TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9368, 18 May 1889, Page 3

TEMPERANCE AND ABSTINENCE.

TO THE KDITOR. Sir, — Your correspondent, who signs himself a " Clergyman," might as well have put his name at the end of his letter. We all know him. He is tho Rev. Rip Van Winkle, just "woke up" from a fifty years' nap in the Catskill Mountains, or other dormitory to which his family periodically resorts to avoid the glare of daylight, painful to their weak eyes. It is just 57 years since the seven men of Preston signed the first total abstinence pledge. They had arrived at the conclusion that " moderation " was quite ineffectual to reform the prevalent habit of drunkenness ; so they adopted the principle of " touch not, taste not, handle not." The last of these seven men died three or four years ago. When he got too old to work, some friends bought him an annuity, which he enjoyed for several years, the insurance office complaining from time to time that " that old fellow wouldn't die." The total abstaining progeny of these seven patriarchs now amounts to five millions in the United Kingdom, seven millions in the United States, and from two to three millions in the British colonies, while, in the course of the 57 years, probably half as many millions more total abstainers have been laid in quiet graves to await the resurrection of the just. The Christian Church was slow in coming into the movement. It was like a starved horse which will shy at nothing but a bag of oats, it is so strange to him. But by degrees they were coaxed into it; and now there are in the Church of England in Great Britain between 6000 and 7000 abstaining clergymen, including several bishops, numerous distinguished canons (such as Wilberforce, Farrar, Ellison), rectors, vicars, curates, big cathedral magnates, and indefatigable workers in the back slums. John Wesley hurled anathemas at the liquor traffic fifty years before your reverend correspondent lay down for his nap ; and of his followers in the ministry probably at least two-thirds are now total abstainers. Of the Primitive Methodists every minister is such, both at home and abroad. Of the Presbyterians, who in Scotland at least long believed that whisky was " a good gift of God and not to be refused," a very large proportion of the clergy and members of the laity have come to regard whisky as a device of the devil and the distillers, and the Scotch Church in all its branches is now prominent in the total abstinence cause. The Roman Catholics, both in England and Ireland, with Cardinal Manning, and many bishops and priests at their head, labour zealously in the cause, and have in the old country at least 50,000 followers in their total abstinence societies. If these facts had been known to your correspondent he would perhaps have been less superciliously dogmatic in his assertions, and not have been so rash as to put "Gospel Temperance" on the same footing as "Gospel bun shops and evangelical fruit stalls." In the opinion of your correspondent, the ministers of all

these sections of the church (and numerous others) who preach temperance sermons are simply the " tools of a faction, and have no more moral right to use the pulpit in the interest of total abstinence than in the interest of brewers' associations." Surely your correspondent had better go to bed again. Your correspondent further tells U3 that the " best thinkers " (who are they ?) " have long found out that you don't make men sober by signing pledges ; of what value is the signature of a child ot twelve scrawled on a temperance card." It is not a question for the " best thinkers" so much as for the best observers, and it has been observed by those who have made it a life study, that pledges taken by adults or children | are, to an enormous extent, kept through life. Of all the fifteen millions above alluded to (including total abstainers, old and young), every one of them almost certainly became an abstainer by takinothe pledge, they, at least, are abstainers still. That many do break their pledges is perfectly true, but so it is true of the pledges taken in baptism, whether by the recipient of the rite himself, or by the godfathers and godmothers. Hundreds of those whom your correspondent has baptised, and his Bishop has confirmed, will lead lives which will justify the assertion that they "will certainly go to the devil." Bub does your clergyman consider baptism or confirmation a failure on that account? One of the main uses of pledges and total abstinence societies is the same as the use of churches and church societies: " Two are better than one, for if they fall one will lift up his fellow ; but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he. hath not another to help him up." As regards pledges taken by children, the "best thinkers'"think it certain that the rapid progress of total abstinence of late years has been owing very much to the bands of hope, the inauguration of which preceded that progress, and whose members have since grown, and arc growing up to be, the officers and rank and file of the great abstinence army, who are now pushing - the cause even into conservative pulpits. I will not in your columns enter into a theological discussion on the question whether the Bible recommends moderation or total abstinence, or whether Paul recommended Timothy to drink the same sort of liquors as we do, and to drink them habitually ; or whether his injunctions apply to any but those who can prove that they have " Timothy's disease." But I shall be most happy to meet the rev. gentleman, if lie will come out in person, on any platform which we may agree upon in Auckland, to discuss the question of a Christian man's duty in reference to strong drink and the drinking habits of the period. Your correspondent goes on to tell us that "a boy of fourteen about to leave home, if affectionately warned by a mother he loves, is more likely to remember her words about the evils of intemperance, and to act upon them, than if he listened to Band of Hope addresses for a life-time." But how if his mother does not give such a warning ? How if the boy of fourteen does not leave home, but continues at home, and has the example set him there by his father, and perhaps his mother also, of the free use of intoxicating liquors—nay, even has it put to his own lips from babyhood upwards ? How if the boy, long before he is fourteen, has, with such examples, become a tippler and cigarette smoker, and half-a-dozen other bad things ? Would there be any harm if you could get hold of that boy, before he became such, in telling him a "few blood-and-thunder stories" which would show him the evils of stroii® drink, and get him the companionship o! other boys who have been taught to shun it, and with them have the subject constantly impressed upon his attention ? The mind of a child, as the Latin poet tells us, is like wax, easily impressed by the prospect of pleasant vice, but capable of being moulded to virtuous courses. _ Nobody supposes that the tacking of a bit of blue ribbon on a boy's coat will save him any more than the wearing of a black gown and a pair of bands will make a man a true minister of the Gospel; but, in the boy's case at all events, it may remind the wearer of the obligations he has taken, or of his mother's advice. Let the mother give her parting admonitions if she likes, but not be afraid of pinning on the 41 bit of blue *' at the same time.

" Clergyman's" attack on "paid teetotal advocates and their clamour" is not worth a reply. Is it worse for a teetotal advocate to be paid than for a clergyman ? Will it invalidate the truths delivered in ouo case more than in the other '! And as to the " clamour," I recollect a passage in a book which "Clergyman" ought to know, which says, "Cry aloud, and spare not;" and if, in addition to resembling the teetotal advocate in being paid, all clergymen would imitate him in his zealous utterances, their sermons would probably be more effectual than they too often are. As _ regards the concluding paragraph, in which it is asserted that "no civilised nations that have stepped out of barbarism have ever been satisfied with water as a beverage," it is simply, as a matter of history, untrue. There are millions of people in the East and South who cannot for a moment be described as savages, though their civilisation is not ours—Mahometans, Buddhists, and others in Asia and Africa—who are and have for centuries been absolute abstainers, who would never have known strong drink but for our carrying it to them in its worst forms. A* this moment we civilised Christian nations, are sending outfrom Great Britain, America, Germany, and France, shipload on shipload of the vilest spirits to the Congo, the Ganges, the Nile, and other places where the natives have never used it, so that the very banks of the rivers are said to be actually " paved with rum and gin bottles." This, according to " Clergyman," is about the right thing to do, and will, if they survive the seasoning, convert the savage";, into civilised nations.— am, &c., . William Fox.