"INTERCESSION."

Star (Christchurch), Issue 11282, 9 January 1915, Page 9

"INTERCESSION."

TO TITE EDITOR. Sic, T haves elicited from your very courteous correspondent Via-tor " .sufficient. <-\'i<!<>nc<v to indicate the inutility dl' carrying on a controversy with lnm. He obviously believes that mankind started its pilgrimage in tho Garden of Kden ; that somewhere above a, flat earth there is a kingdom oi heaven inhabited by a God ol Wrath. Who i.» so incensed with the tendency oi' mankind generally to discard idolatry and superstition and ferret oub the truth lor themselves that He- has permitted that, saintly individual William of Germany Mis emissary and executioner-—to descend like a. pillar of fire by night upon the peaceful and altogether pious and orthodox. Belgians and utterly destroy them. As far as I am concerned ho is quite entitled to these views, nnd any others, that ho may hold. My reading and reasoning convinces me that from the day that the first band of primeval savages with their club's, and totems, and medicine men stole upon their enemies with the intent of injuring and destroying them, right, up to the prosent era, there has Ixsen no miraculous intervention from On High. Tho history of humanity through countless apes of time is a history of war: of triho against tribe, of race against race, all incidental to the struggle for existence. .Hut my reading and observation convinces nip that tho " fall of man" is mythical, as the "wrath of God " is mythical.

Man has struggled from savagery and barbarism up. up, no, always improving, ever on the advance, until he has reached his present state of approximate civilisation. For ever in the world's yesterdays, the ruling laws, the ruling institutions, the ruling ideals, the ruling morals, tho ruling 7'eligions, have been the laws, institutions, ideals, morals and, religions of the ruling forces. The kings and potentates have held control of affairs by hypnotising the common j:eople. and the process of hypnotism' has always been accomplished by the process of employing soothsayers to becloud _t.be intellects of the ignorant with just such doctrines as are inculcated by my friend "Viator." Tt was an ancient Maori who said: " The missionary told me to raise my eyes to heaven, and when 1 looked up he snatched the ground from under my feet." This process has been a familiar one for centuries. It is going on to-day. Europe, ]. am convinced, is in a ferment, not because of the wrath of tho omnipotent for the pocca<liloes of frail humanity, but because of the damnable and unscrupulous ambitions of ruling castes anxious to manipulate the circumstances incidental to the struggle for existence by the great mass of tho people to their own advantage. And, to enable them the better to exercise this malign influence, each and every one of them has laid claim to be the particular protagonists of the Divine and Omnipotent, has claimed that the Almighty is fighting for them, and has employed prophets and soothsayers to give their nefarious transactions a holy seeming, and to persuade the common people to pray that their enemies may be overwhelmed and discomfited. There is not a nation in the present fight which is not officially enrolled nudes the banner of the Omnipotent and which does not profess to derive its hope and sustenance from high heaven. That is why I say that these pravers for intercession are a mockery,- and that those who alternatively invoke tho Prince of Peace and the God of War as allies and intermediaries in their hellish machinations arc making a mockery of all that is high, and holy, and of good repute. But, in my judgment, the day will rome when the eyes of common humanity will be opened to this fraud upon its intelligence and integrity,, and when the common people will no'longer hug their chains or allow their minds to be deluded by superstition. When that day arrives the warrior will be " a thingabhorred." and the peaceful, industrious, productive, useful constituents of the commonwealths of the nations will come to their own.—l am, etc., NONCONFORMIST. St Albans, January 0.