A. Homily on Missions

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXX, Issue 1514, 17 May 1898, Page 3

A. Homily on Missions

• BISHOP AND BULLETIN. According; to Bishop Stone-Wigg, in his address at Government House, Sydney, a few days ago, tbere are only two authorities on missions to the heathen—the Bible and the Sydney Bulletin, while the Bible is only trustworthy (according to its journalistic censor) so far as it agrees with the Bulletin. The missionaries had a message to the bodies as well as to the hearts of the heathen. Their only message to the bodies, according to the Bulletin, was to teach the natives to "cover them up." Mention was made of a missionary cartoon which had been copied from the Bulletin by an English magazine, accompanied by the assurance that it might be taken as a reliable photograph, seeing it had appeared in an Australian paper, which deeply sympathises with missions There was an idea in some quarters, said the Bishop, that the mission Held meant a very desirable living, a comfortable house, furnished by the best Sydney firms, and the missionaries " bread sure," That was not his idea, and in that he was not particular. All who were going to New Guinea with him were going only for their food. One clergyman had given up his position as curate at the cathedral in Brisbane, with a stipend of £2OO a year, and was going to New Guinea for food and raiment. With a touch of irony, the Bishop added that he knew people in Australia were not very well off, and had a great deal to do with their money, yet he hoped times would so improve that the rich would be able to give as much to missions as their fairly well-to-do brethren or even the poor.

James Weatherall, of Wanganui, was sentenced to six months' imprisonment at the District Court there last week for having unlawfully, prior to his bankruptcy, incurred a liability to D?vid M'Farlane by fraudulently and falsely representing to John M'Farlane, a servant of the said David M'Farlane, that he (Weatherall) had £I,OOO lodged in a bank in London on fixed deposit, and that a bank pass book which he produced contained an entry representing an instalment of interest on the said £I,OOO paid into his bank in Wanganui. A strange case of incendiarism is recorded by a writer in Cassell's Magazine. A series of stack fires occurred in a rural district, but there was nothing to cast suspicion on the owners, because they were insured only up to the actual value of their stacks. At length it was discovered that the stacks were fired by farm laborers, their object being to obtain the half crown payment which was given to them for working the manual lire engine, when it arrived at the acene of the fire.