"GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS, THAT NOTHING BE LOST."

New Zealand Herald, Volume XX, Issue 6819, 25 September 1883, Page 6

"GATHER UP THE FRAGMENTS, THAT NOTHING BE LOST."

TO TUB EDITOR. . .. Sir,—The noonday'sun will, if permitted/ show every fleck of diet ; moral sunshine is not less beneficent,'if man- is the reasonable, | responsible being lie ia said to be, of im- } mensa capabilities of good and evil—of good' i to be developed of evil to be repressed,, here and now. ." God kindly gave our blood a. moral flow;'.' and ho means it shall bo moral if it is to continue , ,to flow .with healthful' energy. Both observation, and experience, teach this. -And yet, by that trinity of hell —war, the liquor traffic, and the Contagious Diseases Acts (they; aire all of a piece); the legitimate outcome- of bratd pas3ions'—man has tried to prove himself wiser than God; : by licensing panderings; to "the lowest passions, and pretending to wonder that "they spread; (See quotation in yester-, ■day's HeraXd.re the above'Acta:) "If vice is to be protected and encouraged wo iiuist.ac.-j cept.the consequences. The. good: God of infinite love and wisdom wdl not.attempt.to save us from them; why should . man ?. Better; a thousand times better, endure, the. consequences, however aggravated, of permitted vice; than pander to it. ; The chastity of her women should, be the nation's, chief; concern. Woman . lost,. all is -lost. Yet women of a certain order are to be regarded as -"-scapegoats" by the unreflecting, who judge- of things from what they seem, not 'from what they are.. The Christ I love (wo have not yet improved npon His Wisdom) has j said-of the meanest -things,. " Gather up the fragments, that nothing be lostbut man is so wasteful in thought, in word, in deed, that woman even is to bo worse than wasted, |is "to be-, made. the : "scapegoat " ] ,q£ man's I vices, to the utter - ruin. boßy and soul, [of both- sexeH. Would that I might dare, to write with a hope of its appearing in print what, I believe,, the Christ I .love ; would say to-day of the blind leaders; of. the . blind, who aro dumb on the Contagious.. Diseases Act 3 and kindred evils, because, it doe's not,pay to be honest. ; -W.ith. combined' effort and Christian, true Christian, earnestness the Acts had •, never become law : ia. Auckland, the fair young laud of promise, in which no vice 3 . ought. to be patented; unless man can guarantee immunity from suffering tc those even who will to sin. It is tho sin, not the suffering, that muat be put down if right conditions of existence are to be attained for ■ any. living soul. Wo are s j tied together, in the bundle of life mentally, socially, commercially,- that.purity and goodness in one, however much we. may hata jtFiem,".are again to ail; whereas, impurity dud pollution; .h'oweyer much- we may love the in, are loss to all.' Common sense teaches this; and bo degraded, embruted, is our common humanity to this hour that its most rampant claims aro so deep a reproach to us as to form the strongest possible argument against their indulgence. " God would save the guilty if ho could, but it must be from s.'n, not to sin; and such can always save themselves in this world, although their path, is made needlessly difficult by the cant that Cfrawlb on'all-fours, before Mrs. Grundy, but cannot lend other than the cold, hand of charity to tho erring. Ob, how base our professed Christianity . has., become ! It* motto is "No pay, no kindness;" in other words, " I will give of that only which oosta .me nothing, or returns with interest and •compound interest,"—l am, &<?., j.."' ,:■■■■ Ellbn E. Ellis.