WELLINGTON.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3592, 16 January 1883, Page 3

WELLINGTON.

This day

At the Magistrate's Court to-day Mr Knigge, proprietor of the Brunswick Hotel, was fined .£lO and £2 costs on a charge of adulterating beer with sulphuric acid. From the evidence it appeared that there was no wilful intention to adulterate, but that the jar in which the beer was sold had previously contained sulphuric acid. It is probable that a charge of Sunday trading will emanate from the case.

The Rev. R. Coffee, preaching from the ninth verse of the eighth chapter of Acts, at St. Mark's Church on Sunday evening, referred in strong terms of condemnation to the position taken up by Mr Milner Stephen with regard to his alleged powers of healing, and argued that while that gentleman persisted in attributing the possession of his gift as direct from God for the good of mankind, or for any special Godly service, lie put himself in the position of the prophets and apostles, whose gift of power to work miracles was credential, showing them to bethe messengers of God, and for the exercise of which they dared not and did not receive money, and Mr Milner Stephen dare not take money for the exercise of this gift (if it were a gift) without putting himself in the position of Simon, and all who countenanced him by their presence were equally guilty. Mr Coffey mentioned that a number of persons had asked him to certify that they were not in a position to pay the fee demanded by Mr Stephen, viz., two guineas, and added that lie thought such v charge would amount in a year to at least £10,000 - -rather a good price for a " gift" which Mr Stephen asserted had been bestowed upon him for the benefit of humanity at large, while the manner of receiving it free was to the poor rather a humiliating way of deriving benefit from God's gift.