THE TARARUA DISASTER.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3078, 9 May 1881, Page 2

THE TARARUA DISASTER.

[To the Editor of the Daily Telegbaph.] biE, —As a Christian, and as a believer in the over-ruling Providence of the Almighty Creator, permit me to protest on my own behalf against the sentiments expressed in the morning sermon delivered from the pulpit of St. Paul's yesterday. If I apprebend rightly the words reported to have been uttered by the Re?. Mr Hidey, then I am given to underhand that nearly one hundred souls were launched into eternity, and that, probably, four times as many living persons were plunged into mourning, by the fiat of the Almighty for the beneficent purpose of teaching the Union Steam Shipping Company to respect the Sabbath. The steamer was wrecked on a Friday moraine. But the company, had been known to enter and depart from' port on a Sunday; hence the wreck of the Tararua! Why did the reverend gentleman in his sermon not refer to the lesser accident in our harbor on Saturday? The Union Company's boat Boojum ran into the Sir Donald : the latter sunk, but the former escaped injury. Was this , because Providence in his mercy thought ' he bad punished the Company sufficiently

in the loss of the Tararua? . . . Sir, let me recall with all reverence the words of Our Saviour :—" Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower of Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem ?" (Luke XIII., v. 4.) Sir, in every church, from every pulpit comes the cry, the people are deserting the God of their fathers! Deism, atheism, and schism, are splitting up the Christian religion. Why ? Because of the feeling that the old world notion of God putting Himself out of the way to destroy innocent people for the sake of working some trivial point of his own is no longer consonnant with a true reverence of the Supreme Ruler of the Universe. God is love. When that is the text of church pulpits the wandering flocks may return. —I am, &c, A.B. Napier, May 9, 1881.