Parsons, People, Prohibition.

Southland Times, Issue 18013, 8 December 1902, Page 3

Parsons, People, Prohibition.

TO THE EDITOR. Sib,— Now that License or No-license is decided, I must speak out. It is no time to be mealy-mouthed, for great issues and great princir les are at stake and the truth must be told. As I have thought over the matter for months lot no one say I have been hasty. Every man and woman in New Zealand — and particularly every minister of religion who voted for reduction or no-license without compensation, has done an unju-t, unchristian, unrighteous, unwarranted and indefensible act for which many of them are now—or ought to be —suffering from the pangs of remorse. The way’ to right a wrong is not by committing another wrong, which every minister has done who preaches and practices prohibition, for nowhere in the Bible will he find this teaching inculcated; and by doing so he carries out with a vengeance what he accuses the Jesuits of doing, namely, using the end to justify the means, a course chat that cannot be defended no matter what the wrong may be. To bring the subject home to everyone who so voted, I say that every minister who preach and uses his church for teaching his fl .ck prohibition is degrading his calling and bringing the word of God into contempt. If he stops at temperance I have no fault to find with him. Now that the wrong has been done the clear duty of the vestries and Kirk Sessions throughout the colony is to give notice to every minister that he must preach the Gospel of Christ- and that only in his church —and that until such time as the Parliament passes an Act of Compensation to those hotelkeepers who have suffered by such wrongdoing, his stipend—if he voted reduction or no-licence —bestopped at 30th June next, and the money applied, along with the salaries or incomes of others who voted with him, towards compensation to the sufferers, the full measure of which will, no doubt, later on be cheerfully pissed by the Parliament and people. Giving the women a vote is the main cau eof the wrong that has been done. J know I shall have them down on me for saying so, but I cannot help that. J he business affairs of the world have been until now rightly ruled by man—the breadwinner. It the Bible teaches us anything it teaches us that, and the ministers know it; and they also know, and the women know too and openly say se, that women ate not by nature fitted to rule the world. Their world is the home, let them rule that—which they are quite capable of doing —and leave the rest to us. As a pure matter of justice and for no other reason, I and many others think that the Act granting the franchise to womt n should be repealed. —I am, &o. William Handyside. Invercargill, 6th December.