RACE SUICIDE.

White Ribbon, Volume 16, Issue 185, 15 November 1910, Page 5

RACE SUICIDE.

[A paper l»y Mrs Storer, read at the Auckland Provincial Convention, October 5, 1010 J

“ Knowledge is power,” said Hacon, “ and on the use we make of it deponds “ our salvation from innumerable woes. “ Even the knowledge of evil may be “ used beneficently and serve godly “ end-."

A policy of lameZ’faire, or letting things be, won’t mend this horrible evil of “ Race Suicide,’’ and let me say with all the earnestuess of which I am capable, will it exonerate us who are clean from participation in it, before Almighty God, the giver of life. On that great and awful day of final judgment what account, my sisters, shall those give who have sinfully and deliberately tampered with the greatest fact in the Universe, namely LIFE? And what of us, my sisters, who have sat idlv by letting this horrible cancer, which is eating into our body politic, grow and grow and grow until it is imperilling all that is most precious and sacred in the home and in the Commonwealth ? Aye, if this revolting, diabolical, hideous practice, that would disgrace a heathen nation, is not speedily checked, the purity of womanhood, that is even now tottering to a fall, will crumble in the dust, anti w here are we as a Christian nation? Are we who profess to follow the pure and Holy Master. Who, when He was on earth, so tenderly took little children up on His knees and blessed them, are we, I say, to sit idly by taking no action? If we continue to do so we shall merit the brand of Cain, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” 0 for a thousand tongues to rouse the slumbering conscience of womanhood to the horrors of this vile practice. It has crept on and on and on like an insidious mephitic mist until it has obscured and

smothered the frontiers between right and wrong. “ Woe unto you when all men speak “well of you.’’ During the last fifty years or so women have been praised and lauded to my thinking far beyond their merits), and is this to be the awful fall ? this utter failure to realise their duty to God and Country and Home. Is this to be the result of the generous praise so lavishly bestowed on us by the sterner sex ?

“ Whatever is not of faith is sin,” Romans xiv., 2d. Herein lies the crux of the matter. A dear old soul, the mother of fifteen, who is nearing the borderland, said to me the other day in a voice of cheery confidence, “God never “ sent a mouth but He sent the food to “fill it.” Oh, for a return to that dear, true, though, alas, old-fashioned, standpoint! that the tampering with life even in its most initial stage is Murder, must be driven home to the hearts and consciences of our women. Yes, it is MU III) Ell ! Alas, alas, that we should have to say of so many of the women of Christian lands, “ You are guilty of “ Murder!” “Tremble, ye women that “are at ease; be troubled ye careless “ones; strip you and make you bare, “and gird sackcloth upon your loins.” Isaiah xxxii., 11. Nothing but disaster and ruin can come of frustrating the will of the Almighty, for wo read in Ephesians i., 4, “ He hath chosen us in Him before ‘‘ the foundation of the world.” This Race Suicide is rank rebellion against the will of the Most High God. It is kin to the sin that drove Satan out of Heaven. As ii. the Garden of Eden he tempted man to his fall by first tempting the woman, so now he once more in these last times comes with a subtle wile and lures to ruin our Christian womanhood, making the noble and honouied name of “Mother” a snare and a derision. As Milton says—

“ The infernal Serpent! he it was whose guile Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived The mother of mankind, w hat time his pride, Had ca.it him out of Heaven

We regard with pitying hdrror the Chinese women who destroy their girl babies and we send Missionaries to them to show them a more excellent way, but are wo one whit better than these poor souls? When we read in Exodus i., 11, of Pharouh, King of Egypt, issuing this decree, “ Every son that is born ye shall “cast into the river,” we exclaim “ What a monster of cruelty?” Hut again I ask are those who secretly practise this vice one whit better? And note in this connection that it was by the faith of one woman, —bless her,

dear Jochebed, of her it may truly be said, “she beiug dead yet spoaketh,”— 1 repeat, it was by the faith of this brave resourceful woman that a Deliverer and Law Giver was given to the poor heartbroken, down-trodden Hebrews. What a mother! and what a patriot'! Again I sav “ What is not of faith is “sir.” And now I approach a very solemn and very sacred subject. Ket us pause while the voice of the Eternal speaks to us out of unconsumable light, “ Put off the shoes from off thy feet for “the place whereon thou standest is “holy ground.” In that lovely maternity chapter the first of Luke we read. “The “ Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and “ the power of the Highest shall over- “ shadow thee: Therefore that llolv “ thing which shall be born of thee shall “ he called the Son of God,” Euke i.,

and in verse .‘is we read, “ And Mary “ said, ‘ Behold the handmaid of the “ ‘ Lord ; be it unto me according to Thy “ ‘ word.’ ”

My sisters, with all reverence and from the depths of personal conviction, I say if Mary had not had faith, if like the cruel tyrant of Egypt she had said “Let us deal wisely,” she could have robbed the world of its Redeemer. It was in the power of a woman to frustrate the eternal purpose of the Omnipotent.