"SERVICE OF LIES."

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8872, 5 November 1907, Page 3

"SERVICE OF LIES."

. + ■ VICAK'S'ATTACK ON HARVEST FESTIVALS. The Rev. A. M. Mitchell, the vicar of Burton Wood, Warrington, England, makes a vigorous attack on harvest festivals in the current number of his parish magazine. He describes them as services of lies, and says, that the Church would %ave done well if she had omitted this undeairable novelty from her services altogether. "No good, but much harm is done," he says, "by services which help to bolster up unreality, falsehood, and hypocrisy, which create self-3atisfaction and which pamper the worldly religious taste of the time. "The festival never fails to attract a motley crowd of the vulgar, irreligious, godless and profane, who make this, their service of lies, do ;duty for the year's attendance. "It is an annual agricultural show, wit'i parsonic and wardenic eyes cast upon possible underlying dollars. "The great cauliflower, the monster cabbage, the champion potato, the huge carrot, and the swollen turnip are all on view, fishing for compliments from Tom, Dick and Harry. "Withdraw the show, and the eager mob, the riff-raff of Church and Dissent, will vanish. Flesheaters make the festival a service of lies. Fruitarians or food-reformers ai-2 the only consistent worshippers. "If we insist on meats as necessary and God-given, why not adorn churches with trophies of. the butcher's art, and triumphs -of the poulterer's and fishmonger's marvellous skill? The flesh-eater is convicted 6f inconsistency and falsehood." £