Religious Frauds.

Fair Play, Volume I, Issue 7, 16 December 1893, Page 17

Religious Frauds.

Beware of “the religious fraud.” Hie et übique. He is here and everywhere. He exists of course in New Zealand as elsewhere. But he is undiscoverable, that is to say, he is only discovered when his mountainous iniquity, unable longer to conceal itself, bursts forth, as do things gaseously corrupt, and appals the world. At all time previous the religious fraud is the leader, the admired of religious and social circles. He is the trusted of the trusting, those innocent and confiding trusting “ who believe no evil.” The “ white man” of the world, vulgarly so known, who would shudder on the brink before committing himself to any disreputable act, is merely an awful example of the worldliness of the world in presence of the religious fraud, and his wondrous circle of worshippers and admirers. We have had our Waring Taylor. In the older days of Wellington it was said, “ Who shall stand when Waring Taylor appeareth.” Here, clearly, at this stage, the community suffered from too much piety—that form of piety which Tom Mann so recently and so heartily denounced. There is—be it honourably remembered—the truly religious man, for whom all entertain a respectful and a healthful regard. He is what he seems to be. His place in the ranks of the religious is unquestioned, undisputed. He does not constantly ■ and ostentatiously thank the Almighty that he is not as other men are. He is a man of broadly charitable sympathies. Of a certainty every one knows him thoroughly and unerringly. Unhappily the other is not so wellknown. It was only the most delicate suspicion that prompted the woman in a book, I recently read, to invite her husband, whom she suspected of too much “piety,” to step out into the broad, open day to join her in saying “ Damn ” with all their mights. That was ingenious treatment of an unspoken something which she inwardly dreaded and loathed. We all remember the “ Liberator ” frauds in England and the sanctimonious Balfour—Jabez Balfour—and the equally sanctimonious Hobbs. The curtain has fallen upon that drama—tragedy it ought more fittingly to be'called. Three of

principal religious rascals connected with these frauds were sentenced to penal servitude, two for twelve years and one for five years. The misfortune is that it was impossible to mete out justice to all concerned in one of the cruelest and most heartless frauds ever perpetrated. The worst and most to be regretted feature- concerning these Pecksniffiian blackguards is that success should have attended their horrible assumption of devoutest piety and sanctity of life and conversation. All the scoundrels engaged in this conspiracy to steal seven millions of money and ruiu thousands of the most thrifty and deserving class were great mainstays of their Church. Hobbs was a well-known Sunday School teacher. That is the great art of religious deceivers, for the public has an unfortunate habit of confounding these pietists with persons of probity, and of taking for granted that a man who puts money into the church plate cannot possibly have robbed it from the pockets of the poor. We sec by English papers just to hand that the great wealthy classes of England have subscribed the enormous sum of .£12,000, mark the word enormous,” toward relieving the dire needs of the thousands and thousands of poor people connected with the Liberator Building Society who have been robbed of seven millions of money. What munificence 1 And now comes another story of the machinations of the religious fraud. The Federal Building Society of Melbourne has come to grief, and with it some thousands more of victims, the President of the Society, whose share of the plunder is at present ascertained to be .£60,000, having been 'for many years a pillar of the Wesleyan Church. Here again there will be suffering, and woe, and death, for it is too true, alas! of the poor, that when the savings of a lifetime are suddenly swept away, death, too often suicide, follows. It is the common corollary of robbery and fraud such as this. —Yours truly,