THE FITNESS OF THINGS

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 8, 1881

THE FITNESS OF THINGS.

WHEN the discussion was warm over the Kansas prohibitory law, and some urged that, if adopted, it would make it a penal offense to use wine at communion, a lady correspondent of the Oakland Times used the following forcible language:—

“I believe that there is a temperance revival, and like an enthusiastic little woman that I know, who says she thanks God and takes courage whenever she hears that the phylloxera is appearing in the wine-making districts in our State, I take courage too.

“You mention among the effects of the revival that in Kansas they are so radical that wine is prohibited at the communion table—meaning fermented wine, I suppose—and the case of the clergyman who proposes to make a martyr of himself by going to jail for this restriction upon the right of religious worship.

“I am very much interested in this case, because it shows the eternal fitness of things. There have been so many martyrs on the other side, wives, mothers, and children, and some husbands and fathers too, so many tears have been shed, so many hearts have been wrung and broken, so many have gone down to an early and dishonored grave on account of wine drinking, that there should be martyrs on the other side, and I do not doubt that there will be consistent and sensible ladies who will visit that clergyman often, if he goes to jail, and carry him flowers and delicacies, as they do in San Francisco.”