Trying to Overcome Evil with Evil.
By F. M. W.
It is a sad sight to see professed ministers of the gospel advocating the idea that the most effectual way of abolishing the liquor traffic is for the church of Christ to carry on a more respectable(?) and higher grade of drinking saloons. Such, however, according to The Voice, of February 2, 1893, are the teachings of Rev. Dr. Rainsford, rector of St. George's Protestant Episcopal Church, of New York City. He says:— It is folly to attack a saloon till you provide a substitute. We can only hope to oust the bad club by bringing in a good. People in New York cannot and will not do without saloons. Inoculate these places. Put on the market a saloon roomy instead of cramped, with small bar instead of all bar; with tables, clean food, cheap, wholesome; non-intoxicating drinks, at cost price, or near it—good beer, wine, all of the purest, at prices that will pay a large profit. Do all you can to stimulate the sale of the lighter and healthier, and retard that of the worser sort of drink. In short, bring to compete with the present gin mill a model saloon, where a man is not ashamed to bring his wife and children, and where things beautiful and clean and of good report distinctively predominate. The sinful nature of fallen man can never be eradicated or educated back into harmony with God by scientific measures. While Dr. Rainsford's plan might give to drink houses a greater degree of respectability as regarded by the world, the gross perversion and indulgence of the appetite is as much a sin and as wofully misleading and degrading in a "model saloon," fitted up in artistic style, under church patronage, as in the lowest haunts of vice, in the midst of filth and pollution. Dr. Rainsford's plan in the end would lead as many, if not more, down to degradation, ruin, and death, as the saloons for which he proposes his as a substitute. It is the gospel of Christ only that will reform men, and evil can never be eradicated by evil. F. M. W.