THE THIRD-PARTY PROHIBITION PARTY
In the Pittsburg National Reform convention of 1887, the corresponding secretary in his annual report, upon this point said:—“The national platform of the Prohibition party, adopted in Pittsburg, in 1884, contained an explicit acknowledgment of Almighty God, and of the paramount authority of his law as the supreme standard of all human legislation, The ‘Rev.’ Dr. A. A. Miner, D. D., of Boston, an eloquent and devoted fine and done of the vice-presidents of the National Reform Association, was a member of the committee which framed the declaration.TTR 741.2
“After that presidential campaign was over, and before the State conventions of 1885, Prof. Wallace. of Wooster University, wrote to your secretary, suggesting that all diligence be used to secure similar acknowledgments and kindred declarations on related points, in the Prohibition platforms of the several States. Under this most judicious and timely suggestion, a large correspondence has been held with the leaders of the party, and its chief workers in many States. Efficient service has been rendered by Secretary Weir, in parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio. The friends of the cause have everywhere remarked with gratitude that the county conventions for Washington, Lancaster, and Chester counties, Pa., and Belmont county, Ohio, incorporated in their platforms distinct acknowledgments of the Lordship of Jesus Christ; the States of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Maryland, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, Colorado, and Texas, made devout acknowledgment of God; the States of Connecticut Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, and others, declared in favor of the maintenance of our Sabbath laws, while the States of Ohio and Connecticut declared for the reformation of our marriage and divorce laws in accordance with the law of God. Other similar declarations in other States may have escaped notice.”TTR 741.3
The California State Prohibition convention held in April, 1888, proposed as the preamble of its platform, these words:—TTR 741.4
“The prohibition party of the State of California, in convention assembled, reverently recognize Almighty God as the Supreme Ruler, to whose laws all human should conform.”TTR 741.5
And when objection was made by one of the delegates that this was entering upon dangerous ground, and tended to a union of Church and State, he was met with such a storm of “yells and hisses” that he could proceed no further, and the preamble was adopted with but two or three dissenting votes.TTR 742.1
The National Prohibition convention, held the same year at Indianapolis, likewise said:—TTR 742.2
“The Prohibition party in national convention assembled, acknowledging Almighty God as the source of all power in government, do hereby declare,” etc.TTR 742.3
“Sam” Small was secretary of this convention, and his views in this connection were declared in a “revival sermon” delivered in Kansas City, in the January preceding, and repeated by him in a letter to the Voice of August 8, 1889, as follows:—TTR 742.4
“I want to see the day come in the history of our country when the voice of the church of Christ will be heard and respected upon all vital moral issues. I shall ever hope for and patiently expect the day when legislation, State, national, and municipal, will be projected in harmony with the eternal principle of justice and righteousness, revealed by Christ and proclaimed by his church. Happy will be the day ... when the harmonious judgment of the people of God in America upon the issues of temperance, purity, and uprightness, shall be received with respect and enacted into laws.”TTR 742.5
What more was the papacy ever than this? What more did it ever claim to be? All that the papacy ever wanted was that legislation, State, national, and municipal, should be projected in harmony with the principles of justice and righteousness as proclaimed by the church; and that “the harmonious judgment of the people of God” (and to find out what this “harmonious judgment” was, is what all the councils were for), should be respected “and enacted into laws.” That is all she ever wanted, and that is all she wants now, as is seen by the words of Pope Leo XIII, on page 732 of this book. And as though to make perfectly clear the attitude of the National Prohibition party, Mr. Small in the same letter continues as follows:—TTR 742.6
“I hold that the above expressions are in perfect harmony with the principles of the National Prohibition party, as expressed in its preamble and platform.”TTR 743.1
Mr. Geo. W. Bain, the prominent Prohibition party workers, is a vice-president of the National Reform Association. The Christian Statesman, in August, 1888, under the heading, “The National Reform Movement,” printed an extract from a sermon by “Sam” Jones, preached in Windsor, Canada, to an audience composed mostly of Americans who had gone over the line to hear him, and in the extract were the following words:—TTR 743.2
“Four years from now the Prohibition element will break the solid South. The issue then will be, God or no God, drunkenness or sobriety, Sabbath or no Sabbath, heaven or hell. That will be the issue. Then we will wipe up the ground with the Democratic party, and let God rule America from that time on.”TTR 743.3
This is reproduced here not for any value that it has as a prophecy, but as showing, with the other extracts even, the views, held by the leading and most influential Third-party Prohibitionists.TTR 743.4
The “Rev.” John A. Brooks, of Kansas City, was the candidate for Vice-President on the Prohibition ticket of 1888, and in a joint Convention of the National Reform Association, the State Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, and the American Sabbath Union, held at Sedalia, Mo., May 23, 24, 1889, he made a speech, in which he said:—TTR 743.5
“If you will give me a united church that will recognize that the Lord Jesus Christ is king, and he only is king; and that will think and talk and preach and pray and vote in his name; then victory shall come, and the Kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of God and his Christ. And then when this is done, the millennium will come.TTR 743.6
These evidence are sufficient to show that with the leadership of the Third-party Prohibition party, the principle of prohibition is entirely subordinate to the scheme for securing religious legislation, and to the setting up of the ecclesiastical power above the civil; and that the alliance with the National Reform Association is not an accident. There is a civil basis for prohibition, and upon that basis we favor it; but prohibition on the religious basis, as advocated by the Third-party Prohibition party, if successful, would be far worse than ever was or ever could be the evil against which they profess to be working. The world has been without prohibition for more than forty-three hundred years, but in no instance has this lack ever wrought anything like so much evil as did the religious despotism of the fourth century and onwards, of which this movement is so exact an image.TTR 743.7
A third ally of the National Reform Association is—TTR 744.1