THE OUTLOOK by Editor

Pacific Press Publishing Company · OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA · Nov 7, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 45.

THE OUTLOOK

By Editor

THE CHURCH AND PROHIBITION.

The New Voice (Prohibition) says, quoting the words of one of its editors, candidate for the presidency, John G. Woolley, that "the honor of the church is the issue of 1900."

It further rightly says:—

"The utterances of the church, through the voices of the chief of its pastors and through its great religious journals, during the past two years, have given the Prohibition party a right to expect, not merely scattered recruits from the church, but solid columns of re-enforcements."

It quotes from great representative bodies such utterances as these: "The liquor traffic can never be licensed without sin, and no political party has a right to expect nor ought to receive the vote of Christian men so long as it stands committed to the license policy, or refuses to put itself upon record in an attitude of open hostility to the saloon;" and the New Voice feels that to be consistent, and honest, and true, the church ought to stand by prohibition. The New Voice feels that the trouble is with the leaders. It further says:—

"Already the cry of a 'great leanness in Zion' has gone up; already up and down the land the inquiry, Why has the church no power? why is she discredited with the masses? is heard from church leaders. The answer is plain enough: If the church is without power, it is because she has taught the world by her conduct in the matter of government, year after year, that she is 'only fooling' when she rebukes sin; and the world has come to believe that Christianity is joining the dead religions."

"Magnify as much as any one will the faults and failings of the organized Christian church along any or all lines of human activity, still the fact remains, and is conceded by most thoughtful people, that the things that the church professes to stand for,—the fundamental principles of the religion of Jesus Christ,—are the basis of every high hope that may be entertained for the progress of the human race. The darkest periods of history have been the days when the church, betrayed by false leaders, has discredited itself before the world, and so cast suspicion upon those high principles. The gravest menace of the present is the peril that false leaders will again betray the church, so that, in blind action, it shall be untrue to its high profession, and the world shall again refuse to accept the truth that it professes, because of the falsity that it practises."

"God hath not left Himself without testimony; but the great churches that fondly believe themselves the special repositories of divine power stand in an hour of deadly peril."

They do. They are not only being tested in temperance reform, the test lies between the Word of God and plain, humble duty on one hand, and human tradition and expediency on the other.