PROHIBITION.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 250, 21 October 1924, Page 8

PROHIBITION.

APPROACH FROM WITHOUT. ANGLICAN BISHOP'S VIEWS. ROOM FOR DIVERGENCE. (By Telegraph—Special to "Star.") DUXEDIN, this day. Bishop Jlichards, in his address at the opening of the Anglican Synod, said: "I think it would be a mistake for the Church to enter into the conflict which is being carried on in connection with prohibition. The Church approaches the subject of temperance from within; prohibition is an approacli from without. It may be urged that the result desired in each case is the same, and that, in endeavouring to secure national temperance, prohibition is itself a religious question, and therefore should have the co-operation of the Church. In so far, however, as it is a religious question the Church has already pronounced upon it by obedience to her Lord's command in the consecration of wine to the most sacred use. But prohibition is other than a religious question; it is a social one, and to a large extent also it is political, while even amongst devout anil high principled men there is room for divergence of opinion upon it on grounds of expediency. It may be possibly the best means that can be devised for freeing the nation from the enslaving and deadly evils of intemperance, which we all deplore, but, on the other hand, it may not be, and it cannot lie regarded as an ideal way for making men really temperate, and where it has been already tried it is not clear that its resulting action is altogether good. "The problem is by no means so simple as it *It is both complicated anil difficult. The fact is that the drinking habits of the people do not stand alone; they arc connected intimately with social instincts, with conditions in the home, with home training, and with other things too numerous now to specify. These all have to be reckoned with, and it can hardly be expected that a satisfactory settlement can be attained by the simple expedient of a stroke of the pen at election time compelling the nation to such a perilous adventure ns prohibition. But the question should not be shelved. We are all vitally concerned, and surely it would bo well for people of different views to make it a matter of study and prayer, and to meet together for discussion and for counsel upon it. But this is not the spirit in which prohibition is usually presented in New Zealand. It is brought violently into the region of party strife and of politics, and should the"Church in her corporate being allow herself to be dragged into it, just like any political association, she would be in danger of losing her vision of the eternal, and would certainly be weakened in spiritual influence, which is her peculiar glory."