An Inhuman Brute.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 18, Issue 44, 31 May 1907, Page 5

An Inhuman Brute.

A MINISTER'S DISCLOSURES. During the course of a sermon on foreign missions on Sunday morning at the Wesley Church, Taranaki Street, Wellington (says the New Zealand Turns), Mr A. Beeson, a visitor from America, made a very candid and sensational statement, reflecting seriously on the morality of Wellington. Mr Beeson had given several arguments in support of his contention that it was our bounden duty to go forth, according to the Bible injunction, 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 digresioo. "I have seen death," he said, " in most hideous and gruesome forms, but I have seen in Wellington by far the saddest and most heart-rending spectacle I ever saw. I have been present when the breath left the body of one of your fairest daughters—one who was the victim of the 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 yon have honoured by making great. The brute who has left death in his train, wrecked chastity, and destroyed the sanctity of homes, is in the service of the New. Zealand Government." " I say this to you,” continued Mr Bee-1 son, "because you New Zealanders have talked glibly of the necessity of sending missionaries to New York, and I say that that aspersion is uncalled for. What I have heard and seen here in Wellington has been 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 you 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 you 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.