PROHIBITION AND THE MILLENNIUM.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 5697, 16 October 1896, Page 6 (Supplement)

PROHIBITION AND THE MILLENNIUM.

TO THE EDITOR,

Sir,— Although I have been a total abstainer for some time, I do not like to hear prohibitionists talk as if temperance was the only Christian duty and drunkenness the only evil in the world. It seems to me that so much attention is being paid to the question of prohibition that other questions of equal importance, such as land, for working men, pensions for the aged, railway reform, State bank, &c, will be quite lost sight of, and I feat that ihe prohibitionists maycauße our Liberal majority to disappear during the coming election. Some of the prohibitionists talk as if the millennium would be sore to come aB soon as prohibition is gained, but I think that if they were to study the Bible a little more they would see that the millenium will not come until after the spirit of unjust commercialism is chained up. There is a spirit of just commerce that brings peace and prosperity to the world, and there is an unjust spirit of commercialism that is deceiving all nations and causing all sorts of evils. It causes poison to be put into good liquor, and food to be adulterated with all sorts of rubbish. It causes merchants to send poor sailors to sea in coffin ships and manufacturers to pay sweating wages. It causes rich farmers to keep on buying more and more land until they create desolation all around them, and it frequently leads, well-to-do men on to grasp more and more, until at last they overdo it, and end their days in bankruptcy and ruin. It causes bank managers, &c, to rob the widow and the fatherless by means of false balancesheets, and in some parts of the world it is caußihg men to destroy the natural resources of the earth for the sake of some small .temporary gain. It has turned Christian Europe into a vast military camp, and it is causing all nations to pile up the greatest national debts and to build tip the largest and most unjust monopolies that the world has ever seen, and most of the civil wars and massacres, we now hear co much. of. can be traced' to the action of the unjust, grasping Boirit. My letter would 'be. a very long one' if I put down half the evils that are caused by the unjust, grasping spirit, for it is the author of all the abominations of the earth, and it causes Christians to oppress their fellow men in a way that is quite opposite to the teachings of Christ. ■ If the prohibitionists will include the unjust, grasping spirit in the list of spirits; that they wish to prohibit then I will be with them. — I am, &c, Springston. J. WOODWARD.