5
Dewooralic alc,
“Bellefonte, Pa., Jaunary 14, 1927.
A Discourse On Prohibition.
AUTOBIOGRAPHY.
By Rev. L. M. Colfelt D. D.
Before the completion of my course
at Princeton Seminary, I was called to
the Pastorate of the Presbyterian
Church at Allentown, Monmouth
County, New Jersey, at a salary of
$1500 per year and a parsonage.
was installed May, 1872, in my 22nd
year. This was the happiest pastor-
ate in my life when all was sc novel
and the whole world was young. Dr.
Perkins, who had served the Church
for fifty years lent me every encour-
agement and my Elders were so many
lay helpers. The two years of my
stay were one constant revival. The
church was transformed, a new organ
was purchased and shifted from the
location in the rear of the church and
was placed behind the pulpit which
itself was displaced by a reading desk,
enabling the preacher to speak with
his whole body and bringing him di-
rectly en rapport with his audience.
The singing was led by a Precentor
and every effort made to encourage
congregational. praise. The gallery
benches were superseded by comfort-
ably upholstered family boxes or stalls
and all were rented. This was the
only church edifice I ever preached in
or saw that fulfilled my ‘ideal of what
a church should be, most pulpits be-
ing “Devils Inventions,” barricades
perched high above and far from the
audience as if all machinery of flesh
or iron did not lose power working at
long distances. In two years the
church doubled in income, benevolence
and numbers and when I severed my
relations, the congregation offered me
$3200 and a new parsonage and was
better able to fulfill the obligation than
discharge the original salary. Among
my parishioners was the Ex-War Gov-
ernor of New Jersey, Dr. William
Newell, whose hospitality I often en-
joyed and whose conversational pow-
ers were of the first order. He toid
how the night of his inauguration at
Trenton, a blizzard with its drifts
made the roads impassable for his
team and he must needs walk the
whble distance of ten miles which
savors of the democratic simplicity of
those times. Among his reminis-
cences of Congress, of which he was
previously a member, was the exper-
jence of going from the House to the
Senate Chamber to hear Daniel Web-
ster deliver his celebrated reply to
Hayne. He said that Webster was a
massive man of compact frame, with
beetling brows and piercing black
eyes, that in the beginning as was ils
wont, he thrust both hands deep down
in his side pockets, seemed to halt and
stumble much as if at a loss for words
and so he labored heavily for as much
as a half hour, but it was only to
warm up his gigantic mental machii-
ery and like some stupendous ocean
liner, having gotten up steam he
swept on in stately periods, with in-
describable grandeur of manner and
diction, bearing down all mental op-
position with his massive, unmatched
eloquence.
At this period, Prohibition was he-
ginning to project itself upon the
political horizon. An Elder of my
church, Mr. Robbins had a son just
elected upon a Prohibition platform to
represent Monmouth County in the
Legislature and the father was such
a fanatical Prohibitionist that he was
never satisfied unless I made a hob-
by of and perpetually preached upon,
or alluded to the subject in some form
in the Sabbath services. This made
it necessary for me to work out the
problem mentally, fix my bearing and
take up a position tenable for life.
After the most careful deliberation I
settled down to the position of the
Apostle Paul, that while the Chris-
tian is morally bound to refrain as a
matter of example from everything
that is calculated to make a weak
brother offend, and while it is
proper to preach temperance and even
total abstinence as an entirely individ-
ual and voluntary matter yet to im-
pose Prohibition upon the mass of
ones fellow men by legal coercion is
extra Scriptural and could not be
harmonized with either my reason or
conscience.
rule of personal conduct and pulpit
deliverance desiderated more than six-
ty years ago I have found no adequate
reason to swerve by a hairsbreadth.
And as the years have gone by they
have both strengthened my conviction
that the attempt to force absolute
Prohibition upon a not inconsiderable
body of citizens must prove abortive
and even if successfully enforced must
end in a greater evil than that which
it is aimed to abolish. My position
is so flatly opposed to that usually
championed by men of my cloth that
I must crave indulgence from my
readers while I set forth at consider-
able length my reasons for daring to
differ from prevailing religious sen-
timent upon a subject which I firmly
believe must be threshed out in the
near future despite the efforts of
politicians to shelve it after the same
manner as Fiat money, Trust regula-
tion and Slavery. My reasons for
antagonizing coercive legal Prohibi-
tion are not utilitarian but funda-
mental. It runs counter to the whole
trend of the Divine Government of
the human race. The history of Man
is Divine Providence in human action
and it makes plain the fact that noth-
ing is further from His purpose than
untempted innocence. Even the
Christ was tempted in all points as
we are.” To evolve moral strength
men from the beginning and through
the ages have been put into the fur-
nace of moral temptation that they
might come forth with robust virtue.
Not to abolish outward solicitation but
develop inward self restraint seems to
be the Divine plan. “I pray not that
thou shouldst take them out of the
world but that thou shouldst deliver
them from the evil. It is not written
I will prohibit Satanic temptation, but
“Peter, Satan hath desired to have
thee that he may sift thee as wheat
but I have prayed for thee that thy
From this position is a
| faith fail not.” A race of moral au-:
' tomata .with no capacity for volun-
tary and unselfish virtue would be a
blot upon creation and reduce man to
the level of the brute. Besides, if you
begin the prohibition of outward so-
licitation where are you going to
stop?
Will you prohibit food because
there is wide spread gluttony, women
because there is abounding licentious-
ness, the production of wealth because
there is a deal of avarice, and so on
to the end of the chapter, or content
yourself with the plan of evolution
yourself with the plan of evolution
which permits the free play of tempta-
1 |tion and aims at the production, not of
artificial but actual virtue. Triumhpant
virtue is a million fold more precious
than untested innocence. Neither the
crucifixion of an inward passion that
God has put into the making of a man
nor the abolition of the outward ob-
jeet of solicitation will ever work out
any permanent reform. The only so-
lution of the matter for individuals
and communities is to struggle on to
the only goal worth while which is
Individual Self Restraint, Temperance
in all things, the use of all God’s gifts
and the abuse of none.
If a boy be isolated in the period of
his upbringing by a rigorous parental
discipline and absolutely protected
from the temptations incident to the
normal life of his neighborhood, al-
most without exception, he will go to
pieces morally as soon as he arrives
at his majority and the exercise of
conscious liberty. Sc also if a fool's
paradise is inaugurated by Prohibi-
tion and its national enforcement
succeeds in the complete suppression
of the exercise of moral freedom in
the use of intoxicants, in thirty years
all the previous progress in the at-
tainment of temperance will be ren-
dered vain, and a generation of moral
weaklings will succeed who will fall
an easy prey to intemperance just as
soon as they arrive at the sense of
conscious power and find or make a
feasable way to modify or repeal the
Volstead Act, which was passed in
ignorance of its deleterious bypro-
ducts and in the panic engendered
by the world war.
But there is a more fatal objection
to absolute Prohibition which must
foredoom it to ultimate failure in spite
of all the frantic efforts at enforce-
ment. It is the fact that absolute Pro-
hibition is subversive of Christianity.
Jesus Christ challenged the ages with
the interrogation, “Which of you con-
victeth me of sin?” and up to this cen-
tury the most micresopic analysis of
his character has revealed no minutest
defect and the most blatant skeptic
has been compelled to echo Pilate’s
words “I find in Him no faclt at all.”
But if the position taken by Prohibi-
tionists be the true one, that the use
of any intoxicant is illegal and im-
moral, then the impeccability, the Di-
vinity of our Lord and the whole
structure of Christianity collapses in
ruin for Jesus without question made
wine and drank it and therefore was
guilty of moral fault in miracle and
example. The master of the feast
said to his host, “Thou hast kept the
partook of wine freely is proven by
his own words, “Yea, like children
playing in the market place and say-
ing we have piped to you and ye have
not danced, mourned unto you and ye
have not lamented. John the Baptist
came neither eating nor drinking and
ve say he hath a Devil, the Son of
Man is come eating and drinking
(wine) and ye say he is gluttonous and
a wine bibber.” Not only does Pro-
hibition conviet Christ of moral fauit
but of error. If the temperate use of
wine is harmful to man then Christ
countenancing it was in error and ig-
norant of its deleterious effects upon
the race, therefore was not a prophet
and could not properly say “I am
the truth, To this end was 1 born
and for this purpose came I into
the world that I might bear wit-
ness to the truth.” He did not bear
witness to the truth in setting such an
example at Canea of Galilee and again
the fabric of Christianity collapses.
If the position of Prohibitionists be
true, then Christ is not the Truth.
Palaces of ice are sometimes built in
Russia, the work of a season to dis-
appear in the spring. They are real
habitations presenting every appear-
ance of solidity but one condition is
pnecessary to their permanence, the
continuation of cold and where this is
wanting all melts away and some day
leaves not a vestige remaining of that
splendid specimen of art. Well, the
Divinity of Christ is that edifice! It
subsists only upon one condition—the
absence of error. Suppose to imagine
an impossibility, the discovery of a
single failing in the life of Jesus such
as we find in our lives by scores then
the whole magnificent edifice of
Christianity melts away. Nothing re-
mains of it, you take it up and like a
snowflake it melts in your hand, not
an atom is left worth preserving. For
twenty centuries millions of men of
every class, of every shade of culture
including the most profound thinkers,
the most subtle moralists and the most
competent, scientists have been con-
templating the personality of Christ,
weighing his character, reading his
soul and they proclaim unanimously
in the face of the world that he is ab-
solutely perfect. It remained for the
Prohihitionists in the beginning of
this century to find a spot on the Sun
of Righteousness, a flaw in the dia-
mond of Truth and proclaim to the
world that Jesus of Nazareth commit-
ted sin in making and drinking wine
and was ignorant of the moral conse-
quences of his act during the future
history of mankind.
What wonder that such presump-
tuous folly has already produced a
frightful harvest of disastrous re-
sults? It has trenched on the person-
al liberty of millions who have never
abused it in this particular. It has
laid a burden of coercion upon the
consciences and the reason of a con-
siderable minority of the nation which
they have been unable to bear. It has
reduced life in this country to a sys-
tem of espionage akin to old world
despotisms. It has created in the
minds of millions of working men a
rankling sense of injustice by the rea-
son of fact, that rich men can afford
to pay for good liquor, ad libitum
1 good wine to the last,” That Jesus’
——————
HOW TO SOLVE A CROSS-WORD PUZZLE .
When the correct letters are placed in the white spaces this puzzle will
spell words both vertically and horizontally.
to the definition listed below the puzzle.
“horizontal” defines a word which will
indicated by a number, which refers
Mhus No. 1 under tke column headed
The first letter in each word is
fll the white spaces up to the first black square to the right, and a number
under “vertical” defines a word which will fill the white squares to the next
black one below.
tlomary words, except proper names.
No letters go in the black spaces.
Abbreviations, slang, initials, technical
All words used are dic-
terms and obsolete forms are indicated in the definitions.
CROSS-WORD PUZZLE No. 2.
5
9
(©), 1926, Western Newspaper Union.)
Horizontal.
1—Journal of current events
8—Weathercock
9—A common astringent
11—Highest points
12—Used on a door step
14—Level
16—Consume
17—Minute particles
19—Before
20—Pronoun
21—Thoroughfares
23—Southern state (abbr.)
24—Quarrel
25—To idle
27—Resist
28—Destroys
29—Operatic solo
31—Countenance
32—Negation
34—Rub
36—Personal pronoun
37—Division of time
39—A relative
40—Disfigure
41—Proof mark
43—Accomplishment
44—Caresses
46—Indian servant
47—Site
48—Reproduce
Vertical.
1—Back of the neck
2—Being, in abstract sense
3—Personal pronoun
4—Used on the table
5--Eastern state (abbr.)
6—Sprite
7--Govern
8—Ballot
10—Fertilize:
11—Tropical trees
12—Hunting call
13—Chinese coin
15—Drivers
17—Native of Italy
18—Safekeeping of goods
21—Spawn of fish
22—Seasoning for food
24—Mineral springs
26—For shame
30—A continent
31—Truth
33—Grain
35—To walt upon
36—Measure of electricity
38—Period of time
40—VFlesh of amimals
42—RBind
44—To write
46—Spain (abbr.)
47—Point of compass
Solu‘tem will appear in nevt {usue,
while they must drink poisonous stuff
within, their means or deny them-
selves altogether. For its enforece-
ment it has created an army of drones
who consume but produce nothing and
too often are over tempted to become
copartners with bootleggers. It has
converted the coast lines and frontiers |
of the nation into flood gates through
which foreign liquors pour. It has
added to national taxes hundreds of
millions which have proved totally in-
adequate for the object in view. It
has vastly increased disrespect for
law, fostered the use of dope and other
death dealing substitutes, multiplied
murders and special crimes, broad-
casted illicit stills and not percepti-
bly decreased the drinking habit.
That it will prove an ultimate
failure is as certain as the fact that
this world is built on right lines that
no human tinkering can alter and that
Truth is mighty and will prevail.
Ninteen Hundred Sites of Indian Vil-
lages Located in Pennsylvania.
Miss Frances Dorrance, of Wilkes-
Barre, Pa., in giving her report on the
Indian survey of Pennsylvania, to the
American Anthropological Associa-
tion, in session last week at the Uni-
versity of Pennsylvania, exhibited a
map, on which are indicated the sites
of over 1900 Indian villages.
These sites are east of the Alle-
gheny mountains. The survey to be
extended into the western part of the
State, during thé coming summer. ’
This remarkable archaelogical study
is being made under the auspices of
The Wyoming Historical and Geologi-
cal Society, Wilkes-Barre, Pa, of
which Miss Dorrance is director. It
has the endorsement of the historical
societies of the State. The American
Anthropological Association, the Na-
tional Research Couricil, The Smith-
sonian Institution, and the Museum
of the American Indian are cooperat-
ing. The colleges and universities of
the State are lending their assistance.
The work is under the direction of
Miss Dorrance. Rev. John Baer
Stoudt, D. D., Allentown, Pa., noted
historian and antiquarian, is acting
executive secretary of the survey.
Boy Scouts and “Summer Camps”
are assisting in the preliminary sur-
vey. Trained archaeologists and local
experts will follow up their work. The
work will be done by counties and the
relics will be placed with local histor-
ical societies or educational institu-
tions.
“Pennsylvania is exceedingly rich in
aboriginal remains, and yet we know
less about the pre-history of Penn-
sylvania than almost any other State.
“In spite of local excavations and
“findings,” the life of the Pennsyl-
Yonia Indian still lies buried in our
soil.
“It is imperative that the work be
carried out at once, before modern de-
velopments, railroads, super-power
dams, ete, and spreading population
obliterate all traces.
“The object of the survey is to dig
up all evidences of Indian life, and
to issue an authoritative history of the
Pennsylvania Indian. 1
“Interested persons are asked to
communicate with these societies.
“A fund of $200,000 is contemplated
and a number of substantial gifts have
already been received.”
Solution to Last Week’s Puzzle.
Q|D|Di Dil |E
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AIRICERA LIOBTIO
GUARD oB OWIEIR
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A WAY OF ESCAPE.
(Continued from page 2, Col. 6.)
understand? You didn’t think I de-
cided badly. . ..”
“Look here,” said Arthur wickedly.
“I thought married people decided
things together!”—By Zona Gale.—
Woman’s Home Companion.
Proposed Changes in the Election
Laws.
As a result of the recent survey
made by Governor Pinchot’s “Commit-
tee of Seventr-six” the following
changes in the present election laws
have been recommended to the new
Legislature. :
1. An act to compel the opening of
the ballot boxes used in any district
at a primary or election upon the oath
of five voters of the county that they
believe fraud or error occurred in
marking the ballots or counting the
vote contained in the box.
2. An act restricting assistance to
voters to cases of actual inability to
mark the ballot.
3. An act requiring voters at pri-
maries or elections to sign their names
on the ballot check lists upon receipt
of their ballots.
4. An act providing for the per-
manent registration of eligible voters.
5. An act providing for the option-
al use of voting machines in any city,
SouTEY: borough or township of the
ate.
6. An act to render impossible the
so-called “chain system” of voting.
7. An act to compel the ballot boxes
to be delivered to the court house not
later than six o'clock p. m. of the day
following any primary or election.
8. An act giving any citizen the
right to inspect, under proper super-
vision, the election records (excepting
the ballots in the ballot-boxes.)
9. An act prescribing jail sentences
for election offenses.
10. A constitutional amendment per-
mitting the Legislature to compel the
use of voting machines in any city,
borough or township, without being
obliged to compel them to be used in
all cities, boroughs or townships.
11. A constitutional amendment
permitting the courts to appoint over-
seers of elections not residing in the
districts in which they are to serve.
12. A constitutional amendment
abolishing the tax qualification for
voting. 7
i
—Subseribe for the Watchman.
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JANUARY
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