Ashburton Guardian Megna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1893 WICKED DUNEDIN.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 3131, 16 November 1893, Page 2

Ashburton Guardian Megna est Veritas et Prævalebit. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 1893 WICKED DUNEDIN.

Our friends in the SoiiJ;h have recently taken a "pet" of righteousness. Two clergymen have from their pulpits been giving the world to understand that Dunedin is very wicked indeed. A perusal of the sermons, as published at length in the "Otago Daily Times" makes one fancy the preachers themselves have an idea that not even the five righteous men that Abraham pleaded for would be found in this Gomorrah of the south to save it from doom. The city seems to be largely given over to drunkenness, immorality and gambling, and the rev. gentlemen's figures as to houses, etc., in connection with the three classes cf improper conduct do not tend to show that Dunedin profits a very great deal by her abundance of churches, nor although " great j is the company of the preachers." But in the matter of the three classes of sin mentioned Dunedin is not one whit worse than any other large city in New Zealand, and the small towns are quite as bad in proportion, while compared with oydney or Melbourne, Dunedin would pass for a city of saints. The Dunedin people had hardly got over this snowing up of their iniquities when the Synods sat. One of the same clergymen fell foul of the commercial morality of the city, and said that the competition in the trade was so keen that merchants found it difficult to be honest. This so roused the ire of Mr E. B. Cargill—a name to conjure with among the " old identities,'* and a name, also, that even the most iniquitous of the *' new iniquities '' would rejoice to have in thelower right hand corner of a cheque for a fat sum—that he described the talk about the commercial immorality of the city as " claptrap," and was as "mad as mad ' that a Synod of intelligent men could applaud it. Th Eev. Gibbs, full of a hallowed desire to see the people pure in heart and honest in purpose, said there were men whose woa?d in business was as good as their bond, but there were those who admitted that it was hard to live up to the Sermon on the Mount and be honest, but there were others who could if they tried be more honest. Mr Cargill decidedly, in the hardest of hard Saxon, objected to the whole community being traduced by Mr Gibbs, who by the way, was one of tbe preachers who preached against the iniquity of the city ; and Mr Cargill in the course of a long discussion said that in fifty years' experience he had never been asked to do anything not in accordance with morality. We had always thought that business men who valued their commercial standing were very jealous of their commercial honor, and when keen competition arose, or bad times fell upon them, only became more jealous of that honor, knowing that their good name was the backbone of their credit. Traders know well that even one shady transaction will cause a man to be looked upon with suspicion, and that therefore every man whose business is to buy and sell and get gainj is c^refu} to see that he buys and sells in accordance witty a well defined if unwritten moral commercial code. If he deviates from the course this code lays down, the punishment follows just as surely as though l;e ha 4 been tried and found guilty by a be-wigged and be-gowned judge in open Court: fchady dealers there are no doubt, but few escape detection long, and these men's names soon stink in the nostrils of men who respect the commercial moral code. And if the latter do business at all with the shady ones, it is a business in which no play is allowed 1 f0? ihe wliee} ,on the axle, and the running must be siira^ght and I steady But a parson who only discovers now what has been apparent to most laymen for years as regards the immorality 'of large cities may be forgiven if he fancies that 'evil nufsi be the most prominent characteristic of all commerce. " Bad eggs " .there are in every trade and I prof essiog. Tfye Great Teaeta

reckoned them up at one m twelve—and His twelfth was very bad ; so bad that He spoke of him as " a devil.'' But the rest were sound enough, if certain isolated evidences of their being human are allowed for. So that the divine Gibbs need roll us all up in one bunch. Then this "pet" of righteousness affected the v Southland Times," and the editor asks us to hear him preach. He lets out against the alarming tendency of anglers to go fishing on Sunday, and says the custom is spreading. He has grave fears for the preservation of the Day of Best if these fishermen go on fishing Bad boys, no doubt, the Sabbath anglers, and as we read the very readable editorial sermon on Sabbath trouting wo were almost converted. But when we looked at the date of the paper—Monday, November 13—we hardened our heart again. The " Southland Times" is a daily morning paper; that leader must have been set up on Sunday night. When was it written? i( Between the preachings " (as the Scotch would say) would be the most probable time. No thank you, v Southland Times/