-- Rev. E. F. Marvin (Presbyterian).
By Rev. E. F. Marvin
In a recent reply to the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Wendell Phillips says: "Fashion, in Boston, imperiously orders the use and offer of wine. The city government is created and ruled by rum. Trade, wealth, the press and society defer to it. Blind habit fancies itself science, and parades as such in supporting it. The pulpit, dabbling in all politics except what touches reform, and reading Shakespeare to idlers, while some of the finest genius of the city is dropping into drunkards' graves, contents itself with insulting temperance men; and panders, like a cringing lackey, to the drinking fashions of the pews, both by precept and example; now and then trying to hide its degradation and throw dust in the world's eyes by some empty rhetoric about the awful evils of intemperance."