MR J. G. WOOLLEY.

Evening Star, Issue 11645, 4 September 1901, Page 6

MR J. G. WOOLLEY.

HIS LAST LECTURE IK DtTNEDB*: It was a very large'meeting and a hearty one that Mr Woolley addressed in the Garrison Hall last night, and their singing of 'Onward, Christian Soldiers' to Sullivan's tune gave the proceedings a promising start. The Rev. J. Gibb, as chairman; contented himself with a few preliminary remarks in his best style. Mr Woolley commenced by reading from the first to the ninth verse of the 21st chapter of Deuteronomy, the leading-phrases of which are: "If one be found slain in t!ha land, lying in the field, and it be not known who hath slain him, then fchy elders and thy judges shall come forth, and they shall measure unto the cities which are round about him that is slain; and all the elders of that city, that'are next unto the slain man, shall wash their hands over the heifer that is beheaded in the valley, and they shall answer and sav Our hands have not shed this blood, neither have out eyes Been it He quoted these passages of Scripture for the purpose of drawing therefrom three lessons—firstly, the responsibility of a Christian Government for the protection of the weak and the tempted and the helpless and Hie overmatched and overborne of its citizens; secondly, the responsibility of the elders, the judges, and the authoritative people to the Government for the protection of the moral character of the Government itself; _ thirdly, the jurisdiction of the Divine authority over human judgments, to affirm, reverse, or modify them. Three plain lines cropped out of this old ledge of truth—namely, government by good sense, government by good faith, and government by the will and grace of God. He was speaking to Christian people—Christian, voters. He always* spoke to them, because they were • the most intelligent of the people, and because he thought in their manner of living they were the best of the people, and because, according to the light and knowledge they had in them, they—or many of them—were the worst of the people and therefore in need of missionary effort. Clean hands were a condition Precedent to prevailing prayer, and the puzzle and shame of the church of Christ was that it had reversed God's order, and, without making any intelligent effort to measure-up and define the relation of the Government to the liquor traffic, and the people to both, the church had been praying against tie drink shop—praying without faith, without good sense, and without clean hands, and there was nothing more hopeless ■ than prayer of that sort. Yonder lay the body of a drunkard. He was well and prosperous and manlv till he began to visit the publichonse. Who killed him? That was a very important thing. Send for the coroner"; let him empanel a jury, call witnesses, and investigate, and determine who the culprit was. Let the stomach of the dead man be** analysed for the poison. Let the rivers and streams be dragged for the lethal weapon. Let the detectives pursue the criminal and bring him to trial. Find out ue cause of death, and bring punishment on the head of those that deserve it. There was one thing that, as honest and thoughtful citizens, they must do, and that was to measure up aie situation. How far was it from the dead man to the public-house? How far was it from the public-house. to the Government? How far from the Government to the voter? How far was it from ihe hideous fact before their eyes to their voting hand? Measure the thing.up, and step it off like men. Be knaves if they would, but do not be fools. Every man and woman who had a stake in the country owed it first of all to themselves to measure up the situation. Until they L..X done this it was blasphemy for them to pray that the curse of God should fall on the liquor traffic. Some said that if they severed their connection with the fatal thing it would go on all the samet Perhaps it would. But they ' would no. go with it. If one's hands were crimson with the blood of a fellow-citizen slain by the liquor traffic that exsted by his vote he ought to be too much of a man to bother God with his prayers about the dram shop. God was a fact, and they who worshipped Him must worship Him in fact. This was not a torturing of the original meaning of the Gospel sentence. There was a tendency to run too much to spirit. There was too much refined technical research for spiritual phenomena jind not enough embodiment, of spiritual things. There was too much bookkeeping and too little business. There was too much introspection with regard to Paul's teaching and too little of the simple and practical application of the salvation brought by Jesus Christ. Jesus said "My Father worketh and I work," and it must not bo forgotten that God worked to-day through our forms of government. He (the speaker) was not able to believe that the uamo of Jesus would ever be greater than it was to-day. People were in the habit of saying that they would do this and that when they had voted the Liberal Government in or turned the Conservative rascals out, or had secured the return of So-and-so as member, and God's word to them was: " Why stand ve here all the election days idle?'" The world was literally packed with victories to be achieved by bi ave men and women who would step out and take them. Jesus Christ bad overcome the world, and yet men said that the drink traffic was an inevitable thiiig in the community and could not be suppressed, that they had no right to interfere with the personal liberty of a man who embrutcd himself and ill-used his family. The man who talked about the drink shop or tho distillery as being a necessary evil, or regarded it legitimate to draw a revenue from vice, or allowed it to be right that a dirty politician should represent a clean constituency, talked nonsense, or else he forgot himself or told lies. There was no such thing as a necessary evil, or there never was so unnecessary a thing as the life and death of Jesus Christ. God was manifes ed in the flesh that he m : ght destroy the works of the Devil—not disparage them, or make faces at them. The drink shop was the Devil's garrison fortress ; but it stood on conquered territory, and if the'old Book was to be trusted it could be invested and captured. But the capture would cost something. Could wo afford to pav the price? It would take time. Could we wait? Someone would be hurt jn the assault. Could wo take punishment? or did we need to be kept in cotton-wool? His (Mr Woolley's) work was to bring back the temperance cause to the church to which it belonged. He did not mean the church steeple, but that colossal energy that was geared up against the mind of God. It ha'' been the habit of the church to send out the temperance cause, much as one sent out soiled linen to the laundry, and by thus handing over the work to'travelling evangelists and preachers the cause and the church had both suffered enormously. Tho men thus sent out could not be expected to do much more than keep tho colors flying. The question for the people should be not so much "How can I get some drunkard or some little children to sign the pledge? " as " How can I get the Christian men and women of the nation consolidated into a fighting army to drive the liquor traffic to the he'.l from whence it sprung and whither it must go?" He refused to consider the temperance question as a thing outside the church. He declined to assent to tho drunkard being turned over to the missionary or the gold cure, or that the drink-seller should be dealt with only by the Licensing Committee. All alike were the church's care, and whilst he kept his health he intended that the church should hear about it. We had.a Gospel of tremendous dimensions, able to deal with any evil agency that hurt a man, cheated a child, betrayed a girl, wronged a woman, broke up a home, or damaged humanity in any way, and if there was any church that could not stand up for such a Gospel it ought to disband, and the sooner iho better. The current idea, that preachers were to save and cleanse the world was no good. It would never be saved or cleansed except by the small fidelities of the people themselves to the grace of God. The speaker concluded with an eloquent peroration, and The Rev. Mr Fairclough pronounced tie benediction. v .