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.