To the Committee on Education shall be referred memorials, resolutions, and other papers relating to the Board of Education and the cause of education, and also proposals to change the law relating to such matters.

To the Committee on Temperance shall be referred memorials, resolutions, and other papers relating to the cause of temperance, and also proposals to change the law bearing upon this subject.

To the Committee on Boundaries shall be referred memorials, resolutions, and other papers relating to the boundaries of Annual and Mission Conferences, Missions, and boundaries of General Conference Districts, including proposals to change the law relating to such boundaries.

To the Committee on Temporal Economy shall be referred memorials, resolutions, and other papers relating to property, financial interests, and temporalities in general, not included in the specified work of the preceding committees. Propositions to change the law relating to such matters shall also be referred to this committee.

To the Committee on the State of the Church shall be referred memorials, resolutions, and other papers touching the general welfare of the Church not mentioned above as belonging to the preceding committees, and also proposals to change the law relating to matters thus involved.

To the Committee on Revisals shall be referred memorials, resolutions, and other papers proposing or suggesting changes in the wording of the Book of Discipline, excepting changes which come within the province of other committees as above indicated, and including particularly miscellaneous changes in the text of the Discipline.

All committees may propose changes in the wording of the Discipline if the law is within its province, providing such changes legitimately grew out of subjects submitted to the committee.-Journal, 1900, p.

CHAPTER VI.

MISCELLANEOUS.

¶ 42. Temperance and the Prohibition of the Liquor Traffic.

Notwithstanding the magnitude of the evil of intemperance, the tremendous social, financial, and political power of the saloon, and the astounding indifference of many good citizens who ought to be aroused to activity against its encroachments, we are still firm in the belief that an awakened and aggressive Church can and should, under divine guidance, deal the liquor traffic, "the sum of all villainies," its deathblow. In the language of the Episcopal Address we declare that the Methodist Episcopal Church must continue "to war upon the whole system from its beginning to its horrible consummation."

We are neither appalled nor dismayed, but in the name of the Master we call upon every member of our Church to put forth increasing and persistent effort to accomplish the overthrow of this mighty agency of evil, the legalized liquor traffic, a business that debases all who come beneath its baleful sway, while it brings indescribable wretchedness to thousands of innocent sufferers.

1. Personal Abstinence.

We insist that total abstinence from all intoxicating beverages is the plain duty of every individual and an obligation which rests with peculiar weight upon every Christian.

2. Other Organizations.

We rejoice in the existence of those organizations that are committed to the principle of total abstinence and those that are seeking to secure the legal prohibition of the liquor traffic. To them all we bid a hearty Godspeed and commend to the kindly and favorable consideration of our people the various organizations that are earnestly and courageously striving to secure such beneficent results. .

3. Attitude toward the Traffic.

We are more firmly convinced than ever of the truth and the force of that vigorous declaration of the Episcopal Address of 1888, "It can never be legalized without sin." Planting ourselves upon the bed rock of that solid proposition, we declare that no citizen and no Christian has a right by example, by voice, by influence, or by his ballot to contribute to the establishment or to the maintenance of the ungodly license policy as applied to the liquor traffic.

We are unalterably opposed to the enactment of license laws, because such laws are wrong in principle and ineffectual as a means of restraint. We will not be content with any system of levying tribute upon this corrupt traffic. We demand its entire destruction, and to the accomplishment of this result we pledge our best en

deavor.

The Church of God should be always and everywhere the courageous, hopeful, and unflinching foe of this enemy of all things pure and good, and should continue its warfare until, like the crime of slavery, the saloon has become a thing of the past.

4. Government and the Traffic.

We deplore the fact that our general Government, by its internal revenue system, continues to give legal recognition to so corrupt a business, and especially do we

condemn the course of the Government in accepting and collecting revenue from persons in prohibition towns or States who are known by the officers of the Treasury Department to be engaged in the violation of prohibitory law.

We commend as worthy our unstinted praise the act of Congress in prohibiting the sale of intoxicating beverages at army posts and in forts, camps, and reservations used for military purposes. We record with gratitude our appreciation of the act of Secretary John D. Long, of the Navy, in banishing the sale of intoxicants from our war vessels and navy yards.

We deeply regret that after the enactment of a law prohibiting the sale of intoxicating beverages at army posts and in forts, camps, reservations, and National Soldiers' Homes used for military purposes, a law, plainly intended to effect this result, and so understood by its friends and foes in and out of Congress, and by the chief magistrate who signed it, by a construction, it seems to us, forced and unnatural, placed upon the law by the Attorney-general, its plain intent was defeated, and the Government of the United States, amid the exultation of all sympathizers with the liquor traffic, resumed the practice of selling intoxicating liquors to its soldiers; we are gratified that the House Committee on Military Affairs has favorably reported a bill so explicit in its terms that no antagonism to its object can obscure its meaning.

We earnestly appeal to the President of the United States to use his powerful influence to promote its adoption, and to our ministers and members to urge by petition and personal letters to their representatives in the House and Senate the speedy enactment of this measure of protection to our soldiers from a foe more deadly than shot or shell.

Aroused and indignant at the aggressions of the liquor power, at the inexcusable miscarriage of the anticanteen law, and at the new perils in which the nation

is involving its new possessions, the Church will summon and pledge all our ministers and people to a more determined struggle against this enormous evil, and urge each to contribute thereto, according to his judgment, his testimony, his example, and his ballot.

We call upon the administration to make use of its tremendous power in the military government of the Eastern islands that have come under our control, so that the people of those islands shall not be debauched by the introduction of the liquor traffic among them.

5. Political Action.

Conceding that it is not the province of the Church to give affirmative direction to, or assume to control, the franchise of the citizen, it by no means follows that the Church must be silent concerning great wrongs because they have intrenched themselves in law or have become potent in influencing and controlling political action.

One of the greatest dangers to our country's welfare is the tremendous power which the organized liquor traffic wields in political affairs, a power so great and so promptly applied that, with rare exceptions, candidates for public office dare not speak their honest sentiments concerning that traffic, while office holders, ambitious to secure a reelection, realize that the faithful performance of their duty in the enforcement of law against the saloon will be fatal to their hopes for promotion.

When the Christian citizen is as prompt with his political rewards and punishments as is the supporter of the saloon the cause of civic righteousness will have made a notable advance.

Quoting and reaffirming the action of the General Conference of 1892, we "record our deliberate judgment that no political party has a right to expect, nor ought it to receive, the support of Christian men so long as it stands committed to the license policy or refuses to put itself on record in an attitude of open hostility to the