A Striking Testimony

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · May 29, 1901

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 27, No. 22.

A Striking Testimony.

The superintendent of a Washington, D.C., Reform Bureau, Wilbur F. Crafts, D.D., has been endeavoring to stir up the people on the evils of the canteen business, and to do this has sent reports of its work in Manila to 125 daily papers in this country; but not a line has been printed. The reports were sent to seventy-five leading religious weeklies, and some time after this, when Mr. Crafts reported, only one had noticed them, and that not fairly. The New Voice quotes Mr. Crafts as saying: “The silence of the religious press at this crisis is almost as guilty as the lying of the secular press.” Yet presumably the religious press fairly reflects the sentiment of the people. And yet it is this people, led by these newspapers, that Mr. Crafts is endeavoring to persuade to enforce religious observances by law. What kind of enforcement could he expect? Really, the thing needed is not more law, but more righteousness; but righteousness does not come by law. Let Mr. Crafts spend his surplus energy in converting the church. According to his own testimony, they need it.