PROHIBITION OR ABOLITION.--WHAT IT MEANS.--THE FREE METHODISTS AND OTHER MINISTERS ENDORSE THE WORK.--A CATHOLIC PRIEST'S ENDORSEMENT.-- MODERN DEBORAH.--JOHN P. ST. JOHN.
God is a politician; so is the devil. God's politics are to protect and defend mankind, bringing to them the highest good and finally heaven.
The devil's politics are to deceive, degrade and to make miserable, finally ending in hell. The Bible fully explains this. The two kinds of seed started out from Abel and Cain, then Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob.
There are but these two kinds of people. God's crowd and the Devil's crowd. The first law given and broken in Eden was a prohibition law.
God said: "Thou shalt not." The devil tempted and persuaded the first pair to disobey. He did it by deceiving the woman. The fact of redemption now is to bring them back to the law of God. What is law? God says that sin is a transgression of law. Blackstone says: "Law commands that which is right and prohibits that which is wrong." Law is one, as truth is one. It is not possible to make a bad law. If it is bad, it is not a law. We have bad statutes. Law is always right. Nothing is wrong that is legal, and wrong may be licensed, but never legalized. I find lawyers who do not understand this. I often hear the term "legalized saloon".
When I was passing the building of the supreme court in New York City, on Madison Avenue, I read an inscription on one of the marble statues representing a judge with a book on either side of the door: "Every law not based on wisdom is a menace to the state." This is a false, misleading sentence for all law is wisdom. It might have read: "All statutes not based on wisdom, are a menace to the state." Then at the base of the statue of a soldier, on the other side of the entrance, was this statement: "We do not use force until good laws are defied." Which ought to read: "We do not use force until laws are defied." Such ideas as these are corrupting courts, and biasing the public mind, and the injury is more than apparent to the observer. If law is not a standard, what standard can we have? We must have one. We repeat again: "Law commands that which is right and prohibits that which is wrong." Any statute that does this is lawful. Any that does not, is anarchy.
God is truly the author of law. The theocratic form of government was perfect and the only perfect government that ever existed, we need no other statutes than those that God gave. He said: "We must not kill a bird sitting on her young; must not see our enemy's beast fall under his burden and not help him rise." And the refinement of mercy was taught in the statute that said: "You must not kill the mother and lamb in one day; must not seethe a kid in its mother's milk; must not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." The use, and the only use, of law is to prevent and punish for sin. All law has a penalty for those who violate it. Governments that are the greatest blessing to its citizens are those who can prohibit, or abolish the most sin or crime. Crime is not prevented by toleration, but by prohibition. Nine of the ten commandments are prohibitive and begin with: "Thou shalt not."
The success of life, the formation of character, is in proportion to the courage one has to say to one's ownself: "Thou shalt not." It is not the man or woman who has no temptation to sin, who has the strong character, but the man or woman who has the desire but will not yield to sin. Some people ask: "Why did God make the Devil?" The Devil is God's fire. Like an alchemist God is purifying souls. The Devil is an agent in salvation. "Every Devil in hell is harnessed up to push every saint into heaven."
Those who are counted worthy to enter into the delights of that heavenly land are those who have had their "fiery trials," tried and made white. Man would have no credit and could not hear: "Good and faithful servant;" if he had no temptations to do otherwise, man would be but a mere machine.
God has never used for his work, any but those who prohibit evil.
The pilgrim fathers were forced from the mother country because this principle of prohibition burned in their hearts. When England would oppose the colonies, it was prohibition that smashed the tea, over in Boston harbor. George Washington was put at the head of the colonial armies that prohibited, by much bloodshed and suffering, the oppression from the mother country. Our Civil War was the result of the principle to abolish or prohibit the slavery of the colored race. Now we have a worse slavery than England threatened us with or the poor blacks suffered at the hands of their taskmasters. This slavery of soul and body, is one that leads to eternal death. The forces of God are with the abolition, or prohibition of wrong. The forces of darkness and death are with those who are willing to be led captive by the Devil at his will, and to lead others under this grievous yoke of those who are trying to perpetuate the cause of evil.
There are men who desire to be loyal, who are voting for license or in license parties, because they do not stop to think. The people are generally right on all questions. They go wrong more for lack of thought, than for lack of heart. Edmund Burke, the greatest English stateman, said: "The people have as good government as they deserve." Because the people have always had the power, and in America especially, they are sovereign. The president and all others in office, are but servants of the people. In another chapter I have given what the supreme court says about the impossibility of licensing wrong by law, or according to law.
