Untitled

New Zealand Mail, Issue 658, 3 October 1884, Page 20

There was a story in the papers the other day about the congregation of a cathedral church being dismissed without a sermon because each of the four officiating clergymen had depended on his brethren for furnishing a discourse, and had therefore prepared none himself. ALI were silent, and thus exhibited a woful want ot resource in being unable, on spur of the moment, to choose a text m or out of the Bible, and to talk on it for ten consecutive minutes. Had the Bev. A. Reid, of Pitt-street Wesleyan Church, Auckland, been amongst them, the situation would have had no terrors for him. He would assuredly have spoken, if not wisely, at least so as to have filled up the awkward gap. Tt must, we think, have been m the absence of a prepared sermon, resting on the orthodox foundation and illustrated in the usual manner, that he fell back on a text taken from e United Press Association’s telegrams which had appeared in the Auckland papers on Saturday morning. It was no doubt there announced that toe Hinemoa had sailed, or was to sail for Kawhia and New Plymouth, at about midnight on Priday with a number o members of Parliament, who expecte to get back to Wellington in time lor their legislative duties on Tuesday. This telegram and the thoughts it gave rise to seem to have supplied Mr Reid’s pulpit necessities on last Sun-

day morning. He knew that the wandering members could not be the Wellington churches that day, and so he proceeded to im P r °^ e sion. These members, said Mr Heid, were ££ excureioning ” on the Sabbath in the Government steamer Hinemoa, visiting the bays and harbours of New Zealand. ,£ He anticipated that some such curse as befell the Israelites o old, on account of their national sins, would most assuredly fall upon New Zealand owing to such outrageous desecration of the Lord s ay. hinted that the people should rise en masse and denounce such procedure as detrimental to the true interests of the colony.” A good many curses of one sort and another fell on the Children of Israel during the time of their national existence, to _ sav nothing of what has happened since. Mr Reid should have been more explicit. He evidently knows what is going to happen to New Zealand on account of this trip of the Hinemoa, and he would have shown more public spirit, and would have spared the people much anxious suspense, if he had said plainly that it was to be a famine, or Philistines, or pestilence, or the sword, or that there was to be a modern leading away into captivity. Perhaps next Sunday’s sermon will supply the defect of last; but m the meanwhile we would venture to suggest that it was useless to incite the people to rise en masse, because the mischief was done, and that, if they are to be cursed because of this irip, it was surplusage to say that it was “ detrimental to the true interests of the colony.” We should, however, like to know whence Mr Reid procured his information, not about the trip, but about the impending punishment. That he knew all about it by sermon time on Sunday is plain, but did he know about it beforehand ? If so he should have telegraphed on the subject to Mr Stout who would thus have had the opportunity of countermanding the sailing orders. Of course one does not like to fly in the face of the decrees of Providence, and if something dreadful is to New Zealand on account _ of this voyage, there is no use saying anything more about it, and we must be content to take our share of what is going. At the same time we venture very respectfully to remind Mr Reid and those who told him about this coming calamity, that the Hinemoa sailed on a week day and returned on a week day, and that if her trip is to involve all New Zealand, or even only those on board, in some frightful punishment because a Sunday came round in due course between her departure and- her reappearance at Wellington, then every man who embarks on a holiday voyage which will include a Sunday at sea or out of reach of a church, ought to expect smallpox, bankruptcy, broken limbs, or such other retribution as may be best fitted to meet the requirements of his particular exhibition of wickedness. If the voyage is intended to include two or more Sundays it is hard to say what amount of punishment ought to befall him. Probably no evil on this side of the o-rave would be sufficient to mark the extent of his delinquency. There is another point worth noticing m connection with this highly interesting and intellectual sermon. The telegram which alluded to it did not state”whether Mr Reid explained how he came to know the manner in which those on board were spending their Sunday. Apparently, he either assumed that they were spending it badly according to his ideas, or he had a revelation, to that effect. Ho could not by any earthly means of communication have known what was going on. Butperhaps their Sunday behaviour was of no consequence, everything of that kind being overshadowed or swallowed up in the hideous sin of having joined in the excursion. "We are afraid there are many people who will not be inclined to credit Mr Reid with having been inspired from the right source when he denounced woe to the people of New Zealand on account of some of their representatives having taken part in this excursion trip. But if he was not inspired, if he trusted to his little finite human judgment to find them guilty and pronounce the sentence, what should be said of him ? Well, we scarcely know. Men of that stamp consider themselves beyond criticism ; but surely they are open to the charges of uncharitableness and presumption, they weaken their own influence for good, and they help to bring all religion into contempt. Such denunciations us Mr Reid indulged m last Sunday morning in Auckland are, we thankfully admit, somewhat out ot date, hut are the exact counterpart of certain utterances which, more than

seventy years ago, were mercilessly but justly lashed by the deep-cutting ridicule of Sydney Smith.