WAITAHUNA

Otago Witness, Issue 2524, 30 July 1902, Page 45

WAITAHUNA

July 28.— Mrs Harrison Loe, on behalf of the • New Zealanu Alliance, lectured in Waitihuna last Monday evening. The attendance at the lecture was rather limited, due, partly, to the short notice given cf Mrs Lee's intended visit and partly to the inclemency of the weather. With the substance of Mrs Lee's lecture it is ■unnecessary to deal, as it is treated daily in The newspapers, but a few words on the method of conducting these temperance meetings will not be out of place -that is, the method that obtains in AVuitahuna and a few other places. It is not good policy to aeize every opportunity Rt a public meeting to indulge in Bible reading, psalm-singing, and prayer. Notice that I use the word "indulge"; I do so because the practice is nieroly indulgence in excessive "'spiritual lefreshment" (save the marl- N . If we want prayer in public we know v.^re to go to find it, in its proper tune and pluce. It is useless to remind me that our LorJ K'dieel: says we ought "always to pray" ; I enn nowhere find that He insisted on vocal prayers tit all seasons, and the parable of the Pharisee and thp publican geems to me to be applicable nftw and a^cTa at these meetings. The subject of prohibition is one of the leading political questions of the day, and a prayer meeting in connection with it is as much out of place a.9 it would be if the Acting-Premier called a prayer meeting to consider the Financial Statement of tho colony. On Monday night, when I arrived at the door, a chapter from the Bible ■was being read, about a dozen young met were standing about, aud this is what I heard: "Children of Gideoa! Whew! 1 thought Mrs Harrison Lee was going to lecture- think we (will go for a. stroll," and they went for a stroll, all rollicking, manly young fellov/a, no larrikins among them, sr.ymg as they went they "'couldn't stand that sort of thiug." When the Bible reading came to an end, having a soul too well seasoned to be damaged by any floating particles of piety, and wishing to hear Mrs Lee. I entered the hall, to find, as I fully expected, the audience composed mainly of women and total abstainers, of people who, wrier any circumstances, would be " blue ribbon" and churchgoers. The people whose support tho Temperance party want, and whose votes they &s» striving after, are turned away irom their doors by the imprudence and overso'.icitousness of some of their members. The other side make no such blunders. Instinctively they go the right way about securing popular support, and then the temperance advocates grieve and wonder over their failure ■to attain what the other 3ide have no difficulty in keeping. Accident. — A young man nfined Arthur Bateman, employed as a blacksmith, met with » serious injury to h:s eye- yesterday. He has been admitted to the Dunedin Hospital, but the extent of his injury i: not known yet.