RELIGIOUS LIFE IN MELBOURNE.

Wanganui Herald, Volume V, Issue 1730, 1 March 1873, Page 2

RELIGIOUS LIFE IN MELBOURNE.

The Melbourne correspondent of the Otago Daily Times writes as follows: "Our newspapers exhibit the influence of the " silly season " in very great intensity. They team with -religion and . theology— not all of it of thefljjJß| orthodox character. Parliament b^H silent, aud politics for the time dead J^B devote our minds to the discussionolF many strange : phases of faith.' True. Messrs Peebles and Dunn have left us' bur we still have Mr James Smith, and the Free Discussion Society. Mr Smith writes copiously, abundantly, lavishly, to all the papers of the colony, proclaiming that he is the vehicle of a message, from the Father, who, in the depth of his beneficence, is very soon about to consume with a ' wave of magnetic fire all that numerous part of the human family which does not believe iv the plenary inspiration of Mr James Smith. Those who hear and obey the warning voice, and go and receive magnetic inspiration from the proper quarter, may be saved by being clad in some celestial and fire-proof garment of asbestof: but for all the rest of the world Mr Smith proclaims their fiery doom with the same culm assurance that a Calvinist pronouuees the eternal condemnation of unbaptised and uiiregenerate infants. If much writing could save the world, Mr Smith might yet rescue it from its doom, but there are signs that his preachings s a nd threatenings do not tend to work the spritual change chat he, or I beg his pardon,' the Father,' has in view? In addition to what we get from Mr Smitn, we have bad a contribution to our theological lore from the Free Discussion Society. The gentlemen composing this intellectual body lately issued a circular to several of the clergymen of Melbourne, inviting them to lecture to the Society on any subject they might select-, under the condition that arguments were to be urged in reply by any one who choose to do so. The only one who accepted the offer was the Rev. Robert Totter, who elected to lecture on the existence of an Intelligent Cause for the Universe. It is clear that Mr Potter does not regard religion

as a progressive science, or having progressed very far, when he found it advisable to commence by arguing a poinc that precedes any idea of religion whatever. Mr Potter delivered his lecture, and was then lectured in return by Free Hiscussionists. ono of whom—Mr H. K. Rusdeu—used the singular argumen^— that if Mr Potter could " produce Godr^BP they would be prepared to discuss himTx but that until this was done, there was really no subject before them. Fancy the feeling of an evangelical clergyman on finding that his missionary zeal for the spread>of Christianity bad"lead him amongst, such impious people as these ? If '-necessity acquains . a man with strange bedfellows," so also did on this occasion a zealous and disputatious spirit make Mr Potter acquainted with very strange coiitroversalists. He must have been glad to get out of the atmosphere safe back again into the more sam-titied and less sulphurous odour of of his awn church. _\'o other clergyman has yet repeated Mr Potter's experiment, and I do not think that any is likely to just ' at present. But alt these things give a strange idea of the intellectual aud religious disorganisation which marks the character of our mental aud spiritual' lite here in Melbourne."'