The New Year Treating Custom
The Advance thinks that for the cure of the New Year treating custom "one of the best things the American Tract Society could do would be to secure some capitally-written (mark the word) tract on the subject, and then send it forth everywhere on its beneficent mission. What is needed is to create a pungent public sentiment against the custom so senseless and injurious." Then why do not our Christian journals and the great preachers cry out against the habit? Could not they mould public sentiment? It is a sad fact that the so-called Christian press and the pulpit are afraid to cry out against great and popular wrongs. They wish to get a specialist to preach on the subject who will not feel the lash of criticism when gone, or to publish it in some little tract which can be widely circulated, but scarcely noticed. The Advance, it is but just to say, often proves itself a notable exception in these matters.