As a Christian reformer Dr. Miner has gained a deserved prominence. He has been outspoken on the subject of Capital Punishment, advocating its abolishment, and in the Anti-slavery war proved himself one of the veterans. It is in the Temperance reform, however, that he has taken a strong and marked interest. As an advocate of Prohibition he is one of the leaders in the land. The pamphlet on Prohibition, published in 1867, containing his arguments on the subject before the Massachusetts Legislative Committee in the Representatives' Hall, is one of the most readable documents of the times.[52] His ready answers to the questions proposed to him, and his telling questions pressed upon the advocates of liquor license laws, on that occasion, evinced a mastery of the situation not often realized. In temperance conventions and conferences he has often some searching criticisms on the city officials in their evasions of the laws respecting the liquor traffic; and on every available occasion when called to speak on the moral needs of the State and the moral responsibility of the people, he is quite sure to give a few ringing notes emphasizing the temperance reform. Dr. Miner has been for ten years past President of the Massachusetts Temperance Alliance.
As an educator Dr. Miner has done good work. He began it early, and has never lost interest in it. As president of the college, a member of the State Board of Education, and Chairman of the Board of Visitors of the Normal Art School, he has been true to it constantly.
His business talent is well known. He is a safe and far-seeing financier, to whom the interests of the busy movers "on 'change" are somewhat familiar. In all financial plans and operations demanding his action he is especially and effectively at home. He is President of the Universalist Publishing House, and is still one of the trustees of Tufts College. The degree of D. D. was conferred upon him by Harvard College, and that of LL. D. by Tufts soon after his resignation of the presidency of that institution. He was one of the "Hundred Boston Orators;" having been called to deliver the oration before the authorities and citizens of Boston, July 4, 1855.
The positiveness and persistence of Dr. Miner have sometimes had the effect to alienate rather than conciliate those who might conscientiously differ from him in their convictions of right and duty. It is to be lamented, however, that where we find one possessing his degree of positiveness in what he believes to be right, we are more or less "troubled on every side" by those who are only half-men because of the low policies and expediencies by which they are governed. His confidence in the right seems instinctive; as he says, "A mountain can be tunnelled; a principle never." A Boston secular journal just now speaks of him:--