Divine Authority in Prohibition Laws
In the Christian Statesman, December 22, 1887, Wm. Smith, lawyer, Janesville, Wisconsin, says: “By putting a God in the Constitution plank in the Prohibition platform you rule me out of that party. I am not opposed to prohibition but I am opposed to putting God in the Constitution.” To which M. A. Gault replies, “How can you be an honest prohibitionist when you want a law with only the fallible, changing, conflicting will of the people behind it in preference to a law having behind it, first, divine authority, next human, then the hope of heaven, next the fear of hell.” We would like to ask who will enforce such a law. We would naturally suppose that those who make the law would inflict its prescribed penalty, viz., to send men to “hell” for disobedience.
—W., in Prohibition Journal.