or party organization. We propose to reach the prohibition goal, but we are not going to do it by fetching our heels and head together and turning ourselves into a rolling hoop for demagogues to drive with their little sticks.” We like the style of the Interior’s remarks. They are refreshing, and will do to refer to at some future time. Nevertheless we are morally certain that the Interior will erelong perform the very gymnastic feat which it now scouts. A little time will work great changes.