Things From The Empire City

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XI, Issue 34, 26 August 1893, Page 127

Things From The Empire City

by

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I have long been convinced that a very large Agnosticism . proportion of those persons who think, and don’t go to any church, while calling themWeiimgton. se i ves Christians, are, in reality, Agnostics. Also, that at least one half of the people who think, and who do go to church with great regularity and large Bibles, are, really, Agnostics too. But the number of avowed Agnostics in British communities remains small, nor does it promise, in the near future, to grow much larger. To carry a beautifully bound church service into a pew ; and to kneel, and to listen, with languor, to utterly dreary sermons, and to be an Agnostic all the same and all the time, appears, on the face of it, at least stupid. More stupid still, however, is it, in the eyes of those Agnostics who swell congregations, to go nowhere on Sunday, and to let the wide world know that they believe in nobody and in nothing. As for the clergy, I won’t go so far as to say that some of these, also, are Agnostics. What Ido say about them is, that they decline all argument on the subject : they refuse to discuss it: they are deaf and dumb and mute when we know, and desire and hope that they should hear and speak and explain ! In this compact and somewhat peculiar little city of Wellington we have, as elsewhere, a few people, a handful of people, who call themselves Agnostics. Perhaps they are wise in doing so : perhaps foolish. On this point I say nothing. They are honest, anyhow. I have been at their little gatherings once or twice, and they struck me as a most sociable, pleasant, intelligent, homely, straight-for-ward set of beings. On Sunday evening there was a packed p.udience at the Exchange Hall, for a wonder, when the Hon. W. M. Bolt, M.L.C , gave a lecture on Agnosticism. Sir Robert Stout occupied the chair. There were a good many downright workingmen in the audience ; they looked quite gentlemanly in their Sunday clothes. A number of ladies were there, too : and nicely-dressed children.

As for these last, I felt rather sorry for them. For years I have been an Agnostic myself, but I always sent my little ones to the Sunday-school. Little children cannot reason. Religion is a source of pleasurable awe and wonder to them, and we know perfectly well that those of the present rising generation will soon enough have their faith eclipsed ; and the darkness, whenever it does come, brings no comfort to anybody. Therefore, my idea is to let little children go to the Sunday-school, set what they may out of the things taught there, and take them to the grave with them— they can. If they ean’t —as in these days is more than likely—they are no worse of! for having passed the best years of their lives in a pleasant dreamland. However, this is a digression. Sir Robert, as I say, took the chair, and his imposing, and I may say striking and handsome presence, was the signal for a burst of applause. Applause on the Sabbath evening would have had the whole lot of us burnt at the stake in John Knox’s time—but that’s neither here nor there. Sir Robert read a poem, by a Dunedin compositor he said; when he gave out that he was going to read a poem by a real New Zealand poet I felt sure one of my own poems was coming. No such luck, but the poem was a capital one, and full of thought—deep thought —all the same. I did not catch the author’s name ; nor, strange to say, was the poem familiar to me. Sir Robert Stout, it is needless to say, read the poem correctly. It takes a person of culture to do that much with a true poem.

Then we had music, not exactly the church organ, but something better, or worse—just as you like. I won’t express my opinion one way or another, as to the music. Mr Bolt is a small, active, elderly, grey gentleman. He does not in the least look like an Agnostic, nor does he strike one as at all resembling a Lord of the Upper House. He happens to be both. I am afraid his lecture on Agnosticism was a good deal over the heads of many of the people listening to him. Nor do I think the description he (as also Sir Robert Stout) gave as to the position taken up by the Agnostic was an absolutely happy one. * The Agnostic simply said,’ remarked the speaker, ‘ there are many problems we cannot solve.’ Agnosticism goes further than this. John Stuart Mill, 1 think, gave the fullest and the best definition of Agnosticism. As to the why and wherefore—the whence and thence —of man ; as to his

destiny, and his future : as to immortality, and the supernatural, all we know, all we can possibly know is that we know and can possibly know no more I This is going somewhat further than Mr Bolt’s somewhat impotent and apologetic definition. However, Mr Bolt is an Honorable : and that makes a great difference, even in definitions. He gave a, very good lecture : too much science perhaps : too much Spencer and Professor Clifford : too little of Goethe. Goethe put the whole matter into a few majestic words. As the grandeur of the * Dead March in Saul ’ strikes one as the sublimest of melody, so does Goethe appear to utter, most musically, the very honestest and the loftiest truth when he says : — Then, solemn before us. Veiled, the dark Portal Goal of all mortal Stars, silent rest o’er us. Graves under us, silent While earnest thou gazest Comes boding of terror. Comes phantasm and error Perplexing the bravest With doubt and misgiving. HowaSoprano Wl,eD one wants to conclusively demonstrate any proposition whatever, the easiest wav to Spoiled Mr J do so is, to go into statistics. Legislators Geor E e Fisher s j £now f ac t 8O p er f ec tly that whenever Return. they wish to establish anything they just move for a return on the subject to be laid before Parliament—and the thing is done, when tbe return is laid on the table of the House. It is one of the most interesting properties of numerals that you can do what you like with them when you get a number of them together. There is no one that understands the wonderful capacities of figures in this respect better than Mr George Fisher, M. H.R. for Wellington city. I can’t exactly say how many returns George Fisher has had prepared during his legislative career, but a dozen at least are credited to him during the present session. Having had a hand—in a particularly humble way, I hasten to add, at starvation wages—in the preparation of some of these returns, I can honestly say that 1 have cursed Mr George Fisher as often, perhaps, as Seddon or any other man has, during the last three months. I have got into more rows, 1 may say, through Mr George Fisher, than ever I did through anybody else : not because I don’t understand how to marshal figures in proper order to prove tbe thing to be demonstrated, but simply through a cussed carelessness and an absentmindedness, which only those persons who know me well could excuse. The week before last I was again full of trouble through Mr Fisher. He had called for another return. I forget whether it was to prove that the brilliant ability of W. P. Reeves had saved the Lunacy Department £lO,OOO during the time that he—Reeves—piesided over it, or whether it was to show that the Depaitment lost that sum in consequence of the incap icity of Reeves, when thatgentleman wasat the head of Lunacy affairs. Anyhow, whichever it was, the thing was done in arithmetical tables ; there is, in fact, nothing that can’t be done that way.

But, as usual, in transcribing a beautifully clean and neat copy of the return that was to annihilate Reeves, or elevate him on a pinnacle of financial fame from which nothing could henceforth drag him down, 1 placed a sum of £27,268 18s lid on the Dr. side, instead of the Cr. side, or on the Cr. side, instead of the Dr. side of the account. Well now, in a sense, this was excusable. I was thinking, at the time, to tell you the truth, of a most delightful and charming vocalist : and wondering how it was that the people of Wellington flocked in thousands to hear an older, and lessgraceful and inferior singer, and only came in limited numbers to hear a true English songstress’ And, after all, £27,26818s lid is asmall mistake—undersuchciicunistances. The tables looked just as well, and as puzzling and incomprehensible (that’s the great beauty of them) when printed with the mistake in them as any other way. Nor would one person in 10,000 have seen that there was any mistake in the tables at all. In fact, these figures could have been handed down to posterity as authentic, were it not foi the fact that there are three or four members of the House who, rightly enough perhaps, believe they are Heaven born arithmeticians. They take a positive pleasure in adding up columns of figures, and a fiendish delight in a discovery that they do not tally. In this way my little mistake was laid baie, and Miss Julie Albu has a great deal to answer for, although nobody knows it. But Ido wish those Heaven born Treasurers to be weren’t so awfully clever ! They get a whole lot of people into trouble beside the real culprit. Some six or ten members comedown on the Minister and accuse him, sir, of having done all sorts of wickedness. The Minister comes down on his Utider-Secie-tary, and the Under-Secretary comes down on the accountant, and the accountant comes down on a poor devil like myself. But all this time Miss Julie Albu is preparing to sail away to the United States, and I do hope and believe that the people of the great Republic will recognise her extraordinary merit, and give the graceful young English singer the hearty welcome she deserves I