Some Plan Speakmg.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 242, 15 April 1897, Page 2

Some Plan Speakmg.

i At a farewell social at Hastings the other evening, the l\ev Dr Hosking thus unburthened himself : He wastnisintcr preted by the Press when ho was re- ' ported to have said li the Press were the 1: greatest liars out of Hell," aud that he ' had refused to allow the choir, at the ■ recent Christian Endeavour meeting to | sing " God be with you till we meet ' again," saying that l ' he did not want to " meet fcbem again " ; both statements ' were unfounded, Hawke's Bay was the most immoral place in the colony, and the churches here, more than anywhere, required to be aggressive in order to cope ' with the evils of gossiping, gambling and » guzzling. He always maintained a firm 1 stand on the drink question. He saw ' the iiower of tbe country's intellect, men for whom he held tbe highest esteem, | dragged down to the lowest state by the liquor traffic. The Colonial Press were 1 one sided on the liquor question, and ■ distorted facts and figures in its interest. He made use of the Napier and the local press in order to ventilate bis views on the subject. He succeeded admirably in gettiag up a correspondence, and in fact kept the three papers dauciag to his music. He bad been abused in the ! Press by swiping hoodlums aud empty . headed numbskulls, who stabbed a man under the cowardiy cloak of a norn de plume. He was found fault with for calling people liars. He would always say exactly what he thought, and if a man told a lie he would say, " Mr, you're a liar," the same as be would call a murderer a murderer, or a thief a thief. He did not uphold everything he said as ' correct, but a congregation should take 1 tbe wheat and le.ave the chaff , as they would eat the meat and leave the bones. 1 He always spoke candidly from the ; pulpit but never personally. Some of his congregation sought to dictate what he should preach, but he would not be dictated to, and those persons left bis 1 church.