THE TARARUA DISASTER.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), 21 May 1881, Page 3

THE TARARUA DISASTER.

[ To the Editor of the Daily Tbleguaph.] Sib, —Will you permit me to make a few observations on your leader of Thursday on the above subject. Iα respect of the portion written by yourself, 1 admit, at once, the wish shown by you to be scrupulously fair to the two sides of the question. But there are one or two positions assumed where you allow your feelings to strain the sentiments of those who hold the theological views that I do, which it is important to have properly stated, You speak of the views expressed by the writers of the press as synonymous with the views of the people. In the matter of religious thoug'it, I fear, the writers in what is called the secular press

but very poorly represent the views of any number of people, and that they possess very small fitness for any such task.- To the statement that the mam of the people are strongly opposed to the sentiments I have expressed on the occurrence of casualties in the Providence of God I have to answer that Ido not believe it. They may be opposed to the sensational turns given to them by some writers, who put words in ray mouth I never uttered, as the " Tararua disaster, a judgment from heaven," &c. These are deductions sought to be fastened to the sentiments we have expressed by men who will limit their views to only one narrow aspect of the ground that must be included to form any just judgment on the subject. They accept the benevolence of God, but they quietly ignore His justice. Have we no expression of the divine rectitude given inhuman life ? Have we nothing but displays of a divine benevolence? The universal instinct of the race says we have both in the divine Government of men, and they must both be taken into account in any judgment we form of the divine providence. Your leader furnishes us with an illustration of this perverted sentiment. You say, "When it is endeavoured to be shown by ministers of religion, that the Almighty, in his mercy and long suffering, is the direct author of indiscriminate slaughter." When have ministers of religion ever done anything of the kind ? Can you point to any modern example P Most asuredly you will not find it in anything I have said or written on the Tararua disasater. This is one of those extravagant inferences which men seek to force on a broad and clear principle, and which requires the halt of the ground on which it rests to be laid aside. What I have said is that casualties occur in the Providence of a righteous and benevolent Deity, and that they are meant to impress on the living certain great moral lessons which are essential to the continuance and progress of communities. Have any of the newspapers said that they occur out of the Providence of God ? or have any of them denied that they impress a great moral lesson on men ? I have not seen any statement of this kind, and do not expect to see it. It would be too great an' outrage on the sentiments of the people, and of all common sense. The statement that ministers of religion represent the Almighty as " the direct author of indiscriminate slaughter" is simply a grotesque misrepresention. They are too familiar with the inherent difficulties ying in the government of our world by God, when we pass a certain limit, to make any such statement or to lay down any definition of which that could be a legitimate inference. They find indubitable evidence that the world is governed by God, and that righteousness and benevolence enter into that government. They cannot conceive how any plan that involves intelligence and purpose, and has cause and effect in it, could be the product of a blind law. Hence they see and feel that casualties must occur within the divine overruling, and serve a purpose within it, and do not fail to teach it. But the use of such words as " author of indiscriminate slaughter" they leave to men who neither care for discriminate thinking nor writing on this profound question, where it is so much needed. There can be little doubt that you mean by this phrase " indiscriminate slaughter" the cutting down of all types of characters. If a fire occurs in a town, does it confine itself to the dwellings of the rogues of the town ? If war breaks on a district, does the sword confine itself to the base and the wicked within it ? If political maladministration brings a class of charlatan legislators to the front, do the wicked only suffer by their preposterous legislation ? Are we in the habit of seeing, what you would teach men they ought to expect, discriminate affliction according to men's deserts ? We are not, and it would be no difficult task to show that there is a vast mass, both of wisdom and mercy, in the course pursued by the Almighty to man. When casualties, which have occurred in tbe Providence of God, have been looked at with a devout spirit, they have always been the means of enormous moral improvement to men and nations. You draw another distinction in your leader, which seems to me to be very deficient in expression. You say,

" Theologically Mr Sidey is no doubt thoroughly sound, and his opponents may be illogical and unscriptural, but this matters nothing to the great mass of the people, whose judgment on religious subjects is founded on sentiment." In reference to the immediate subject in hand I answer that not only is the occurrence of casualty the logical and scriptural conception of the overruling providence of God, but it is also the common conception of men, whose views rest on sentiment. Such persons universally believe that juetice and benevolence enter into the divine providence. They do not confine these views to the benevolence of God merely, but always associate with it the quality of justice. Logic with scripture is seldom at fault with sentiment. While impressed with the fairness pervading your own part of the article, I cannot say as much for your quotation from the Wanganui Herald. That displays abundantly gross ignorance, egotistic weakness, and malevolent intention. Had the writer been in Napier during the past week it is not at all improbable that he would have seen some reason for the use of a little discrimination in his language and thought. How easy it is to put certain sentiments in the mouth of another, and then to proceed and say they are blasphemous, and make them represent the Deity as more malicious than the blackest representations of the Evil One. Of all the sinners, in this particular, the Wanganui Herald is the chief. The Wanganui people and editors must have very soft heads or very hard hearts if they find in the sentiment that casualties occur in the providence of God, and that they inculcate moral lessons, a ground for blasphamy—a reason for making God malicious—a basis for an assertion that Christ never taught them—and a multitude of other charges of a kindred type. Wanganui heads must have got very soft or their hearts very hard when that is extolled as the cause that is sending them all adrift into the dreary wilderness of scepticism. The Wauganui editor notwithstanding, Mr Sidey is not doing the work of freethinkers. The sentiments he has expressed never made a free or fast thinker. Freethinkers are what they are, from other causes, less intellectual and less moral too. But it must be very mortifying to freethinking editors that Christian teachers will not become their echoes, and cast all heaven's verities to the winds, and spout absurdities in their room. Mr Sidey's views of the Deity do not make him repulsive. They simply embody these facts which meet every man in the affairs of life, which come to him in the word of God, and have the assent of his own consciousness, and give him the intelligent apprehension of them, which gives rest to his j spirit. And if a man will rush to the insane conclusion, on the ground of these things lying in the world, the conscious and the scriptures " that religion is an imposture and a sham," it is only too sad an illustration that he himself has descended to the

ne plus ultra of all ehams and impostures, a fact which will doubtless shew itself in a great many things. The milk and water dilutions of pulpit talk, which represent the Deity as all benevolence may suit the delectation of the writer in the Wanganui Herald, and help him and others into a grosser scepticism then they now play father to, but a free, fall, and loving distribution of the word of God will never make one, and will nurse many noble men and virtuous citizens to a divine dignity.—l am, &c, David Sidey.

Napier, May 21, 1881