Temperance Items

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 105, 21 September 1901, Page 1

Temperance Items

[advertisement.]

0 (Published by arrangement.) J. G. WOOLLEY SHREDS OF YARN. CoMPIiIMKNXARt. You have a high rate of Lubelligen 18, a law abiding population, rather cleanly p ‘liticu aa compared With many other countiies. What's the matter with New Zealand, that a publican h-s more power with the Government than a minUter of the Gospel? . The Christian manhood of this colony haa a right to hold the reins of Government. St ATE CeNTUOIi tit BuiET. Haters of the saloon with a Gothenburg attachment, who would fain con* tent themselves with putting the liquor traffic into better hands, to do a worse business for a smaller t-hare of the profits upon a stipulation that a proportion of the proceeds be devoted to charity. Power. Power influences the world far less by what i' does than by what it is: ... To feel power is a great thing for tha man that feels it, but it is nut worth a rap as evidence to tha worldly man. Tha churches in this country and my own are fairly crowded with tremendous feelers of power. We want to get tha Christian men together who have the stuff in them lo make the other fellow feel. To prove power to the outside world—that is the proposition. . . • And there is a most pathetic unanimity of confession that the voting Church in these countries has not power; but she must have it if this Government of yours aud that of mine are to survive aa Christian Governments, or even free Governments. . . . And in Chris* tian ciciz nship a very little straight-from-the-shou<der Christian doing isl» election day will support a lot of o’ass meeting testimony, and mass meeting resolutions, and consecration rows, and family players, and the like There were always people—good people, too, and there are still some in my country —ready to apologise even for human slavery; but the dram shop has no apologists, aud to every accusation simply lays its hand upon its pocket, pleads guilty, asks, with the brutal directness of the vulgar rich, “ How much is it ? ” pays the fihe, or the tax, or the license, or the mulct, or the bribe, or the contribution to the party fundaccording as the price of the public virtue is differently named or differently paid in different localities—and continues in business at the old stand, with increased facilities and even—brisker trade. Why does it not die? Well, to use a slang expression, it does not “ have to ” die, and it has scruples, or, at any rate, aesthetic objections to suicide* The Church, to be sure, has, by sundry sonorous resolutions, condemned it to death, and back of the Church —very far back of the Church, indeed—are thousands (or millions, if you include' all the countries in Christendom) ot Christian voters who bate the saloon thoroughly, but who have not the power, or who say they have not the pow. r, to stand by the voice of the Church at ;he e’ection, put the precepts of the Church into i xecution at the ballot box, and put the saloon to death.