"VON IN REPLY.”

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 19, 23 July 1879, Page 2

"VON IN REPLY.”

(fo the Editor of the Feildinu Gcaediajt.) Sis,—l c-onot see how oontraotors or rail, way bosses ear be shat gad with promoting drunkenness in others except they themselves supply the men with drink, for oontraotors pay these men for tbeir daily labor, and there it ends: I have been seventeen years on tha goldfields and lived in tente end huts quite eoralortabb, »s diggers think, for we get aoeuatoir ia to it, aud you will sea diggers and their families ootne into town, their drase as ’■ clean iynd respeotable as any in the oity. Of course ‘here is no absolute necessity for a ma i in wear a belltopyer and paper oollai with bliss studs to look respe .'table. Now, sir, I will state my opinion of drunkenness. Tne dri'.king custom may be described as consisting in giving and taking of intoxicating drink ns a beverage or refreshment, in all tbe branches of society from the higheet to th* lowest- For eximple they are oommon in m . (til ; end pa ting with friends, in buying and suiting, at raffias and at raeee, in foot in moat all transactions. Does not this tasting ocou.iionally lead too generally to tippling, and doea not this tippling lead commonly to drunkenness-' Thus may not these ouster' s bo said to be the means of producing drunkenness or to form the manufactory for making drunkards. And is this diatom beneficial ? Certainly nor,. If we take notics of ih: highest inedioal authority that in lexis eating drink is poisonous drink. However slow e poison it may b.,, on the ground of bodily injuriouxneet, although for o time ws may be insensible of r.juiy. the voioe of chemistry as welt as oimstiau.ty calls upon us to abstain from it, not o ur in eio sa, but in metarule use, or to use h. like o her pu.,u:i only vh.n medically p.-etoribcd. Con.iqucniiy 1 1 ougi.

be us**d not when in health but in sioknesft. not i” largtf but in email not in social but ir solitary doses not so often but as seldom as possible, and if possible, never! For it i* universally acknowledged that noth*, ing gain • or as the ;jhra«e is, eatg in upon one so daily, and so quickly and »trm*ly as intoxicsling drink'. On this acoount drinker, negn is eo nnbmon as it it, and the habit so readily contracted* Looking at tbit vice in the light of reak°H end morality, are wo not bound to support temperance hotels, or temperance clubs in place of public houses or rigb ly named, urnking dens. A.s I Btaled before,the Government could greatly diminish ( runtrenness, by imposing such a tax upon ell intoxicating drink aa would cause it to bo used as a drug and not.as a beverage, and to l? sold in the chemist shdp. Consequently tie facilities for obtaining intoxicating drink and for indulging in drunkenness would be greatly diminished, but not oomp’etely aon* ; pressed. But "after uil that the Goromment | might do externally, even at the utmost it can in no true sense cure drunkenness any more than any other vice, which is of a physical and moral nature. The true cure for drunkenness as we-i as fo* every other sin, moat be chiefly not of an external or physical, but of an internal or moral nature, and this cun* is not to be found in the power of the land, but at the Church or iu the means of Divine appointment with which the church is entrusted. For what means but Di?ine means can effectus ..y reach the heart, and (* rike at the root of the disease, so as to produce an internal renovation and an external reformation if it were otherwise! If human

means, even of the most powerful moral nature could be effectual for eradicating this sin from the human aeart, or for extirpating it from the world, thin it would follow that there is a vice for the destruction of which, and a virtue for the acquisition of which neither Christianity not the power of God is a* all required. This, however, is absolutely impossible from the moral nature of things as well as from our own sinful state. For we can neither practically deliver ourselves m any true sense from a single sin any more than finally make satisfaction for the smallest: (Jnais sted human strength is utterly unable

to afford support in the hour of temptation* Without strength from on high we are unequal to the conflict; we are safe only wheu we depend on a mightier arm than our own for support, for our strength lies in our sense of weakness*

I am, &c„ Ton.