A REJOINDER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 2639, 11 June 1889, Page 3

A REJOINDER.

to the editor. Sik,—Will you kindly allow hip. space in your columns to..thank the liov. C. H. Garland for hiV:gener(ius defence of mo in Saturday's WaikatoTtmks. Heaven protect me against such a defender, ;md preserve one from such '"charity" as is lavished upon mo by the rev. gentleman, who with one. hand prfetends to hold a shield in front of me, while'with the other t-o stabs mo in the buck. Fortunately,

uncultivated" though I may be, : Tam quite able to defend .inyeolf, and. although the paragraph Mr Garlafld object* to was written in a jocular vein, as might be clearly seen by the latter portion of it, there was nothing in it that would lead any one seriously to believe that the writer had formed any such ''conclusion" as' tpat attributed to him in Saturday's letter. "My paragraph merely drew attention to tho extremely "illogical" way in which "Zeitgoist's" article was worded to convey the meaning he no doubt intended, and I still maintain that the only logical inference to be drawn from that article is that Sunday scholars furnish the bulk of our criminals, and, if drink is the principal cause of crimo, that Sunday scholars are peculiarly suseeptiblo, above all others, to drink. I have no statistics on thn subject handy, but I don't think it is too much to assume that at least one-third of the youth of Great Britain are not Sunday-school scholars, but say even that seven-eights of the population have enjoyed tho advantages of Sun-day-schools for six or eqven , years, there is still an undue proportion of criminals ami-ing them. This is a startling fact, and I seo by Saturday's Herald, in the last column of the third page of the supplement, that this very subject has been seriously considered by the Free Svnod of Glasgow. From the remarks of the Rev. Mr Mnckay, there quoted, it will it be seen that there are among the clergy, those who are honest enough not to lay all tho blame on " tho drink," or this, that, or the other, but where it really lies, upon the apathy of the churches, and the incapacity or indolence of ministers. In conclusion I must positively decline to accept Mr Garland's "charitable" statement that I am "daft," and would remind him of a certain Festus who accused his prisoner of madness because he could not understand him. —I am, &c. John H. Johnson , . Cambridge, June Bth, 1359.