THE TWO METHODS | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 9, 1880

THE TWO METHODS.

TEMPERANCE ideas and policies may be promoted either by the method of antagonism — denouncing the whole trade — or by the method of attraction and sympathy — seeking to unite and consolidate all its friends. These different methods are as much the opposite of each other as are positive and negative electricity, or as light differs from darkness.

To antagonize the drink trade and whatever may affiliate with it, is a first and principal duty in temperance. We are not better than Christ. As he denounced the evils of his day and the persons who practiced them — the scribes and pharisees — so must we antagonize and denounce the infamous drink trade and all its agents and abettors. No fellowship with the great crime, but hostility and eternal hostility, is the motto of the real temperance reformer.

To establish bonds of sympathy and work among all temperance reformers, is as much a duty and obligation as it is to antagonize the evil itself. We need not disturb individuality in demanding this harmony. Whoever has a temperance truth to proclaim, let him speak it; but let him accord the same right to another; and then let the two stand together as advocates of a common cause. There is common ground on which they may stand, and yet retain diversity of plans and views. — Advance.