ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE.
[We are at all times ready to give expression to every shade of opinion, but in no case do we hold ourselves responsible for the sentiments of our correspondents.]
(to the editor of the akaroa mail.)
Sir, —Every true Good Templar can tell that " Good Templary" is based upon the moral teaching of Christianity, and that the very note of its precepts may be traced to the 13th chapter of Ist Corinthians. If a templar is faithful to the cause that very note must ring out upon occasion ; it may sound false to those whose ear is not attuned to it, but it will never be mistaken by the few who rightly understand its nature. Our community is not a faultless one, if it were so it would be neither natural nor human, and there would be no scope for the exercise of that moral discipline which is at once its safety and its shield. If there are hypocrits among us, as aome are inclined to think, we cannot dissociate ourselves from then any more than the Church can disburden herself of her false professsrs. Ministers and statesmen can alike affirm that there are mingled shades of good and evil to be met with in all communities, and that humanly speaking the evil cannot be utterly eradicated though it may be controlled. Yet some of us have, no doubt, learned from hard experience that what may be cendemned as hypocrisy by one man may but the deepest and most earnest revealingsof another's nature. It is very difficult for any of us to judge of our neighbour's motives, when we are strangers to his inner life. Only time and personal experience can give us the clue to the man himself; if his motives are servile they will very soon betray themselves ; if they are worthy -they will stand the test in the long run even when their advocate may have passed away Adam Smith remarks in his moral sentiments. Every faculty in one man is the measure by which he judges of the like faculty in another. I 'judge of your sight by my sight, of your ear by my ear, of your resentment by my resentment, of your love by my love- I neither have nor care to have any other way of judging about them. And this good old moral philosopher was right when he took those deep soundings of human nature. A true templar cannot but have confidence in his brother templar ; he may understand little ox his character, and know nothing of his past life, but lie knows the binding obligation of his own, and he must continue to trust him. until he has open and actual evidence of his fall, and then his strongest feelings will be those of surprise and sadness mingled with an earnest prayerful hope that he may be reclaimed. Our regalia is simply a badge of our Order, and we wear it in token of such. : But the true templar thinks very little of outward trappings, though he does not despise them— they are not tawdry though they may have appeared so to the ' jaundised eye' of the '' Sundowner." We can afford to smile at his badinage and forgive him for the mistaken thrusts we have received at his hands, being fully persuaded that we will have the best of it in the long run,, and that he may be thankful in his declining days to take" refuge within the fold of "Good Templary." We are inclined to think that a new " Sun" will arise for him with steadier ray, when the 'shadow of the old' has virtually passed away. And we assure him faithfully that we will have more satisfaction in welcoming him as a brother than we would the wealthy aristocrat who is unwilling to deny himself his bottle of Maderia, and who shelters himself under a more respectable name. —
Yours, &c, GOOD TBMPLAEY.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AMBPA18770622.2.13
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Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 97, 22 June 1877, Page 2
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656ORIGINAL CORRESPONDENCE. Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume I, Issue 97, 22 June 1877, Page 2
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