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The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 72, October, 1863 by Various
page 52 of 295 (17%)
the alternative,--to stagnate in a lifeless church, or to join these
ravers in their breakneck leap at the Millennium."

"There is a noble element in this one-sided pertinacity," I suggested,
"and a wise man might humor and use it for the best ends. Instead of
attempting to pull these hopeful people back into the church, cannot you
urge the church forward to comprehend their position? This
impulse,--fanatical as some of its manifestations doubtless are,--might
it not be constrained, or at least directed?"

"Never by me!" exclaimed Clifton, haughtily. "I should have to commit
myself to all the wild Saturnalia of their moralities before it would be
possible to acquire any power over them."

"But surely you might go as far as any one in the advocacy of
Temperance."

"Temperance! Why, you forget that I must denounce Temperance as the
deadliest of sins, and proclaim Abstinence to be the only virtue. There
is a grand State Convention of Progressive Gladiators at present in
session in Foxden; all the neighboring towns have sent delegates. Well,
it was only yesterday afternoon that Stellato, in behalf of one of the
committees, denounced the clergy of New England as gross flesh-eaters
who had made themselves incapable of perceiving any spiritual truth. And
I happen to know that Mrs. Romulus so successfully manipulated Chepunic,
not a hundred miles up the river, that before leaving that town she
publicly delivered her lecture entitled, 'Marriage a Barbarism,' and
professed to have discovered something far higher and holier than the
chain of wedlock."

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