The next year was given to the financial management of the West Virginia Normal and Classical Academy, located at Buckhannon. While the school did excellent work for a few years, it eventually went down for want of material support. In view of the losses and disappointments and alienations caused by its failure, I am not sure that the conference did a wise thing in starting it. Little colleges have their advantages, I grant, but trying to operate one at every crossroads on faith and enthusiasm, is too much of a good thing.
By consent of the conference I agreed to give a few months to the business management and associate editorship of the West Virginia Freeman, the State prohibition organ. During this period I made a partial canvass of the State in the interest of a prohibition amendment then pending. It would require a whole chapter to tell of my experiences with the old political partisans, some of whom fairly went into spasms at the very mention of prohibition. Our presidential candidate, John P. St. John, had defeated James G. Blaine, so the Republicans affirmed; hence they were ready to vote against anything, or anybody, the angel Gabriel not excepted, who believed on any point as St. John did. Many of these were Christians, so-called, and some of them members of my own Church. I knew them well; and be it said to their everlasting shame, that they went against the amendment, just as did every whiskyite in the State.
Under our system of government the ballot has in it a moral element, and therefore will meet us at the bar of final reckoning. It not only has to do with our political, industrial, and educational affairs, but with the church and family as well. What show will a man have at the last day whose ballot has constantly belied his profession as a Christian? I have never been able to understand how he could enthrone his Lord in the affairs of state by voting a ticket perfectly satisfactory to the drunkard-maker. It remains for an allwise God to determine what disposition shall be made of these vicious ballots when the judgment day comes. Personally, I have no respect for, or confidence in any United Brethren or member of any other church who, knowingly, votes for a man for any office who is opposed to my Christ and the cause for which he stands.
Being ever ready to “speak my piece” against the saloon and its allies, I was constantly stirring up a “hornet’s nest” over the business. When I spoke against it, whether in public or private, I never hesitated to pay my respects to the machine politician, since I regarded him and rum as closely related. As the result, some of the newspapers and office-seekers got after me with a vengeance. This I confess was to my liking, since I felt sure I was making at least some kind of impression upon them. Then it gave me a chance to answer their criticisms, and puncture their fallacies. The following extract from one of my replies may be of interest to the reader. The principle laid down will always hold good:
“All at once the saloonist and politician are becoming greatly concerned over the question of ‘pure and undefiled religion’; and well they may, for if religion is effectually taken into politics they will as certainly go out. This they fully understand, hence yell themselves hoarse in trying to divert attention when the pulpit begins to let the light in upon their devilish business. While a man is a minister of the gospel, he is also a citizen in common with other men. The fact that he pays taxes, lives under, and is subject to the laws of our commonwealth, makes him such. Then most assuredly he has the same right as other men to be heard upon great political issues that affect the well-being of his country. If not, why not? Touching all moral and political affairs which have to do with the home, the individual, and the general good of the community, the pulpit has ever stood at the front, and so it ever will, unless it sells out to the saloon.
“The truth is, under a government like ours, presumably Christian, all political questions have a moral phase, and to a greater or less extent involve the question of religion. In other words, every question in politics touches at some point the work of the pulpit, therefore it is right and proper for the minister to discuss before his people, prudently, of course, the moral bearings of all these issues. There is nothing that the liquor ring, and old-line politicians would rather do than to stifle the utterances of the pulpit, for well they know that the molding of sentiment, and the training of the moral forces by which the eternal God proposes to overthrow and dash in pieces their strength, must there begin.”
In May of this year, 1885, I attended my second General Conference, which met at Fostoria, Ohio, in company with Z. Warner, E. Harper, and S. J. Graham. The occasion was an historic one. Radicalism was given a black eye; the forces of the Church were realigned, and the clouds which had so long hung over our Zion were pierced by the sunlight of a new day.