Drunken Parsons.

Hastings Standard, Issue 370, 12 July 1897, Page 4

Drunken Parsons.

" Drunken Parsons I Have Met" was the sensational title of a lecture given a few nights ago in the Temperance Hall, Melbourne. The lecturer was Bishop Meyers, of the Free Church of England, a denomination which has at its head in Melbourne the Rev. Nathaniel Kinsman, the record matrimonial knot-tier of the Southern Hemisphere. Bishop Meyers has seemingly had the misfortune to meet many clergymen who were addicted to using more wine for their stomach's take than Paul could have possibly have had in his mind when he sent that notorious prescription to his young friend Timothy. Happily the awful examples cited were all Englishmen. By way of introduction the lecturer declared that "generally speaking, no better set of men existed than parsons although there were black sheep amongst them, just as there were in every profession." A story which created some amusement was that told at the expense of a liquor-loving curate who, when under the influence of driuk, startled a bridal party by reading the burial service instead of the marriage service, and who on another occasion, while preaching to a regiment of soldiers after a drinking bout, smacked his lips so often because of his dryness, that presently the whole regiment was smacking its lips too and firing a perfect volley at him. This Bishop also told of a rector, who, after drinking for two hours at the rate of fifteen glasses in half an hour, walked to his home, two miles distant, to all appearances as sober as the proverbial judge. This statement, according to report, was received incredulously by one or two stray topers who had chanced to drop into the meeting.