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The Safe 'Basis of Government
Sy Dr. G. 21. Nunnally
SAFE Government of republican form
depends upon competent citizenship. The
people by vote at the ballot box deter
mine the policies which influence legis
lation. Whether or not it be incorpo
rated in the state or federal constitu
tion the Initiative and Referendum
essentially inheres in the people. If not
asserted before legislation it is declared
I
by the election which follows. Truly the government
is “by the people,” though sometimes they are
dangerously misled by the demagogue. To prevent
this disastrous misleading the masses need to have
information and intelligence to enable them to
understand the issues involved and the legislation
proposed. Hence the state has become a patron of
education, hence the public school system and the
institutions of learning under state control. It is
an effort at self-preservation. An ignorant ballot
box is a menace to the republican form of govern
ment, Hence an educational qualification is requir
ed of the voter in some of the states.
If a lack of intelligence is dangerous in that the
ship of state may be stranded on the rocks and reefs,
how much more dangerous is a lack of integrity
which may occasion an explosion in the open sea.
Blind pilotage is fearful but a defective boiler is
fatal to the vessel and to the cargo and crew. Right
here is the weakness of the public school system.
It gives strength to the pilot wheel but does not
and cannot undergird the boiler. The intellect is
trained to a long, clear vision, but the conscience
is not quickened. The head is all right but the heart
is all wrong. The vision of thought is clear and far
reaching, but the moral sense is dull and dead, per
haps defiant and deadly.
The conscience, the moral sense, needs to be
aroused and the will needs to be directed before the
man can become a safe and reliable voter. Just here,
is where the Christian school, the denominatiaual
THE PROHIBITION TIGHT
Compiled by J. L. D. Hillyer
Both the great national parties have announced
their platform and their candidates. How does pro
hibition fare between them? Morally, Bryan is for
prohibition, though politically he may oppose it.
Taft is against it. The republican platform pays
no attention to it whatever. The democratic plat
form makes a ludicrous exhibit of the committee
that framed it which was evidently put into it by
the Liberty League of Chicago. That league is com
posed of liquor men. It demanded that the republi
cans of Illinois, and the democrats also, adopt
a resolution declaring in favor of personal
liberty. The Illinois Republican State Convention
adopted the resolution just as it came from the
league. The Democratic State Convention adopted
it in somewhat modified form. Now, after the re
publicans had ignored it in their platform, the dem
ocrats perpetrated the ludicrous farce of amending
the Bill of Rights by inserting before “liberty” the
word “personal,” making the pledge of the party
read that “the purpose of the party would be to
so administer the government as to protect the life,
personal liberty, and property of the people.”
That is the Chicago Liberty League platform.
Now it would be a good lesson, it all the prohibi
tionists in the South, black and white, would vote
the prohibition ticket. If that were done one time,
the national parties wouldn’t ignore the prohibition
ists again.
I had something to say a few weeks ago in The
Golden Age about Sunday laws. Since then the laws
in Columbus have been put to the test. A grand
jury was organized that obeyed their oaths and re
turned indictments against venders of various kinds
of merchandise on Sunday that could, not be classed
among articles of “necessity, mercy, or charity.”
The Golden Age for July 23, 1908,
college, finds its reason for existence. Other schools
do not meddle with the conscience or present to the
moral sense the correct standards of right and
wrong. Intelligence supplied by the public school,
if you choose, and integrity, which alone can be
taught by the denominational school, are the essen
tial qualifications of good citizenship. • Let the
denominational college die and the republican form
of government will perish. As little as many think it,
the enactment of salutary legislation and the
enforcement of wholesome laws come from the
denominational college hall. It is no relief to say
that public schools and state colleges inculcate a
high standard of morality, for that high standard
is derived from and vitalized by the denominational
college. Is it not strange that every species of
heathenism is studied and considered and analyzed
in our state college, while the religion of Jesus
Christ is severely and cruelly barred and shut out
from the student mind and heart? The founders
of other religions and their illustrious exponents
are pondered and discussed, while the names of
Moses and David and Paul and Knox and Calvin
and Bunyan are eliminated from the pages of the
world’s history. Why should Plato be read and his
teachings honored, while Moses and the decalogue,
and Paul and justification by faith are utterly
ignored ?
So long as the school-room curriculum rejects the
study of the Bible, its author, its prophets and its
apostles, so long will the republican form of govern
ment be in jeopardy. The law of Sinai and the
Gospel on the mount give the body and the soul to
the only government that can afford full protection
to its subjects, or can claim any right to prosperity
and perpetuity. As we get near to Sinai in our
legislation and climb the mount of instruction in
our living we will discover and provide the strongest
bulwarks that defend us and gain the widest vision
of life here and hereafter.
The sellers of soft drinks, tobacco, cigars, ordinary
drugs and toilet articles were indicted and convict
ed, or pleaded guilty and were fined. This confirms
what we have said. Our Sunday laws are wisely de
vised police regulations, that if properly adminis
tered would give to the religious part of the commu
nity all that they can reasonably ask. The object
of the Sunday law enacted by the State is to for
bid all persons, within the State, performing their
ordinary avocations for one day in each week, ex
cept in emergencies in which the demands of “ne
cessity, mercy or charity” shall override the other
demand that the people should have one day of rest
and relaxation out of each seven. The reason why
the first day of the week was chosen for the day of
rest was because the majority of the legislature pre
ferred that day. The personal reason that each leg
islator had for preferring that day does not appear
in the law itself. It is not, so far as the State is
concerned, a religious requirement. It is one, how
ever, known to be wise, prudent, sanitary and eco
nomical. Yet —
Every Sunday morning the first thing we hear is
the cry of the newsboys selling the Sunday papers.
When the subscriber goes to the front door he finds
his copy, which an early Sunday worker has left
on his steps. These are clear violations of the law.
Every grand juror knows it, and he swears to indict
known violations of the law. And yet, year after
year, the grand jurors forswear themselves about
this thing.
And yet, many of our best and most upright citi
zens pass through the grand jury room perjured and
forsworn because they failed in this thing.
Where does the fault lie? If every pastor in At
lanta should point out clearly the law of Christ
about this matter and appeal to the intelligence.
piety and patriotism of liis and make it
clear that the enforcement of our state law would be
übedienCe th tlife Lbrd, the liext grand jury would
act. Lofidon lias for several years refused to tol
erate the Sunday paper and they don’t have any
of them in that old town. 1 feel very sure that At
lanta could get along without the Sunday paper. I
know that there is no necessity for violating that
law and I know that the selling and distributing of
the Sunday paper is a violation of the law. So
much of the work on the Monday morning paper as
is done on Sunday is a violation of the law and
should be stopped.
Os course soft drinks, confections, ordinary drugs,
have no more right to claim exemption from the law
than hay, corn, wheat, dry goods, shoes and cloth
ing, and not half so much as fruit, vegetables, and
fresh meats. If the really upright citizens of the
city want to obey God and the law of the land in
preference to the unthinking demands of the Sunday
deseerators, they can stop all this in ten days. All
we need is to enforce the laws that the grand
juries are sworn to enforce,
*
Judge Adams of Savannah is quoted by the papers
in a recent Speech to have characterized the pro
hibition law as sumptuary. That is an astonishing
thing. For a pot house politician or a bar room
“spieler” to denounce prohibition laws as sumptu
ary Occasions no surprise. But for a man of learn
ing and culture like Judge Adams to have so
blundered is a matter of wonder. Does not Judge
Adams know that sumptuary laws are enacted to
regulate in divers ways the personal and family
expenses of the people? Does he not remember that
the word is from the latin “ sumpt us, ” that means
“expense”? Is it not clear then to everybody that
a law that forbade a man to use sugar in his coffee,
except on Sunday, or prohibited beef steak on more
than two mornings in the week, or limited the
price that ladies should pay for their hats to
$5, would be sumptuary? Does not Judge Adams
know that the only sumptuary laws in Georgia are
some that instituted a quasi limitation to the ex
penditures that administrators, guardians, trustees
and public officials 1 must observe in the administra
tion of their trusts? And Judge Adams knows, or
ought to know, that the prohibition law enacted to
prevent crime and secure the tranquillity of society
as far as its effects may reach, is simply a police
regulation exactly like that that forbids the firing
of guns and pistols in an incorporated town or
across or along the public roads in the country.
The following paragraph is a good one:
“A writer in the Boston Congregationalist, speak
ing of prohibition in the South, finds the cause in
the religious convictions of Southern Christians who,
he says, are intensely Calvinistic. ” He adds the
South “never thinks of taking its creeds Mor sub
stance of doctrine’ but swallows them without a
wink or a hiccough. The Southern Christian be
lieves liquor selling a sin, and just intends to stop
it utterly. That’s his creed. In the midst of our
materialistic age, when the church has ceased to
battle whole hearted with the devil, because it
no longer believes in a personal devil, it is refresh
ing to see a whole section of the country nailing
a flag to a masthead and going out to fight the
devil as if it believed in him, and its power under
God to beat him down under scornful feet.”
This is all true except that it is just as true of
non Calvinists as of Caivinistic Christians.
It It
Literary Chickens.
An Indian novelist with a love for the simple
life moved to a farm, says a writer in Lippincott’s
Magazine, and began raising chickens. When he
had some hatched out, he soon noticed that they
were languishing in their coops and apparently
about to die. Fie consulted a neighbor.
“What do you, feed them?” asked the neighboj.
“Feed them!” exclaimed the novelist. “Why, I
don’t feed them anything!”
“Then how do you suppose they are going to
live?”
“I presumed,” replied the novelist, with dignity,
Gthat the old hen had milk enough for them now,”
