TEMPERANCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 880, 11 January 1889, Page 7

TEMPERANCE.

THE TRAFFIC AND NATIVE RACES.

I protest against this detestable traffic because of its neutralising effects upon the efforts of our Christian missionaries. Why should we go to the heathen world handicapped and hampered by these men who have no oare but to make money, and who have yoked the car of appetite to the car of Mammon —a new alliance, hb we have seen in those days—that they might ride all the more surely over men ? Oh, brethren, let us, as representatives of the missionary societies of the world, rise in our might, and say it is time we should be unhampered by and delivered from this terrible evil. If the Christian Churches in England were united and in earnest and right, no Government whatever could resist them, and no evil in the world could stand before them. * God is in the midst of her, and He shall help her, and that right early.’ So let there be no pessimism amongst us in regard to this. The fault is our own. Pessimism is the creed of those who have no Christ. Courage is the characteristic of those who know that they have Him in them and in the midst of them. With Him one of us we should chase a thousand, for the Lord our God, he is fighting for us, as He hath proraised. But let us uever forget that, on the other hand without Him, two of our adversaries will put ten thousand of ns to flight; for the power is in him, not in us. His power, however, will be in us if we go forth in His name—a united, earnest, holy band to do His work. And we must go with clean hands. This thing must begin at home, on both sides of the Atlantic. You know the lighthouse tower ? It has sometimes seemed to me as I have been sitting in these Conferences, that the missionary cause might be fitly compared to the lighthouse : * To give light to save life ’ — that used to be the inscription on the Eddystone —and that in the highest of all senses is what we Christians must seek to do through the missionary enterprise. But how much.’ light will get through if you suffer the lantern to be all blacked with drink ? We demand that that shall be removed, and that the lantern shall be clear and translucent. Again, how much light will be given if the reflector be dim ? Tho lamp will shine alone ; but its illuminating power is intensified, and its illuminating area is increased, with the clear brightness of the polished reflector behind it. Go to the lighthouse, and you will see that every, thing is spotlessly clean. And so, in Europe and America, if we would cast our light over the darkness of heathenism, we must have everything clean within ourselves. The' bright reflector of a holy Church behind the lamp will inake it shine with beneficence the world over. For that let us labour ; for that let us pray ; and let us determine in the might of God to lay low everything In the *

shape of demoralising traffic or evil that confronts us. Concerning this drink traffio with native races—we are not here as teetotallers or prohibitionists, or I might say something more—but concerning this drink traffio amongst the native races, I say, let us knock it on the head and sweep its kennel clean out.—Dr. W. M. Taylor.

/ I protest against this traffic because of the retribution it is sure to bring on the nations who permit it. I rejoiced to hear the ringing words quoted by Dr Hudson Taylor from Mr Richard : * The goverment of God is real, the government of God is moral, the government of God is retributive.’ That retribution in the case a nation must come iu the historic continuity of that nation’s life ; for nations, as such, have no existence in the future state; and, therefore, the nation that does wrong in the sight of God is sure to be dealt with severely in His sovereign justice. Has Great Britain forgotten already the lesson of the Indian Mutiny ? Has America forgotten already the lesson of the Civil War? Why should wa let ourselves go to sleep again over an evil like this, and fold our arms, and say, ‘ Let it alone, it will take care of itself,’ or, as the governor to whom I referred iu the paragraph said to the native king. ‘We cannot interfere with the course of trade ?’ That has been said again and again in history, but its reminds me of the passage, ‘Yet a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep ; so shall thy poverty come as one that travaileth, and thy want as an armed man.’ Oh, that aimed man ! We saw him in America twenty years ago, and Gettysburg was the retribution of long years of letting it alone. You saw him in the Indian Mutiny, and that fearful time was the retribution of letting it alone. And are we to let this alone, and bring down still greater retribution upon our heads in America, and yours here ?