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Note and Comment

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · Mar 2, 1905

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 82, No. 9.

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Note and Comment

THE following facts stated in The Independent show the uselessness from a temperance standpoint of state regulation of the liquor traffic:—
Liquor selling is a monopoly of the State in South Carolina. Anybody can get whisky who wants it. The State supplies dispensaries anywhere, and they are freely patronized. When the system was started, it was said it would be “a temperance measure to limit sales.” But the sales, which began with two or three hundred thousand dollars, have grown to $3,374,786 last year, with a net profit to the State of $603,998, of which sum $304,339 was paid over to the school fund. Public vice was found an easy and profitable way to support public education. The more liquor sold, the more money for schools, etc.; so that he is the best agent who develops the most trade. It is a bad business, but the Board of Control report themselves “very much gratified to report that the business of the dispensary has been conducted with harmony and success in all its departments.” They do not state the number of resulting murders.
What the liquor business needs is not regulation, but relegation.
IN a recent issue of the Homiletic Review Mr. F. H. Decker, a Westerly, R. I., pastor, inquires if it is true that “there is a falling off in the attendance of men upon the services of the Protestant church,” and in answer says:—
No doubt such is the case with the Sunday evening and mid-week services, but I do not think that it is always true of the Sunday morning service. Toward the second Sunday service, the Protestant churches will have to take the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church, now that the conception of the Sabbath of that church has come to be practised by Protestants generally. No doubt this change in the idea of Sunday has affected church attendance; it has made it impossible for most Protestant churches to maintain more than a mere shadow of the second service.
Why has the conception of the Sabbath of the Roman Catholic Church now come to be practised by Protestants generally, with this (from their standpoint) deplorable result? Can it be for any other reason than that the Sabbath of Protestants generally is none other than a Roman Catholic institution? Certainly it is quite proper to pattern after Rome in the manner of observing a Catholic Church day.