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Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4376, 12 January 1883, Page 3

,{To the Editor of the Evening Star.)

' Sib,—ln a leading article in your contemporary, on the immorality of " the Thames and its causes, the editor appears to throw the principal blame upon Free Thought publications. In a broad sense everyone who ventures to think diff-re»tly to his neighbour is a free thinker. In a narrow sense Free Thought is generally confined to 1 those who do not believe in God and a future life. I suppose erery one has his own opinion as to the causes of all,-this immorality. My opinion is that,the restraints., of religion have lost their hold-on the public, and the cause is. the religious teachers of the day do not meet, the wants of the age. They do not supply the mental and spiritual food , the thoughtful require. Much that they say they cannot prove, and this causes many people to turn away in disgust, and allows the whole thing to slide. People drop into a state of' indifference. When man once gives up-irk belief in God and a future life, he breaks away from the centre of gravity, so to speak, and becomes a wandering star. As the solar system needs the great . centre of attraction to keep the planets in their right course, so does the moral and religious world need the Infinite Spirit as a centre of attraction, that all human spirits might" revolve around. ,1 cannot j conceive of a high toned morality without : it.' But,.once..men have a strong conviction of the presence of this great soul of the universe that we are responsible tc— from the control of whom no man by any means can escape the resultof his actions, and that whatsoever they sow^now they must reap hereafter —no external law could possibly produce the palutory effect this internal principal would. In one exi«fs, and 1 so sure as that God is allpowerful, so sure wii! He accomplish His great, grand, and glorious purpose, and no power can frustrate or overturn His f-rand design,. That must be the perfection of the great work that I!e has begun—particularly man, His son, His offspring, aitd His neer. relation. It is for every man to act-his little part well, in the great drama of life, in order to assist in bringing about lliis resuU.-rl am, &c., ;,...'■- J.'HOEN.