Baltimore Evening Sun (19 December 1913): 6.

The Hon. William H. Anderson is lying in state today at the headquarters of the Anti-Saloon League in the Equitable Building. The catafalque is surrounded by a guard of honor consisting of eight clergymen of uneasy virtue. Early this morning the Hon. Isaac Lobe Straus broke down at sight of the remains and had to be carried out by the bouncer, the Hon. Charles M. Levister, D. D.

Proposed design for a manganese steel suit of armor to be worn by suffragettes attending moving-picture shows to protect them against kidnapping by white slave traders armed with hypodermic syringes:

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The Hon. the Bentztown Bard in the estimable Sunpaper:

There is no quality of the human spirit so invested with divinity as that of forgivingness. To forgive those who take advantage of us for their own reward calls forth all the best and broadest there is within us. At Christmas the disposition of the heart is to forgive everything.

Nobly spoken. But suppose it were 11.59⅞ P. M., and Mr. Harvey were coming in with positively the last jar of Pilsner, and some low comedian planted a cake of soap in his path, and he slipped up it and came down with a crash and burst the jar of Pilsner, and just then the bar closed–how now, good Bentz, how now?

The Rev. Dr. Carlton D. Harris, editor of the Baltimore Southern Methodist, fills a whole page in the current issue of his estimable gazette with a sonorous recitation of my recent accusation that the Christianity practiced by such organizations as the Anti-Saloon League, the Lord’s Day Alliance and the Pentz Society is far more Mohammedan than Chrsitian. I have read this treatise of the learned doctor with the utmost interest and diligence, and have been duly charmed by its earnest tone and voluptuous style, but it would be stretching politeness to the bursting point to say that it has convinced me, or to predict that it will convince any other theologian of authentic gifts.

For example, the doctor bases his whole argument for the Anti-Saloon League upon the fact that it “stands for the destruction of the saloon”–or, more accurately, for the prohibition of alcohol. But is the prohibition of alcohol a Christian idea? Was it advocated by the Founder of Christianity, or by Paul? Of course not. On the contrary, the Founder partook of wine with His disciples without the slightest thought that it was wrong, and such partaking is now an essential part of the most holy Christian sacrament; and Paul went so far, in his first letter to Timothy, as to specifically recommend the act, not in any mystical sense, but in a wholly literal and practical sense. And in all of Christendom today there is not a single considerable Christian sect which makes the total avoidance of alcohol a prerequisite to inclusion in its communion, or which makes any ex cathedra recommendation to that end.

Turn now to Mohammedanism. At once the attention is arrested by the salient doctrine of prohibition. At once it becomes apparent that of the three or four ways in which Mohammedanism differs diametrically from Christianity, not the least important is to be found in the Mohammedan doctrine that winebibbing is a sin. No such sin is known to Christianity, but Mohammedanism exalts it to equal importance with blasphemy and murder. Wherefore, and by reason of which, I hold that any man who gives his assent to this exaltation and particularly any man who goes it one better by making winebibbing the worst of sins, and the father and mother of all the rest, is a Mohammedan to that extent, and not a Christian. And to this doctrine I pledge my life, my fortune and my sacred honor.

So much for the alleged Christianity of the Anti-Saloon League, an indubitably Moslem organization. As for the cases of the Lord’s Day Alliance and the Pentz Society I hope to consider them at length in some future issue, when the pressure of political and sociological matter is less heavy. But meanwhile let me ask Dr. Harris how he reconciles his theory that the Lord’s Day Alliance is a Christian body with Mark ii, 27, or with the whole of Matthew, xii, and Mark, iii. To which doctrine are these preposterous jurists and snouters most committed–to that laid down by the Pharisees in the chapters I have named, or to that laid down by Christ? And how does he reconcile his theory that the Pentz Society is Christian with Romans, xii, 19, and John, viii, 7, and, above all, with the Beatitudes?

To the Rev. Dr. W. W. Davis, as to common sinners, life is nothing but one d------d thing after another. No sooner had he bestirred the reluctant clergy of Ellicott City to snout the Sabbath carnivals of the Hon. Charles Carroll than news came of a Sunday concert at the City Jail. January 4 is the date and the Letter Carriers’ Band wll play–thus revealing the moral decay in the P. O. since the entrance of the Hon. Sherlock Swann. Verily, the rev. gent. is kept on the jump.

Shannon, Ill., dispatch to the estimable New York World:

Drinking coffee made in a copper boiler is believed to have caused the death of Thomas Huereman, a farmer, 63 years of age, who died after a short illness.

Respectfully referred, etc., to the Hon., etc., etc., for investigation, etc., etc., etc., and report, etc., etc., etc., etc.

Political note in the rambunctious Maryland Suffrage News:

For a long time it has been recognized by suffrage workers that the only way to force the City Democratic Organization to advocate votes for women was to form a counter organization in Baltimore city.

In brief, the way to persuade is to revile and threaten! The suffragettes are lovely creatures, eloquent, refined and charmingly indignant–but their politics is quite as absurd as their mathematics, and almost as absurd as their pathology.