(Continued from page 2.)

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue 7384, 10 February 1902, Page 4

raid Sunday work. But though it was knitted that these requests were tasonable and possible of fulfilment ttle had been done in this way. The >ply was " Will the suppliers agree.' Fhen you touched the industry nywhere, that was the allbsorbing argument, "Will it pay?" loral considerations were entirely mored. The speaker referred to arious excuses and satirising them s insufficient and the outcome f spiritual blindness, said while it was 10 part of Christian duty, and, indeed, . fault to ignore the " things which are een " whether in relation to providing or one's family, or in relation to taking tart in the ordinary duties of Christian itzenehip, there was a terrible danger o the individual, and a hindrance to the lommon good in paying so much afctenion to temporal matters that eternal natters were lost sight of. To some nen breach of the Sabbath law was a mall matter. The great question was, vhetber the reduction of Sabbath abour would not interfere with the size >f their cheques ; and their bad influence, le was sorry to say, was already risible in this district. He spoke >f a growing unwillingness for Christian york by some, and a falling away from deals formerly set up by others as ividence of this. He was not in the larrow sense a strict Sabbatarian, and ;new there was much that must be done >n Sunday in factory and on farm, but vhen he knew that on Sundays men :ut their corn, sowed their seed, wrote mt their cheques — he could prove that n one part of the district a fourth of the iheques drawn were written on Sunday —and that in another place, not ten niles away, scarcely ahorse was broken n, that was not handled on Sunday, he tvas justified in saying that much unnecessary work was done. He had seen all over the colony except the West Coast, and he told them that for impious and blasphemous Sabbath breaking he had never seen anything to equal what he bad seen in this province of Taranaki. It behoved all Christian people to set their faces determinedly against this. Then they saw evidence of the moral effect of dairying on many people by the grasping spirit, and by the unwillingness to part with money for religious or charitable purposes. Many a man pulled a long face if you asked him for 5s a quarter in support of bis church, though drawing a cheque of £90 per month for his milk. He knew men getting from £90 to £150 a month from whom you could not get a pound for religious or charitable purposes. People said they had to pay such high prices for their land and such high rents, and he feared that often it happened that men were encumbered by going into business in the industry sooner than they should have done. If they had saved for a few years instead of getting someone else to find the capital, so much would not have been heard of the financial stress. The speaker also implied thai in his opinion there was too much haste to get rich. In the Old Country men would be content to work 30 or even 40 years' to make an old age provision of £4000 or £5000! but here many wished to make it in ten years, and often it could not be done without outraging God's laws. If we were to receive continued blessings from this great industry, then it must be conducted more in harmony with God'a laws and social morality, and and in conclusion be indicated his opinion while there was nothing in the industry which must necessarily lower the spiritual lives of the people, yet it all depended on the manner in which men went into it, whether their sole object was to make money irrespective of everything else, or to manage their business as Christian men, recognising that God's eye was on them.