RELIGIOUS INTOXICATION. Services And Practices Which Undermine The Nerves And Health.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 396, 24 August 1889, Page 6

RELIGIOUS INTOXICATION. Services And Practices Which Undermine The Nerves And Health.

There is no doubt that human beings often become intoxicated, although they may be total abstainers. Indeed, asceticism in one direction often tends to excess in another. While we are grateful for the improvements which have taken place of late in the methods of observing Good Friday and Easter Sunday in the Established Church, we cannot conceal from ourselves certain dangers attaching to modern religious observances. Some mothers very rightly objected to their daughters, for example, spending the whole of Good Friday in church without proper food or sustenance of any kind. One lady states thatherdaughtercommenced at 6 o'clock in the morning, and remained in church until 5 o'clock in the afternoon. After an hour's interval she returned to the church again, and remained there until late at night. Recently a service, entitled c Tenebroa,' has been started by certain of the clergy, which consists of the gradual extinguishment of all lights as the service proceeds, until the whole building is enveloped in darkness. Mothers, quite rightly, object to the youth of both sexes attending such services, and they regard them as calculated to re-introduce all the vice and evil attaching to revivalist services of past times. What with communions from 5 a.m. onward, watchings, confessions, church duties and the multifarious services which certain clergymen now endeavour to induce young ladies to undertake, the happiness of many families and individuals is becoming undermined. For a clergyman who is bound by solemn vows to inculcate morality, sobriety, moderation, virtue and a tender regard for others, to use his church for organising and enforcing religious excess in every direction is, ( to prove himself an unfaithful steward, dangerous to the best interests of young and old alike. If some check is net put to the unwholesome excitements fostered by pertain of the clergy, many a daughter's health will be undermined, if her life is not ruined, • through the influence of her so-called father in God. In the interests of morality, of sobriety, of health, of sober sense and.of the national life, we protest against religious excess of all kinds, and we look upon the clerical intoxication here referred to as a - social danger which, if unchecked, must soon result in the degradation of many of the rising generation. — * London Hospital.'

' Bobby was ill. "Mamma," he said wear ilyoneday, " will I get well again ? ••Yesdarling," replied the mother," " you wil, soon be well again, and grow up to be a big man." Silence of one minute. "Mamma," he asked earnestly, "will 'l be a big man like Uncle Dick ?" " Yes, my dear. " "Then I guess," he continued thoughtfully, " I'd rather die." A certain hangman, when telling ' his victim 1 to "hurry-up," was met with this rebuff :•—•« What's your hurry ? ■ They can't go on without us." A Londoner now stores oils in glass barrele. , t<