RELIGIOUS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 705, 4 September 1885, Page 6

RELIGIOUS.

AN OLD BUSHMAN’S NOTIONS OF THE TRUE REFORM REQUIREDTwo vears ago Judge Higinbotham told U 3 in Melbourne, * the people are leaving the popular faiths; they have not their old belief in the dogmas and doctrines of the churches, a .very great maDy of which are contradicted point blank as science advances. How any one who carefully reads the Bible through, and learns from history what the Bible has given rise to, can have such faith, is quite incomprehensible to me. I consider the very greatest insult which could be offered to my reason is, to ask me to believe that the whole Bible is the inspired word of God. So much for doctrine. A great deal, though not the whole, of the practical teaching of Christianity, may he gathered from the following texts ‘ Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you.’ ‘ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy- " Self * j * Sell all thou hast, and give to the poor. ‘ Lay not up for yourselves treasures in this world, where rust and moth do enter and corrupt.’ With much besides to the same effect. How this practical part of Christianity is attended to, I respectfully ask any one who j will open his eyes to inform me. The con-, stant earnest endsavour of nearly every one is to lay up treasure and become rum* ana therefore act in diametrical opposition to the injunctions of our creed. Our vast and cumbrous courts of law, with the “laws delays,” are a mere travesty on our pretended faith. Our laws, our armies, our rmblic-houses, with our barmaids at them, the bulk of our press and literature, our businesses generally, our habits and customs, our daily lives are the same. . The only possible inference from the above outline of doctrine and practice is, that all the energy and means expended on the churches and clergy to keep up this old and departing superstition, are wasted. u p to a century ago they were much worse than wasted. It does not follow, however that the chief agents in this work, the clergy, need be utterly useless, merely to be classed with the ‘ medicine men ’ of savage peoples. All religion may be summed up m the two following propositions : Ist. Another life will succeed this. 2nd. Righteousness makes men happy m this world, and will affect their position in the next, , . , ... I submit, then, the great object of the teachers of the people, the clergy of all denominations, should be to make the people righteous. . , How this great object is attended to let the following serve to show : In a speech by John Bright some three years since, that eminent man says —* The bishops and archbishops are given seats in the Parliament of Great Britain, voices in the Senate of a great nation, and they never raise those voices to say what is the righteous course for that nation to pursue. _ The other extreme of the social fabric is exemplified' by the fact that two inspectors of truant children for the public schools m the suburbs of Sydney state they never, m all their rounds, meet a clergyman of any -denomination. I have attended as many churches as I have had opportunity for some years past, and I deliberately declare I have scarcely heard the practical duties of life taught the people at all. I inquire of persons lately from England, and I hear the same. The sermons in The Town and Country Journal and the Sydney Mail, our leading country papers, sing the same tune. Some phase of supernaturalism is always enlarged upon, and practical duties of life neglected. My own observation is confirmed by that of nearly every intelligent man I ask, that the people in the bush, where a clergyman is seldom seen, are more righteous than those in the populous districts where the churches and the clergy abound. , , , ~ From the above facts, it seems to me, tne people are precisely in the same position now that they were in eighteen centuries ago, when Jesus Christ ‘ had compassion on them, because they were as sheep, not having a shepherd.’ If that great moralist con-

demmed the ceremonial worshio of those days, which he did most pitilessly, and the omission to teach ‘justice, and mercy, and truth,’ a thousand times more would he condemn the worship of to-day ? I say nothing as ; to the honesty of the clergy, although I know some of them do not believe what they preach ; but I contend they entirely mistake their vocation. Their teaching may take an odd one of us to heaven (Theodore Parker, no mean thinker, reckons one in a hundred thousand), consigning the remainder to torment (some of them still say unending torment) ; but this is not what is required. We want all the people to be made honest, sober and virtuous, and I maintain it is the duty of the clergy of all denominations to strive for that end. This is the great reform that is needed. The frightful wickedness there is among us calls loudly for some reform. I feel the most profound conviction that the greatest reform would be what I state, and that it should be made incumbent on the teachers of the people to teach them to be good. I, as a colonist, demand that this be done. I demand that the clergy be called upon to show their fruits in this world, in the virtue of those among whom they severally minister ; and as a colonist I will assist to support them. In my humble opinion, we have been put off quite long enough with promises of results in another world. Let us in future have them in this. Ido not object to each denomination, in its own time, after hours as it were, teaching its own dogmas ; but I certainly do object to assisting in its support for so doing. If, as advanced by each sect, that sect teaches the Word of God, let them look to God for this reward. He will surely reward them either in this life or the next. I have nothing to do with this. What a glorious thing it would be if this young colony were the first place in the world where virtue should become the established religion, and the teaching of virtue the sole duty of the teachers of the people ; where all the clashing dogmas of the sects were thrown to the winds.

A. W. BUCKNELL, To the Harbinger of Light.