BE CONSISTENT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XVII, Issue 5722, 20 March 1880, Page 6

BE CONSISTENT.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —Sincerely thanking Mr. Edger, 8.A., for his excellent lecture of last night, I yet dare to believe that for all practical purposes there are " a score of Charles Dickenses" in Auckland, if the reforming forces at command are utilised; and for the sake of every child born and unborn, for the sake of all that is holiest and best in man and woman, and for the sake of all that is vilest in the vile to re leem it, these forces shall be utilised when once woman's God-given work to bless mankind is sufficiently appreciated in all its height and depth and length and and breadth, to allow her to define clearly the line of demarcation between good and evil. If we would but read life aright, we should learn that all suffering is vicarious, or it fails in its divine mission ; and woman, by virtue of her more delicate organism, is nearer the heart of things than man can ever be ; she has been elected to work out its cure. And every good man would be ten times the man he is to defy the powers of darkness, and to champion the causa of right, if man and woman were one with the divine idea of oneness ; instead of which each sex is to this hour a a standing problem to the other, and virtually as wide apart as are the poles, with an estrangement painful to contemplate. In the deepest humiliation possible to man he has yet to learn that God knew what he was about when he made woman, in the highest sense, "a helpmeet" (meet, not mate, Mr. Editor) for man in all the walks of life—social, commercial, political, and religious. But, instead of becoming helpful to each other, thinking that he kuew better than Ged, man doomed woman to ignorance, shut her up within doors, and from that instant became to all intents and purposes her betrayer, not her pr.itector. Never did conventionalism, that falsest of devils, curse the world with a deeper curso than by making the woman-question unpo pular. Oh, the insensate folly of man and woman too ! My God ! what can this- world look like to Thee, when it looks so black to me 1 Black with a devilishness all of man not of devil; a devilishness which man and woman united would not tolerate for an hour, for they are " the salt of the earth" to conserve all good, to reform all evil, or if they prove unequal to the task, kill off the drones and give viceaf.iir field. Be consistent; make the tree good and its fruit good, or the tree corrupt and its fruit corrupt. For if truth and goodness means anything at all, the true and the good must be—there is no lmlp for it—must be a means of discipline to the evil and corrupt, with an oppressiveness hateful to hypocrisy.—l am, &c., Be Consistent.