STATE-MADE SOBRIETY.

Motueka Star, Volume IV, Issue 172, 14 April 1903, Page 4

STATE-MADE SOBRIETY.

Those who believe in State-made sobriety—in making people temperate, as we say, by Act of Parliament, may ponder with profit the following remarks on the subject, which we (Picton Press) take from an English paper received by the last maih They seem to us to go to the root of fhe matter : —"lt is really a misuse ot language to describe any Act of Parliament as a "temperance" measure. To speak thus is to fall into the old error of supposing that morality can be separated from Christian belief. The utmost that any legislation can rto is to prevent a man from becoming a drunkard ; it cannot change his moral character. Temperance is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, not of an Act of Parliament. No more have you made a man "temperate" when you have deprived him of the opportunity of getting drunk, than you have tamed a wild beast when you have placed him safely in a cage. The man who is controlled merely by certain penal checks has not learnt selfcontrol, and self-control is the very essence of temperance. Parliament can, and should, do something to prevent open temptation being put needlessly in the way of the weak. But that work is merety subsidiary to the infinitely greater one which has to be accomplished. In other words,| there is just one way in which you can make a man temperate—namely, by makin°him a Christian. To forget this, to imagine that morality can have any other substantial basis than religion, or that the spiritual needs of man can safely be ignored, is the increasing tendency of the State. It attempts the task which the Church alone can achieve, substituting legislation and prosecutions for faith and the means of grace. Therefore it fails to effect the good it might do, because it attempts j that which is utterly beyond its province.

"The drink problem is urgent enough. Every kind of material expedient for combating the evil has been

tried, and none has proved adequate. Model publichouses may be built, habitual drunkards black listed, and even, as in some American States, prohibition made tbe law of the land, and yet the law is circumvented—or vice, repressed in one particular direction, breaks out in another. Two lessons at least have been made increasingly cle;ir of late. The first is that all the parts of the social problem are intimately connected with each other The drink question, the housing question, and many another—all must be viewed together. If drink leads to poverty, poverty leads to drink ; and so through all the series. And the second point made clear is that which we have urged anew in this article. No attempt to promote morality can succeed which has regard only to the minds and bodies of men, and leaves their souls out of account. Not the ingenious scheme of a Home Secretary, but the power alone of Jesus Christ will enable mankind to conquer the tempt.ntions of the world, the flesh, and the devil."