OUR LETTER BOX.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XXXXV, Issue XXXXV, 8 December 1903, Page 4

OUR LETTER BOX.

(We are at all times willing to publish correspondence on matters of public interest, but it must be distinctly understood that we are not ] identified with the letters of our correspondents.—Ed. Daily News.) M CENSING LAWS. (To the Editor). Sir,—The letter of your correspondent, " A Lover of Truth," exemplifies the correctness of i ••• o ]>ioverbs, viz., "" In vino Veritas." and "Truth lies at the botto.n of a well," and the " Lover," et. luis evidently got a bucketful of his diluted article from the very bottom of the well he drew from. " A truth that is half a truth," etc., I published as a saying of Isaiah, what that prophet'actually said, a.nd there is no twisting! into a fab'p meaning when the ipsissijma verba, of a person are quoted without- comment. But I may fairly comment on the twistvd meaning of the passage from the same prophet quoted h\ " A Lover of Trutiii." When Isaiah sti\-"'- —'• Woe to them that are mighty to drink wine, and men of strength to mingle strong drink," he evidently inveighs against excess and mixed liquors ; against abuse, and not template use. And, like Isaiah, everywhere the Bible inculcates temperance, and nowhere total abstinence. Nowhere, says your coi respondent, does the prophet refer to strong drink us a blessing, and here I mus-t join issue with him. When the land is to be cursed, the prophet says : " Gladness is taken awav. and joy out of the plentiful field ; and in tiro vineyards thore shall be no singing, neither shall there be shouting ; the treaders sluilj tread out no wine in their presses ; I have made their vintage shouting to cease." When the land is blessed on the other hand : •' And in this mountain shall the Lord of Hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things ; a feast of wine on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined." And again : /,'>Surely no, more will I give thv corn to be meat for thine enemies'; and the sons of strangers shall not drink thy wine for the which thou has laboured ; but they that have {fathered it shall eat it and praise the Lord, and they that have brought it together shall drink it in the courts of my holiness.'j The Bible throughout advocates the u«e of wine and strong drink io moderation as a beneficent gift of God, and therefore not to be despised. True, in the New Testament, under special condition, which do »vot prevail now, the counsels of perfection are advocated, but St. Paul is careful to qualify his personal predilections, thus : " But I speak by permission, not by commandment," and again : "I speak not by commandment, but by occasion of the forwardness of others,." And he uses the same guarded language re celibacy : " Now ooncerning virgins, I have no commandment of the Lord ;

yet I give my judgment as one that Imth obtamed mercy of the Lord to ■be faithful." These counsels of perfection are observed by those devout souls who though in the world are not of the world, and we find such in convents and monasteries ; but of ■such are not the demagogues «f the Prohibition party. The counsels are not, if fact, of general application, and were never recognised as such. When "A Lover of Truth" is prepared to follow them in their entirety ; to give up has wife (in St. I'aul's words. " They that have wives be afi though they had none") ; to abstain from flesh : then it will bo time to speak about abstinenee from wine. Meanwhile let him observe the modesty of St. Paul, and not talk as by commandment. The Biblical manipulations used by the Prohibitionist party try to teach as Bible truths jiew matter which they have imported into the sacred and as gprmanc to them as the book of Mormon. As St. Paul •says, " They are changing the truth -of God into a lie," and they calmly ignore the curse levelled on those •who alter the scriptures, whether by adding to or taking away from the words of the Book. The rest of you» correspondent's remarks need no comment—they are foreign to the »natter at Issue.—l am, etc., THOROUGH. >'«w Plymouth, Dec. 5, 1903. THE READING ROOM. (To The Editor.)

'Sir,—A Jew days ago a letter ap.peared in the News complaining that ■the papers in the Heading Room wer» iilevJ, and as one who has •uflered inconvenience from this omission, I should, with jour permission, like to write a few lines. I would suggest that the local and other leading daily papers should, be placed in the ordinary padlocked wooden frames (I don't know the technical name for them), say, a week's issue at a time, and that back issues should be fastened together in order, and hung on the walls—mot placed on a low shelf as at present. There are frequent complaints now of papers being taken from the room, and the frames would render this impossible, and would surely be preferable to the primitive method till recently in vogue of piuding l a niece of wire clothes-line through the paper, and stapling it to the table < The latter practice mads it impossible to see properly many of the fine illustrations in the weeklies so treated. Many of these illustrations, by the way, are quite spoiled by the free use of the Library stamp. It is a pity some of the sneak thieves that ren<W these precautions necessarv catinot be caught ; but the obliging custodian cannot be everlastingly in the room. A groat improvement too, would be a sloping frame on the table. Another suggestion I would make is that an extra copy of the day's issue of the local daifv papers be fixed to reading easels in t-he usual way. Again, is it not time thafi in a town of the size anil importance of New Plymouth subscribers had a room to themselves, where the cliief pajwrs, magazines, and Ijooks of reference could be kepi '.' For M»any years Waivganui has had such a roomf In conclusion, Sir, [ may say that 1 do not know who are responsible for the choice of books, periodicals, etc.. for the Library, but it appears to me that trashy novels, such as Nat Gould's and Haw ley Smart's, are much in evidence, and that almost every; mtapa/ine published—good, bad, and tmlinerwit—is represented. In mv humble <>i>inion, many of these maga zines might !*; dropped. As the ladies are evidently well looked alter, perhaps the directors might see their way to giving --mere Ulm -- ~„ opportunity of seeing that tine paper "The Vicld." and, perhaps. the "Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic, "-wl am, etc., W.H.V.I!. X»w Plymouth. Paw. 7.