CARDINAL MANNING ON DRUNKENNESS.

Waipawa Mail, Volume I, Issue 30, 25 December 1878, Page 3

CARDINAL MANNING ON DRUNKENNESS.

Awaking at Middlesborough Cardinal MAfeng said :—Drunkenness wos not one •in alone. So long as a man's brain was clear his conscience was watchful, and his will was strong, and moreover his passions were kept under. The tempter knew well eriough that to put a temptation of some great crime before a sober man would be to scare him just as an unskilful fowler frightened the birds which he would take, losing hia prey by want of skill ; so the tempter, who was always on the watch, would not tempt a sober man until he could make his brain reel, his conscience grow dull, and his will weak, and set his passions on lire, and then there was not one of God's commandments that that man might not break, and no sin that a •nan could commit of which that man might not be guilty. Therefore, when he said drunkenness was not one sin only, he meant that a drunken man was capable of committing all sins ; and he would go further, drunkenness did not destroy one soul Alone, but it spread havoc on every side like wildfire. A drunken father would wreck a whole household; a drunken mother, if possible, was still worse, and a drukeu family in a neighborhood would make tneir neighbours drunken, or at least tempt them to do the same. They knew that a little leaven leavened the whole lump, and that when evil once began it spread like a circle in the water, so that he might say with truth that one drunken man or woman was the beginning of the wreck and the ruin of he knew not how many souls besides.