RELIGIOUS COLUMN.

Otago Witness, Issue 2286, 23 December 1897, Page 62

RELIGIOUS COLUMN.

| I TO THE EDITOR. I

Sir, — I thank you very much for the Religious column in the Witness. At one time you used to ask for subscriptions towards the column, or sermon fund, but they were few and small, and now when you give it free someone comes forward to criticise that very able writer "A Banker." The critic serves a purpose— sflmetimea for good, at other times for evil. This timß I see no good in him myself. Ido not profess to be able, much less willing, to criticise "Veritas" in your issue of the 25vh ult., bat, as one of your unintelligent readers, I Lave read that whales have been found in the Mediterranean. I have also read that a man who ought to kuow spoke of the Baid flsh as a whale. And if it was not a whale, as we know it, it must have been a kind of sea monster of the whale tribe. "Veritas" has not enlightened me a little bit upon the subjtcb of the whale, and, what is more, I do not) think be is able to do so. Apirt from having a true and deep spiritual knowledge of the Bible, any schoolboy may know aud tell you all that •' Veritas" or Professor G. Adam (Glasgow) has told us about the whale, or Jonah aud the whale, and perhaps a little more if he wi'l only go to the trouble to turn up a good concordance or a Bibje dictionary or commentary. Bub as an unintelligent reader I ask, What of all that P What' does it all amount to ? It is only the opinion of men, and they differ, and differ very largely ; aud yet we trust" that they are all men of knowledge. -Seeing that lihig is the case not only in regard to the subjecS of the whale, but in regard to many other, subjects in the Bible, ara thf;y not best left alona ? . . Oh, " Veritas," do not dig a pit for yourself, to fall into, for after all you are only a poor mortal like myself : you can only go so far ;| your wings are clipped— -faith alone can bear you up. . . "A Banker," I trust, will take no notice of this " Veritas," but go on in the even tenor of his way. His subjects are well chosen and ably handled — what I would term a wheel within a wheel. They have a double purpose — that of not only proclaiming the Gospel in the. simple, good old way, but of doing so in a style that draws or leads one to read them, which is very hard to' do, because numbers read journals like the Otago Witness who would not read a sermon or religious subject unless drawn to it.-rl am, &c , Hawke's Bay, December 7. Simplicity."