New Zealand Tablet Fiat Justita. FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 1877. HOW THEY BREAK THE TRAMMELS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume V, Issue 217, 22 June 1877, Page 10

New Zealand Tablet Fiat Justita. FRIDAY, JUNE 22, 1877. HOW THEY BREAK THE TRAMMELS.

There is at present, in this city, a lecturer who has set himself the task of breaking the trammels in which Christianity has bound the minds of men. He holds forth in the Princess Theatre on Sunday evenings, and there he gives to his hearers a weekly treat of vituperation of everything which. Christians hold most sacred. In other places such lectures are usually attended by the idle, the dissolute, and the vainly curious ; they are the pastime of the lowest and most dangerous members of society. Here, however, it would appear that a different state of things exists. Men, and women, too, who had been hitherto regarded not only as decent people, but also as respectable, aTe found among the patrons and active supporters of this shocking insult to the faith of ages arid the vast majority of this community. We have noticed, with amazement, that a member of an honourable profession, who is also one of the Parliamentary representatives of this city, is not only a member of this lecturer's committee, but has taken the chair, we believe more than once, at these lectures, and permitted without rebuke the most shocking blasphemies against the faith of nine-tenths of his constituents. This reveals a new state of things. It has hitherto been the custom of representatives of the people, no matter what their own private opinions may have been, to respect at least the religious convictions of all sections of their constituents. Self-interest had no doubt something to do with this, but the feelings of a true gentleman, and the convenances of good society, had, we doubt not, a great deal more. It is painful, therefore, to be compelled to say that for vulgarity and rampant infidelity Dunedin holds a place of unenviable notoriety. This city, with the appiause of some of its leading citizens, sanctions the insults to Christianity and its professors, which even the infidelity of Melbourne cast out from it. This lecturer has, of course, ro difficulty in contradicting the words of God, and rejecting the authority of His inspired servants. An illustration of this has been given for the third time during the last few days. This lecturer, in one of his onslaughts on Christianity, in order to prove how benighted and ignorant Christians are, told his hearers that Christians erroneously and foolishly believed that the ten commandments which were written on the second tables of stone, mentioned in the 34th chapter of Exodus, are not the precepts of the Decalogue which bad been written by God on the first tables of stone. His error was pointed out to him in a letter written to one of the morning papers, but in vain. He has since twice repeated his untrue and groundless assertion. And this is what is called breaking the trammels of the human mind ! To deny what God promised and what Moses expressly declares he did, is, of course, not to rivet but to break the trammels of the human mind ! And to obstinately persevere in asserting a palpable falsehood, is, of course, to manifest a great love of truth, and show an earnest and logical spirit of enquiry ! Nothing ciin be more certain than that the commandments written on the second tables of stone were precisely the commandments written on the first which Moses had broken on coming down from the mountain. It the first verse of the 34th chapter of Exodus God says to Moses :—": — " Hew thee two tables of stone like unto the former, and I will write upon them the words which were in the tables, which thou brokest." Christians believe that God always keeps His promise. Had we, therefore, no other reason for saying that the first and second tables of stone contained precisely the same commandments, these words would be s>ufficieut to establish the fact. But there are also other reasons, one of which is the express words of Moses himself, who, of course, knew what he put into the Tabernacle. In the Book of Deuteronomy, chapter 10, verses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Moses writes: — " At that time the Lo&D said to me : Hew Me two tables of stone like the former, and come up to Me into the Mount,

And thou shalt make an ark of wood. And I will write on the tables the words that were in them, which thou brokest before, and thou shalt put them in the ark. And I made an nrk of Settim wood. And when I had hevrn two tables of stone like the former, I went up into the mountain, having them in my hands. And He wrote on the tables, according as He had written before, the ten words which the Lob» spoke to you in the Mount from the midst of the fire, when the people were assembled : and He gave them to me. And j returning from the Mount I came down, and put the tables into the ark that I had made, and they are there till this present, as the Lord commanded me." But this breaker of the trammels of the ignorance of Christians knows a great deal better than Moses himself, ■what was done by God, and what he did himself ; and tells his enlightened hearers who sometimes applaud him, so enamoured are they of his learning and trammel-breaking, that what Mobbs so expressly states is not the fact, but the contrary of fact. Here, then, we have a specimen of the learning, logic, taste, and refinement of this lecturer, and those who show their superior enlightenment by patronising his lectures. "Wbat idea, we wonder, is entertained of Dunedin •where these facts are known? Respect for the intelligence and propriety of manners of many in Dunedin, will not, we fear, be felt where it becomes known that so many here employ their Sunday evenings in listening to and applauding lectures of the learning, research, and taste of which we have now given an example.