LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 3086, 17 May 1917, Page 6

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

"FOLLOW THE KING" Sirj—l notice that the executive o£ the New. Zealand Alliance passed a re-j solution the other day which called upon ministers of all churches to preach) a sermon on June 3, urging their hear-, ers "to follow the King" in the mattor; of liquor. As to "follow the King" IS] the very opposite of what the Alliance; aims at. —the compulsion of all to be| abstinent — I was surprised that the! executive should call upon reverend-; / ministers to preach such sernions.j Perhaps it is just ignorance and notfl intention on the pan of the Alliance.] "To follow the King" is not now to baj abstinent, but "to take a little stimu-j lant daily." It is quite true that the.', King personally and voluntarily r<H solved to give up liquor during the -war J but after his accident in Fntfce: the King was compelled to abjure liiai voluntary abstinence pledge and_ to tH turn to his former habit of using a; little- alcoholic stimulant every day,; and that abjuration has not yot Dcero, officially renounced. ■ The executive of the Alliance may, have forgotten—or may have overlooked the fact—that a Buckingham Palace* bulletin was published, in "The Times • (London), announcing that the Kuiflf had been losing in weight, and that* he was compelled "to take a little stimulant daily."/ Now, if we are alt to follow the' King, are the members! of the New Zealand Alliance to Set the* oxamplo, and henceforth "take a little> stimulant dally" for their Btomachs , '- eake, and their often infirmities, as< the Apostle Paul enjoined Timothy—; I. Timothy, v., 23. However, jnsteadi of raising disputations about this eter* nal liquor question, and dragging the churches into a vortex of fort-he* trouble, the executive of the Alliance and active Prohibitionists generally might be better , .employed in digging up"waste places, growing potatoes, and! keeping the peace. It is all verywelE to rave about Prohibition, but; Prohihition has produced nothing in ihe who!© course of its twenty-five years' agita-j tion'in New Zealand, save ill-will and; bad feeling in the community. And its latest resolvo is an endeavour to induce the ministers of all churches' to preach some doctrine that is neither in. accordance with religion w truJJh.—" 1 am, etc., / CrUOSTIAK