HOW THESE CHRISTIANS LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

Observer, Volume XL, Issue 8, 25 October 1919, Page 2

HOW THESE CHRISTIANS LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

EACH year it is the custom for leaders of various religious denominations in New Zealand to launch verbal thunders and to pour long columns of abuse on humanity. If persons other than leaders in religion made use of the' violent language in which this annual blame is couched, were to imitate the clerics

no doubt the clerics would be greatly shocked. A much advertised cleric lately launched one of his periodical diatribes against racing which in his opinion is "one of the dirtiest customs known." The person who says so of course does not know anything about it himself, for it is unlikely that he would attend a race meeting. It is equally unlikely that he has any dealings with the tens of thousands of people in New Zealand who take their occasional pleasure among animals, who never curse humanity or scream perpetually that everybody but the screamer is going hot foot to the Devil.

Those who participate in racing are "crooks and twisty people" but it does not occur to the gentleman who says so that the tens of thousands of "crooks and twisty" people have as much right to abuse those who make the declarataion as the abusers have to verbally blight them. There is ''dirty work" in racing. There is also dirty work among the most prayerful', dirty work among speculating (and peculating) churchgoers, and there have been on this earth, even clerics whose godliness of. demeanour has been greater than their cleanliness of soul.

It is only desired to prove that it is quite fair to scold the perpetual scolder who never under.any circumstances whatever, minimises the alleged evils he screams about and merely spurs humanity to retaliation.

Racing, according to the gentleman is getting "slimier" and vitiating the public taste. Observe the perfectly good taste of the gentleman who is evidently not one of the public—a person supreme, apart, perched on the heights of a moral Olympus flagellating the poor human worms he so loves to tread on.

This clerical scold, who is perfectly unable to have racing stopped was not the only denunciator on the premises. One modest person said that Aye should stand out against this "hated, damnable militarism " — the single point that did not occur to the clerical user of bad language being that if. WE-—that is ■ British people generally—had stood out against this damnable militarism, the clerical gentleman would be a German subject now and probably would be digging drains or hoeing weeds at the behest of a Prussian sergeant-major. Here follows a sample of thought by a follower of the gentle Nazarene. "The territorial system made larrikins of the boys, who were blackguarded l»y some of the most filthy mouthed men in the country." It would be useful to know whether bad language (not to speak of untrue, bad language) spoken by a clergyman at a conference is less reprehensible than the bad language used on the parade ground by a sergeant-major t

Did you ever hear of the New Zealand "hurling" system before? A lay brother declared that ten thousand boys had been brought before the Courts during the past few years and hurled before the magistrate by the military system. This gentleman gets a vicious prod in too when he says, "the majority of the officers are not fit to associate with the boys." It seems very wrong of God not to have made the officers from the same pattern as the Christian gentleman who thus refers to the officers. * * * The magistrate on the other hand is a very fit and proper person to "hurl" young cubs (excuse the language—clerics are setting the example of forcible expletives)—before if the said young cubs don't amble out and do their best to be ready to defend the Revs. North, Bnsfield, and Duncumb— and incidentally Mr. Martin, whoever he may be. fgg should be spoken to in the loudest possible way, even though they come from "Christian homes.

Now, if you please, observe what these Christian people in conference have said. They have said to New Zealand that tens of thouof people whoi attend race meetings are dishonest, and that the Church the scolders represent; is in violent hostility to tens of thousands of people. As all New Zealand boys must become territorials,these Christian folks have said that all New Zealand boys are larrikins. 'This is highly extraordinary, as one would have thought the perfectly pure and gentle people who slated the boys would have been able to make the boys gentlemen by showing a Christian examole.

They have said that officers of the New Zealand Territorial Army are unfit to associate with boys. The officers are also citizens. What makes a clergyman hate- his fellow citizens so much? Wonder if he found any instructions in the Holy Writ to hate his fellow man, abuse the boys, curse their amusements and shreik at their training? The North man airily dismissed the subject by stating that the proposed military system was an "hallucination." He might have added, being a logician'that the war with Germany was a mere dream, that the Russian trouble is only being engineered to make movie pictures of, that the report that there are four hundred million Chinese in. course of being Japanned is'quite wrong, there being no Chinese or Japanese, except in the imagination of the people.

It would be useful at some future time when clerics and their imitators are abusing the whole of humanity, for humanity to tell the clerics, what they think of this never ending system of scolding. Many a man has been run in by the police and fined by a magistrate for using language less violent than that used by the Christian gentlemen who abused humanity at the Christchurch conference.