A Man's a Man for a' that.

Woodville Examiner, Volume XIII, Issue 2384, 26 June 1895, Page 2

A Man's a Man for a' that.

Bather a curious coincidence took place on Sunday evening in the Methodist Church, Mr Stevenson, who took the service, happening to hit on the same subject as Rev. J. Wrigley had the Sunday evening before, the text being, " How much tben, is a man better than a sheep ? But the two gentlemen treated the matter very differently. One of Mr Wrigley's strongest points was the superior economic value of a man, he showing that the sheep in the parable' represented material wealth, and that a man had claims on others above the claim of material things; that no man, because he was a man plus capital, had a right to oppress him who was a man without it, and the opportunities it gave. He put in a plea for the brotherhood of man, and then went on to deal with other points of the difference between a man and a sheep. Mr Stevenson did not take up this point, but dealt with the mental superiority of man. He deprecated any idea of want of sympathy with athletic training, but he thought it was often carried too far, and that when a man went in for cultivating his muscle solely, he threw away the advantage of his superior intellect, and reduced himself to the level of the brute creation. "What good did such men as J. L. Sullivan or Donald Dinnie do to the community? A man was going to swing clubs for twenty-five hours to break the record, but it would be a useless expenditure of force because it would b 9 utterly un-reproductive. And after all when a man had trained himself to the very highest, and obtained the world's championship foe boxing or weight lifting he could neither fight a lion or lift as much as an ass. A man was better than a brute, because he had been given a brain by his Creator to enable him to accomplish his ends by skill iastead of brute force.