TEMPERANCE AND CHURCH WORK,
BY ELD. J. B. MCCLEERY.
ANALYSIS OF CHARACTER.
1. An indomitable will.
2. A sublime courage.
3. A never-satisfied hungering and thirst for knowledge.
4. An intense love for truth, and hatred of shams.
5. A tireless worker.
6. An advanced thinker.
In presenting this analysis it is by no means thought to be complete.
There are many phases of his well-known character left untouched,
because this chapter would become a book, if all were presented in
detail. We touch upon these more salient ones, as presenting the
well-known outlines of his later life, and trust the picture will find
faithful recognition among his host of admirers.
Those who have known him ever since the past Territorial days of
Kansas, will concede that, for the accomplishment of a purpose unto
which he had once deliberately put his hand, no man ever breathed the
fresh air of these broad prairies who followed the trail with more
determination and keen, intelligent acquaintance with all bearings,
overcoming difficulties, meeting objections, accepting temporary
defeat (philosophically), but never relinquishing his purpose until
victory crowned his effort, or failure was absolutely inevitable,
than he.
Suited to this was a courage as heroic as Leonidas' and sublime as
Paul's. The stormy days of the fifties and sixties gave evidence of
the physical side of this quality, and his entire life, of the moral.
He "feared no foe in shining armor," and rather courted than avoided a
passage at arms dialectic. Eminently a man of peace, and loving the
pursuits that make for it, he would see no principle of right unjustly
assailed without girding himself for the conflict, and standing where
the blows fell thickest.
Coming to this unknown country at an age when the ordinary mind takes
firmest grasp of all intellectual things, and being thus deprived of
that mental food necessary to satisfy and make strong, there was ever
after a hungering for the things he did not have, that would not be
satisfied. I remember talking with him once, while sitting on his
lumber wagon, resting his team in the cotton-wood bottoms east of
Atchison, and he bewailed as much as a man of his fiber could, the
fate that compelled him to toil day and night while his soul was
starving for that intellectual food which lay all around him, but
which he did not have time to gather and devour. This, however, was
not abnormal; for, even to the day of his death, he was a devoted
disciple, sitting at the feet of every true Gamaliel.
An intense lover of truth, and a like hater of shams, he analyzed
mercilessly; not for the sake of opposing, but in search of kernels
and the source of things. If he found the tree was bearing, or
destined to bear evil fruit, he would do his utmost that there should
be left of it neither root nor branch. Accepting good in every
presented form, if he suspected evil in the garb of good, there was no
waiting for a more opportune time than the then present, for such
stripping and exposure as his vigorous logic, sarcasm, wit, pathos,
and personal presence could produce. Humble, and exceedingly retiring
in ordinary, when the truth was assailed, or wolves in sheeps'
clothing appeared, he became a lion, fierce and towering; and woe
betake the man or system that then became the object of his righteous
wrath. Such torrents of invective as fell from his tongue; such
flashes as gleamed from his gray eagle-eyes; such scorn as glowed in
his thin, pallid lips, made every one tremble--an avalanche that swept
all before it.
To toil, of some character or other, he seemed to be destined. For no
sooner did he find a little rest from the field or herd, than all his
Hurculean energy was thrown into some cherished and waiting mental
project. His life is an example of the statement that "genius is the
result of labor." Neither did he travel in thought alone upon the
surface of things. There were subjects, the philosophy of which no
contemporary understood better; and upon the social and organic
relations of the religious reformation with which he always stood
identified, he was twenty years ahead of his confreres. He was a
veritable Elijah in many things, but he was never known to flee from
the face of his enemies.
His was a mighty nature; the soul of honor and the embodiment of
truth.
There are two features of his Kansas life, which marked the man, that
I wish to portray, viz: His _temperance_ work, and his _religious_
work. These were not in any sense divorced, as though they were not
always righteously allied; but, as all know, the prohibition question
holds a prominent place in the history of this proud young queen, with
her "_ad astra per aspera_," and from the time she was admitted to a
place among the sisterhood of States, up to the date that the
comparatively little majority of 8,000 votes placed her squarely in
opposition to the saloon, with all its interests and iniquities, he
labored, watched, and prayed, for such a consummation. In this, as in
his religious conceptions, he was always in the advance, running new
lines and opening broad highways, and inviting fields for the less
sturdy but oncoming multitude. As he had battled to prevent this, his
adopted State, from being desecrated by the blot of human slavery,
so now he voted, preached, lectured, wrote, that it might be delivered
from the body and soul destroying curse of the rum power.
I have before me his temperance scrap-book, beginning with the
proposed amendment to the State Constitution, March 8, 1879, and
coming up to the time of his death, in which I find fifty-five
newspaper articles written by him, of from one to three columns in
length, presenting, in his own terse, humorous, glowing, vigorous,
convincing way, all sides of this chameleon-hued question; now
analyzing the amendment and the laws to enforce it, turning aside here
to answer the cavil of some carping critic, then to demolish and bury
some blatant political defender of the whisky element; arraigning the
Governor, Senate and House of Representatives for their gingerly
treatment of the great question, and sending a trumpet-call to the
honest, brave, and sincere temperance workers, both men and women,
urging them to greater vigilance and closer compact. These, with
numerous short and pithy articles, added to all his sermons and
lectures on the subject, occupying a much larger space and far more
time, will give an idea of the labor of heart and brain bestowed upon
this one question, during this one decade. We have room in this
chapter for only one short article from his pen, as an example of the
many, indicating how he felt, thought, and wrote during those stirring
years. The title of the article is, "The Prohibition of the Liquor
Traffic, The Constitutional Amendment in Kansas." He says:
This is, perhaps, the first case in which any government
in the world has incorporated into its constitution a
clause prohibiting forever the sale of intoxicating drinks
as a beverage. This is a struggle in which the churches,
the preachers, and the Sunday-schools are arrayed in
mortal antagonism to the saloons and saloon-keepers. Both
parties are instinctively conscious that this is a contest
in which the issue is to kill or be killed. No truce or
peace is possible. 'I will put enmity between thy seed and
her seed.' The people are drawn into one or the other of
these parties by a sort of elective affinity. One class
goes with the churches and the Sunday-schools; another
gravitates to the drinking-house. The one class are swayed
and controlled by the law of love--"Thou shalt love thy
neighbor as thyself;" the other by the principle that
governed Cain--"Am I my brother's keeper?" "Who cares?"
"Let every man look out for himself?" "If a man chooses to
make a beast of himself, it is none of my business."
One of the peculiar things connected with this movement is
the fact that by far the most determined and effective
opposition to this law comes from foreign-born and
naturalized citizens. They have, so to speak, monopolized
the liquor traffic; they are bound together by a kind of
free masonry, and with small regard to whom they vote
with, Democrats or Republicans, they give the whole weight
of their political influence in favor of free liquor.
With here and there a notable exception, the Roman
Catholic Church throws its influence on the same side;
hence its church fairs are carnivals of drunkenness.
The two extremes of our American society do also largely
join in this clamor for free liquor. "The upper ten
thousand," those that arrogate to themselves that they are
par excellence, the _elite_ of the nation--albeit that
their assumed gentility is sometimes but a shoddy or
shabby gentility--make the road from the top of society to
the bottom, and from thence to hell, as short as possible,
by assuming that it is aristocratic to tipple.
When from these so-called upper circles, we go down to the
bottom of society, what shall we say of that great
multitude of men and women, crushed into poverty,
helplessness and ignorance, groping as the blind grope in
darkness; and who find in the dram-shop a momentary
oblivion to their miseries?
To these elements of opposition to prohibition we must add
another class of men--the professional politicians. These,
like the chameleon, take the color of every object they
light on. To them the good Lord and the good devil are
equally objects of respect, and possible worship; and,
having all mental endowments accurately developed, except
the endowment of conscience, they hold that all things are
legitimate that bring grist to their mill. These will be
good prohibitionists when prohibition dances in silver
slippers; but now they do duty on the other side.
The above picture contains a very fair analysis of the
elements of the vote in opposition to the prohibitory
amendment, except that, perhaps, we ought to add the vote
in opposition to a well-intended class of men who have no
proclivity for liquor, and who, perhaps, could give no
better reason for their vote but that they abhor
innovations, and are content to do as their fathers and
grandfathers did before them.
Notwithstanding, prohibition carried in the State by eight
thousand majority. It is noteworthy that six counties,
lying along the Missouri River, and having in or near them
the cities of Atchison, Leavenworth, Wyandotte, White
Cloud and Kansas City, and which also contain the largest
foreign-born population in the State, gave heavy
majorities against the amendment.
It is self-evident that if the execution of this law is
left to the municipal authorities of the above-named
cities, or to the officers elected in the above-named
counties, then the saloon keepers and liquor dealers will,
without let or hindrance, trample under foot both the
constitution and laws. The proof of this lies in the fact
that, in time past, the liquor dealers have ridden
rough-shod over all laws enacted in the interest of
temperance. For example, the law provided that they should
not sell to boys under age; the law provided that they
should not sell on the Lord's day. The law forbids bribing
at elections; but the bribery of strong drink at
elections, in the cities, has been just as common as the
elections; and church members, and even preachers, who
were candidates for office, have been blackmailed to get
the money to buy the liquor. It will be asked, What, then,
do we gain who live in these river counties, and in these
cities, by the passage of this prohibitory law? We gain
much.
1. Thus far these law-breaking liquor dealers have acted,
in carrying on their business, under the shadow and
protection of law. This protection is now withdrawn.
2. The government has hitherto been in partnership with
liquor dealers in the infamous business of making
drunkards. This partnership is now dissolved.
3. The appetite for strong drink is not a natural
appetite. It is an appetite artificially created in
children, boys and young men. It is not for the public
welfare that it should be created at all. The scheme and
plan of the popular saloon is to create this appetite, and
to strengthen and foster it after it is created.
The whole business of the saloon looks in this direction.
To this end are its flashing lights, its glittering
decanters, its rainbow tints, its jolly good fellowship
and boon companionship, and the _bonhomie_ of the portly
saloonkeeper. All these, in the purpose and intent for
which they exist, mean the death of the body and the soul
of the man that enters these gates that lead down to hell.
The saloon is a serpent, with the serpent's fascinating
beauty and power to charm, but with the serpent's deadly
bite. "At the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth
like an adder." Kansas has wisely ordained that it will
not maintain by the public authority and at the public
expense poisonous serpents to sting the people to death,
4. Men object: "The selling of liquor will go on, but you
will drive the business into dark places and into the
hands of disreputable men." To this temperance men reply:
"That is just what we want. We wish to take away every
vestige of respectability from the man that sells liquor.
We intend that it shall be sold--if it must be sold at
all--in dark cellars and in back alleys, and that the men
that sell liquor shall take rank among the law-breaking
and dangerous classes of society,"
5. The one potent charm and omnipotent argument that has
served as a gift to blind the eyes and an opiate to lull
to sleep the consciences of the municipal authorities of
our cities has been the revenue they have derived from
liquor license laws. For example, the city of Atchison has
derived from this source a revenue of $10,000. This
revenue was paid not alone by her own citizens, but by all
men who were drawn to the city for purposes of business or
pleasure and who could be induced to patronize the
saloons. And this has been a perpetual menace to the
safety of families living in the country who did business
in the city. This revenue is gone. It is hopelessly and
irrecoverably dried up. The Missouri river will turn and
flow backward towards its source before this revenue,
which is the price of blood, like the thirty pieces of
silver for which Judas sold his Master, will ever come
back again. After Jesus had cast a legion of demons out of
the demoniac that dwelt among the tombs, this man was far
more impressible with regard to motives addressed to his
better nature than while he was possessed by these demons;
so we may charitably hope that now, after ten thousand
evil demons have been cast out of the hearts of the mayor
and common council of the city of Atchison, these
dignitaries will be more impressible with regard to
motives of morality, humanity, and of the public welfare.
Meantime, temperance men look on the whole business of
liquor license as an unspeakable madness. Regarded simply
as a question of dollars and cents, they look on it as a
horrible nightmare--a hallucination fallen on men nearly
allied to that form of mental abberration which carries
men to mad-houses and insane asylums, a strange and
mysterious perversion of the human faculties. Regarded in
its economical aspects, they hold that it would be just as
good economy and as much the dictate of common sense, to
obtain a revenue by licensing murder, theft, burglary,
robbery, and harlotry, as it is to license the sale of
intoxicating drinks as a beverage.
It will be seen, then, that prohibition incorporated into
the constitution of Kansas, does not, by any means, give
us the victory; it only places us in a position to fight a
fair and equal battle hereafter. We are, like Israel,
shouting triumphantly, "I will sing unto the Lord, for he
hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he
drowned in the Red Sea."
But beyond us are parched and desert sands, poisonous
serpents, savage wild beasts and mortal enemies. All these
must be conquered before we finally rest in the happy
Canaan.
It is now conceded by the best informed actors in this great drama or
tragedy, that Pardee Butler, as much or more than any one man, made
the prohibition movement in Kansas the marvelous success it is. The
generation is yet to come that will rise up to do him rightful honor.
From '54 to '60 Pardee Butler was the Moses to the church in this
wilderness, and for years following he was in some sense like Paul,
"having the care of all the churches." But from the beginning he was
the foremost man by virtue of natural and acquired ability, although a
reluctant following was often given because of former habitudes and
shibboleths, socially. There were other men in different localities
who battled grandly for the truth and sowed the seed of the kingdom
with firm and loyal hand: Brethren Yohe and Jackson, of Leavenworth,
followed by the Bausermans, Joseph and Henry, Gans of Olathe, Brown of
Emporia, White of Manhattan, and others equally worthy,--all pioneers
in every good sense, and now all gone to their reward, with the
exceptions of Brethren Yohe and the Bausermans. Without being formally
chosen Pardee Butler was the recognized leader of these sanctified
few, and no home where they entered was too humble, or field where
they toiled too barren, for the light of his countenance to cheer, or
the strength of his arm to be felt. In the polity and development of
the church, as in other fields of moral and social struggle, he was
far in advance of the time; and up to the day of his death, this was
one of the great burdens that rested upon his heart.
The membership coming to the Territory, and which, of course, formed
the nuclei of churches, was a heterogenous compound. In many respects
there was no possible assimilation; but so far as the simple tenets of
the primitive faith were concerned, there was little or no difference.
But as to plurality of bishops in the congregation, their tenure and
jurisdiction of office, the relations of comity between sister
churches, the duties and powers of an evangelist, the laying on of
hands in induction into authority, instrumental music in the
congregation, the Sunday-school and its organization, the order of
social worship, the mid-week meeting for prayer, and numerous other
matters of scriptural life, there were as many shades of opinion as
there were of dialects; and the tenacity with which they were
maintained, those not familiar with the time and its environments can
hardly hope to know. Yet upon all these and kindred questions, Bro.
Butler had singularly clear-cut and advanced opinions. He has often
said to me, "How very obtuse the churches seem to be on the plain
teaching of Scripture. And the preachers are equally ignorant, or else
they are willing to go limping and halting, when they could as well
and better be easily marching and leading their sanctified hosts to
marvelous victory."
He did not feel, or even make manifest, that he recognized his
greatness in these directions only as he labored to bring the
congregations and their officers up to his ideals.
In the first struggles to bring the scattered congregations into
co-operative unity, he was the head and heart of the movement; and
through all the varied successes and failures of those non-cohesive
times and men, he never lost courage or intimated aught else than the
success which now crowns the work.
I regarded him as the finest ecclesiastical historian among us, and
because of his knowledge here, coupled with the philosophy that grew
out of it, linked to the genius of Christianity itself, he was, by
educational intuition, a missionary zealot.
Carey and the Judsons, and Barclay and Livingstone, with all others of
like character, were what he termed "ripe fruit" from the Good Tree.
He was to the churches in Kansas what these men and women were to the
people among whom they labored. Visiting every outpost, gathering the
straggling sheep into folds and striving to secure shepherds for them,
stripping the fleecy garments from the wolves, uncovering the
sophistries of the various polytheisms, immersing the converts and
exhorting the saints, the thirty-five years he spent in Kansas were
years of severest mental, moral and physical labor; and from which he
asked no respite until God called him.
Truthfully this Scripture may be written as his epitaph: "Blessed are
the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth; Yea, saith the Spirit,
for they rest from their labors and their works do follow them."