MR SPURGEON ON WASTE.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume VII, Issue 1691, 19 October 1887, Page 3

MR SPURGEON ON WASTE.

. Something onght to be doDe by Christian people, If It ony on •conomieal grounds, to try to stop this dreadful waste. Well may we be a nation of beggan If we are a nation of drfakera. No good cornea of the drink. I can go Into a working man's home, and I will sot apeak to anybody about him ; bat I can tall yon In three minutes whether he Ie * teetotaller or not. Look at the furniture and arrangements of the man's house, and judge for yonaself. The abstainer's room Is like a little palace. There Is everything In it fcr convenience •nd for comfort t How djd he get it ? " Ob, he has good wages !" No j it so happens that the persons I am speaking of have not particularly good wages ; that is not the root of the matter. Igo Into another house and poverty reigns there. There Is a candle etuok m a gingerbeer bottle. The whole thing is dilapidated and the children are down at the heel, and the wife looks wretched ; and they all look half starved. "This man has bad wages." Do be has cot. This man has half as much again as the tenant of th« first house. Why has be not the fnrnltnre then 1 Why has he not the blankets for thi» bed? Why hue he not the shoes and stockings for the children 1 He has swallowed them all. He has swallowed bedsteads and chests of drawers. He drank the eight-day clock down at one sitting. Be drank the table ; he drank bis wife's shots ; and he drank bis own Sunday breeches. If I were talking like this to the negroes somewhere In tbe centre of Africa, they would say that it could not be true. But It is understood here because It Is co common. You know that every word is true; and It Is being done thousands of times over In this olty every week ; and the misery aud tbe cry of It go up before God In heaven, and they say to every one ef vs — "Set your foot down* and Bet an example against this crying, this destroying evil, evary one of yoiij as much as In your power."