A SERMON ON TRUTH.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 81, 18 November 1911, Page 5

A SERMON ON TRUTH.

AN EGREGIOUS AND MANIFEST FAILURE. PROHIBITION FOUNDED UPON A LIE.” “Know the Truth and the Truth shall set you free.”—John 8, 32.

PREACHING on “Truth,” at St. John’s Church, Stockton, recently, the vicar, the Rev. F, S. Willoughby said“Of all pampered, petted, and patted-on-the-back ‘isms’ in the last(say) half century, I should class Prohibitionism amongst the very first. All its peculiar nostrums and vanities have occupied the stage here or there, more or less. So much so is thins the case, that it is safe to say that all • its many and various jerrymauderings and poltrooneries have boon abundantly tried and most of them as abundantly found wanting, in that where they are supposed to effect a cure, they invariably increase what they wanted to cure in another direction. And why should this be so? It is because the foundation of Prohibitionism is built on the shifting sand of a grotesque assumption or illusion. It confuses drinking with drunkencss,- and in order to keep on its tirade against the former it boldly transfers the denunciations contained in Holy Scripture against drunkenness to drinking. It confuses, I repeat, drinking intoxicants with drunkenness. To bolster up this impossible tenet which results from its mental confusion, it resorts to the pious fraud plan, and works its trumped-up mixed medley of things that differ as true for all it is worth. And with what result? I will tell you. Its objective when seemingly gained always successfully eludes its’grasp.’ After extolling tiie Truth and its power to free men from all forms of the bondage of evil the reverend gentleman concluded: — “I have no hesitation in saying that our prohibition-raongering is an egregious and manifest failure. It is founded on a lie. It has brought out licensing legislation into the most befogged and befooled muddle imaginable It has imposed guards on drunkencss with one hand, and opened concurrently other channels for it galore with the other. It has undermined religion in our land. Much of the indifference wee see around ns was bred in teetotal circles, where taking no intoxicants was taught as the sum and substance of Christianity. As I said before, prohibitionism has had an unimpeded innings, in our land, its pious, fraudulent talcs have been allowed every hearing and practical help by legislation and administration ; and the propagation of its specific tarradiddle has begotten tarradiddles in the .public mind.” i >;;.; ]■, Therefore if the people would'put an end to a movement that lives ostensibly upon tarradiddles and is founded upon a lie they will strike out the bottom linos on both ballot pap crs. Every lover of true temperance w ill do it*