Leslie's Journal. A HOME THRUST.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2513, 18 August 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

Leslie's Journal. A HOME THRUST.

Archdeacon Farrar, in a recent sermon, presents a somewhat novel, but certainly very cogent argument for the support of missions in barbarous or semi-civilised countries. He says: 'Missions are incumbent on tis, because—to our shame be it spoken, and I hope it will go home to the heart of every Englishman here— we have taken with us all over the world a ruinous and clinging curse, the curse of drink. It is not the only wrong we have done by ?ny means. The kidnapper has gone forth from us to the sweet Pacific Islands ; we were for years guilty of the execrable slave trade. The diseases we have afflicted have been bad enough, but our drink is worst of all; and as yet the conscieucc of this nation is as hard as the nether millstoue to the fact of our guilt. Let the shameful truth be spoken, that mainly because of drink, our footsteps among savage races have again been footsteps died in blood. The wild tribes of Africa, the once flourishing Hottentots and Kaffirs, the noble Maoris of New Zealand, the native tribes of Madagascar, decimated, degraded, perishing, uplift to us in wrath and in supplication their appealing, their indignant hands. We have cursed India with our drink, and our drunkenness ; and at this moment, after so short an occupation, we are cursing Egypt with it too. We have poured upon these nations the vials of this plague of ours, this vice of our people, this bane and leprosy of our civilisation —arc we not bound to give them the antidote ? There is only one course which can hush the voices which louder and louder are pleading trumpet-tongued to God against this nation, and that is to give them the blessing and the antidote to this crime which we have taken to them ; that is the only course which can avert the onus of our crimes ?'—Q. E. Standard. London has at least five flourishing and well-housed clubs for women. The most fashionable of these is the Alexandra ; the literary, or Bohemian, the University. Jewish tailors of Leeds, England, want less hours and more wages. They have been working from sixty-two to seventy hours a week for from Is Gd to 4s 6d per day. A velvet-pile Persian carpet was recently sold at auction in Paris for £1520. Some fine old tapestries of the Fifteenth and Eighteenth centuries brought extraordinary prices. The light at St. Catherine's, the most southerly point on the Isle of Wight, is now the most powerful electric light in the world and the fog signal is a steam horn of great power. Smith—l see by the papers that the Dey of Algiers is dead. Jones—l'am glad to hear it. It's time that death took a Dey off. —Texas Sittings. The heirs of the late Sir Joseph Whitworth will give to tho city of Manchester, England, £1.35,000 for a Wbitworth Insti- j tute of Art and Industry. A Newfoundland dog was pushed in- r to the Niagara river at Prospect Point, c on the Canadian side, the other day and 8 went over the falls. He was not injured. j. A parrot that was valued at £00 died j in i'oughkeepsie recently. It could sing, v talk, and swear in the English, Dutch, { and Portuguese languages. g Tiie British four-masted ship Ellisland c cleared from Port Townsend with 0 1,881, 523 feet of lumber for Hobson's 0 Bay, Australia. This is the largest n single! cargo ever taken from the „ Sound. v