ABSTINENCE, OR MODERATION?
Dr. Crosby has done the cause of temperance much good where he did not intend it, though in the line of his intention he did it no good whatever. His lecture, which he singularly styled a calm view of the temperance question, has called forth reviews and counter lectures which have made a valuable addition to temperance literature. Dr. Crosby asked the question: “What chance would a young minister of my views on temperance have in the Elmira district as a candidate?” To this Dr. W. E. Knox replies in the Evangelist as follows:— “No young minister is catechized as to his temperance theories on admission to Presbytery or on installation over a church. If his heart is in the work of piety, and morality, he will find none of us hypercritical on questions of theology or reform. We differ among ourselves as to interpretation of Scripture relating to wine and the exact basis on which the temperance reform shall be promoted. A minister may have one, or a dozen kinds of wine in his Scripture exegesis; he may hold to total abstinence as a virtue or an expediency; he may adopt the pledge or decline it, and meet with the widest toleration. I have never known any man ‘oppressed’ for his views in this thing, nor the first word of intemperate debate in any of our Presbyteries or Synods touching this subject.” “Yet, I will say frankly in reply to Dr. Crosby’s question, that while a minister might hold to his views on temperance, and yet be kindly received in our churches, I am quite sure no minister could give such expression to his views, whether on temperance or any other topic, without strongly prejudicing his case. The brethren who have differed from Dr. Crosby, are characterized by epithets, I would not have believed any clergyman would put in writing, much less in print, with his own name subscribed as author. They are ‘savages rushing on truth with a howl.’ They are a ‘rabid pack with blows and bites.’ They are ‘Baalites, who go for them as wolves for a wounded brother.’ He says that ‘Clement dared to write in The Evangelist, an article on Does Prohibition Prohibit? and straightway their fangs were in his hide.’ The only person this coarse description can intend, is my excellent and amiable friend and brother, Dr. Anson Smyth, of Cleveland. The harshest word he uses with reference to ‘Clement’ is the one where he fears that the writer has ‘made a mistake.’ Yet this entitles him to the description Dr. Crosby gives of a mad dog with his fangs in the hide of his victim. He cannot refer to the replies of other men just as worthy as Dr. Smyth have made, but as a ‘chorus of barks,’ a ‘hullabaloo,’ a cyclone, a bellowing tempest, as so much ‘rant, cant, and nonsense.’ We country ministers stand amazed at this exhibition of refinement from a learned city clergyman and Chancellor. “He says in his exaggerated way, that he has hundreds of letters which testify to the ‘bulldozing of ministers by this tyrannical teetotal craze.’ It would be a curiosity of literature to read them, but I suspect he will prudently refrain from publishing them.”