A GRAVE CHARGE

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 6219, 27 May 1907, Page 5

A GRAVE CHARGE

SENSATIONAL PULPIT UTTERANCE. PREACHER LOSES HIS FAITH. During the course of a sermon, on foreign missions yesterday morning at the Wesley Church, Taranaki street, Mr A. Beeson, a visitor from America, made a very candid and sensational statement, reflecting seriously on the morality of Wellington. 1 Mr Beeson had given several arguments in support of his contention that it was our bounden duty to go forth, according to the Bible iujunction, and preach the Gospel to every creature, and had traced the rise and progress and the issue of Christian missions, when he made a startling digression. “I have seen death/* he said, "in many hideous and gruesome forms, but i have seen by far the saddest and most heartrending spectacle I ever saw in Wellington. I nave been present when the breath left the body of one of your fairest daughters—one who was the victim of th** most inhuman, brutal and cowardly crime*. This sounds like sensation. It is not sensation, but the truth. I went in search of a. public conscience to condemn this crime. I could not find it. Only in the heart of one man I found it —the heart of a man you all know and love, and whom you have honoured by making great. The brute who has left death in his tram, wrecked chastity, . and destroyed the sanctity of Inmes, is in the service of the New Zealand Government.** "I say this to you/* continued Mr Beeson, "because you New Zealanders have talked glibly of the necessity of sending missionaries to New York. I know New York, and I say that that aspersion is uncalled for. What I have seen and hoard here in Wellington has oeen most terrible. I was unnerved by it, and desolated. My very faith went, and it has not come back to me yet, although I stand here and try to preach to you to-day. You have been told that you are indifferent towards the plague. I say that yov are indifferent and suffering from inertia in the . face of a plague more terrible that is in your midst. The Christian conscience in Wellington and in New Zealand needs rousing. It must assert itself. It is not as if crime could not be rooted out here. The country is small, and, if the public conscience demanded it, 3*ou could uproot every vestige of crime/* Mr Beeson went on to express the opinion that visitors to New Zealand who, on leaving the State, bestowed indiscriminate praise upon it, were not only wrong in so doing, but absolutely immoral. He insisted that this country's regeneration, in view of our geographical isolation, must come from within.