MR BOOTH'S MISSION. TO THE EDITOR.

North Otago Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 3973, 5 June 1885, Page 3

MR BOOTH'S MISSION. TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, — This correspondence must have already become a tax upon your forbearance, and your paper's space ; nevertheless I crave indulgence for the insertion of this letter to end my contribution to the controversy. Allow me in passing to tender you the thanks of the Blue Ribbon organisation for allowing the discussion in the columns of the NO. Times. At first we feared at this juncture it would prejudice our work, but vre are now convinced that so miserable an abandonment by our opponents of even an untenable position must favorably influence the temperance cause. "Only a Heathen," has been singularly unhappy in his reply to my last letter. Such a parade of vapid "nonsense and unmeaning tirade dished up for your readers without even an attempt at reasoning on the subject, is quite inconsistent with his professed high estimate of the intelligence and independence of thought of our colonial community. Like one whose mind has become unhinged, he wanders away from one subject to another regard, less of connection or bearing, and I must take the liberty to state that that portiou of our people whose opinions he assumes to champion must be very gullible indeed if they could swallow his absurdities. " Only a Heathen " should not make statements of our church dignataries, or of our home British community quite opposed to the history and experience of our times, and if be must be poetic let me beg of him to be accurate in his quotations, and let Tennyson's couplet appear as originally written —

Theirs not to reason vfhy, Theirs but to do and die.

Why must "Only a Heathen " drag Bible inspiration into this controversy 1 the subject is quite too profound for him. Men of acknowledged ability have tilted at it and returned from the encounter miserably defeated, and will "O.A. H." essay tbe task 1 Let me in all the earnestness of Christian sympathy ask him to allow Gospel teaching to influence his life, and he will cetse to be " Only a Heathen," and become an earnest advocate of truth and right, and realise the blessedness of those who are branches of the True Vine.

A Lover of Temperance.

[Thii correspondence is now closed. — Ed.]