THE BISHOP OF TASMANIA'S SERMON.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 8948, 4 August 1892, Page 3

THE BISHOP OF TASMANIA'S SERMON.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,ln your account of Bishop Montgomery's sermon at All Saints' Church, Ponsonby, he is reported to have said, "God had no favourites. He (the preacher) had found that if he asked a class of children whether God loved the good child or the bad, the answer almost always was that God loved the good child better than the other. Children should not be allowed to grow up with this idea, for God loved them, not because they were good or bad, but because they were His children. It was the same with nations as with individuals; God did ■ not love the Israelites better than the nations that were cast out before them— were alike dear to Him." But when we turn to the second commandment, given by God Himself to Moses and the children of Israel, His own description of Himself is, "I, the Lord thy God am a jealous God, and visit the sins of the Fathers upon the children to the third and fourth • generation of them that hate Me, and I will show mercy unto thousands of them that love Me and keep my commandments." That He loves some persons better than others, we learn from the expression, "Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated," though no reason is given for the love of the one or the hatred of the other, and nothing can be found in the character of either to justify the difference of feeling. If He loved the nations that were cast out equally with the Israelites, His conduct can hardly be reconciled with an equality of love. In Exodus we read, " »\ow, therefore, if ye will obey my voice and keep my commandments, then shall ye be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people." Soon after this God is angry with them, and because they worshipped a calf, says to Moses, " Let Me alone that my wrath may wax hot against them, and that I may consume them then He thinks better of it, and we are told, The Lord repented of the evil which He thought to do unto His people," and so on through the whole period of their history as recorded in the Bible, showing as clearly as language can show it, that the Israelites were the chosen people of God, that He regarded them with special favour, that He was their God and they were His people. The Bishop is also reported to have said: " When man invented his deity he produced a gigantic human being, hating men when they sinned, loving them when they pleased him." To what man-made god does the Bishop refer? He does not tell us. Is it to the Egyptian Amen-Ra, to the Greek Zeus, to the Roman Jupiter, or the Mahomedan Allah ? If so, the reference is irrelevant to the subject. Can he possibly refer to Jehovah, the God of the Israelites, the God of the Old Testament ? If so, what becomes of the inspiration of the Scriptures, and Jehovah's own account of Himself and His dealings with the Israelites? The Bishop may well say that much of the Agnosticism of the present . day is due to the Church itself. Such teaching as this of the Bishop's contributes largely to the present condition of things. What are churchmen asked by the Church to believe as truth. The Church has been continually shifting its ground. It has been driven by science from positiou to position. From the time of Copernicus to the time of Darwin and Renan it has been yielding and abandoning doctrine after doctrine, and that which a few years ago was declared to be truth, upon which a man's salvation depended, is now given up, and admitted to be error. Is the Biblical account of the history of the Jews the work of inspired writers, or is it simply a history, like ail other histories of ancient peoples—having a basis of fact, upon which has been raised an immense superstructure of myth? Is the Jehovah of the Jews a living God, or a mere creation of the human mind—a man-made God? These are questions which should not be dealt with by Church dignitaries in a vague and uncertain manner. They are subjects of the deepest interest; they are commanding the attention of the profoundest scholars and the most earnest minds; they are influencing society to an extent not fully understood, it would seem, by its ecclesiastical moderns; and if the tendency of modern criticism i 3 to be diverted from its present course, it must be by teaching and preaching of a very different kind to that found in the sermon of the Bishop at All Saints'.—l am, &c., Inquirer. August 3,1892.