Note and Comment

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Aug 18, 1904

BISHOP POTTER'S effort to inaugurate a religious rumshop, to serve as a sort of poor man's club, seems to strike the religious world in general with surprise, as well it may. A rumshop can never be anything but a terrible curse, and the bishop's blessing which he is said to have pronounced upon it, can only make it worse than it was before, by increasing its power for evil. The character of evil can not be changed, and if God should pronounce a blessing on sin, it would only make sin infinitely worse than it is now. The bishop's idea, if we may judge from newspaper statements, draws condemnation from the church and ridicule from the world. Here, for example, is a brief quotation on the subject from the New York Sun:—

His project is the laughing-stock of every man who knows anything about the liquor business, and his shallow and silly arguments in defense of it as a great scheme for social elevation will meet only with ridicule among sensible frequenters of drinking bars. They are not worth a reply.

As one of our correspondents to-day remarks, if religion can properly go into such a partnership, it may as consistently go into any other business which caters to appetites of men, the indulgence in which provides the police with most of their business.

The religious rumshop will thrive for a few days or a few weeks as an absurd sensation, and its promoter's name will have an ephemeral notoriety. But eventually he and his rumshop will have to struggle along in obscurity as merely a single competitor of the thousands of saloons licensed in New York, and run by men far more competent for the business than an amateur liquor dealer.

The bishop's project, however, is quite characteristic of the times.