PROHIBITION FALLACIES.

Press, Volume LVI, Issue 10482, 21 October 1899, Page 5

PROHIBITION FALLACIES.

(Published by arrangement.) AN APPEAL TO THE CLERGY. Under the above heading an appeal is made to the bishops and clergy to wake up to a sense of duty in the matter of the temperance cause. Among the reasons set forth for their so doing is one, which states in effect that the drink traffic is the cnief cause of non-attendance at church amongst the masses; that, indeed, "it is the main cause of forcing them into heathenism or something worse." Against such a statement as this, it may be well to put on record the statistics gathered by - THE MAINE BIBLE SOCIETY, and which shows that Waldo county, Maine, has 6987 families, divided in religious pre: ference 'as follows: —Adventists, 239; Baptists, 713; Christian, 159; Oc_g_egationalist, 691; Episcopal, 24; Free Will Baptists, 734; Methodists, 1818; Roman Catnolics, 136; Unitarian, 126; Universalist, 6i_: other denominations, 541; without preference, 1046; not recorded, 141. Of the total, 4850 deport themselves as not attending any. church. Oxford County contains 7288 families, of which 4577 report that they attend no church. The combined statistics of fifteen counties show that of 133,445 families, 67,842 families (considerably more than a half) are not attendants upon any church. The above figures are a somewhat startling commentary on the appeal addressed to the plergy. They certainly prove that, whatever else prohibition may do, it most decidedly does not conduce to church atendamce. On this head the Royal Commission on the liquor traffic, in,its report says:—"The fact of the prehibition of the Liquor traffic being a part of the constitution of Maine has not had the effect of strengthening the religious life of families in the State, and that the influence of religion is diminishing. This diminution must-affect all lines of temperance work, aid in tliis State gives point to tbe asaertion frequently made that religious and other efforts in behalf of voluntary temperance have weakened contemporaneously with the attempt to compel tbe people by legislative enactments to become total abstainers." THE PRESIDENT~OF BOWDOTN COLLEGE. Writing in the "Forum" on "Impending Paganism in. New England," President Hyde, of Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, says: —"The word paganus originally meant simply countryman or villager. It acquired its present meaning in consequence of the fact that as Christianity entered the; Roman Empire through the cities, the rural regions were the last to be converted. In New England, on the contrary, Christianity came first to the town. Yet New England to-day is confronted with this danger, that, the country village will be the first to lapse from Christianity, that here the Engfish word countryman- will repeat the history of its Latin predecessor, an* tbat rusticity will again become synonymous with Godk__ness and superstition." So, after forty years of prohibition in Maine, the people are reverting to paganism. Yet in New Zealand the clargy are asked to believe that prohibitioo Will prove the means of filling the churches. r 1988