I am surprised that Professor Mayor, in his president address at the Jubilee meeting of the Vegetarian Society, should have chosen such an occasion for associating the movement with Biblical arguments, which some of us emphatically repudiate. He was speaking officially, from the platform of the Society, and at a meeting which might be supposed to express our united sentiments after fifty years of propaganda. When, therefore, he is reported in the VEGETARIAN MESSENGER [p. 218] as saying that “they [vegetarians] went to the Scripture for guidance as to principles,” I am compelled, as a freethinker, to ask wither he was speaking for himself and for those who think with him, or for the Vegetarian Society as a whole? I trust not for the Society—though his words, as reported, can scarcely be otherwise understood—because, if that were so, it would be impossible for freethinkers like myself to continue to be members. Food reform is to me a secular question of morality, economy, and health; and nothing, in my opinion, could be more fatal to our cause than the impression conveyed by the Vegetarian’s offer of a prize for the “Ten best texts,” and confirmed by the President’s remarks at the recent Jubilee meeting—that modern vegetarianism relies on the authority of the ancient Jewish scriptures.
July 8th, 1897.
The Vegetarian Messenger, September 1897, p. 290