THINGS STRANGE AND WONDERFUL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 16, 7 August 1885, Page 9

THINGS STRANGE AND WONDERFUL.

BUB&LY this world would be soon reduced to a dreadful state, were the Protestant idea of private interpretation, with all its legitimate -daductions, to receive the actual approbation of the world. Private interpretation, as applied to moral conduct, means that there can be DO fixed and positive standard of right, other tthaa > the iqdividnal conscience ; mo voice of general authority, which is with certainty, to draw the lines between what is'good and what is evil, pemittitig the one, and prohibiting the other. Provided that only a person brings himself to the belief that particular acts are justifiable, or that particnlar opinions are sound, he may practice the one and advocate the other, whatever be their characters ; and no, other man or woman has the right or power to authoritatively condemn what the first has chosen thus to do, or to proclaim. TJie Mormon may take down his Bible and read how the early Hebrews were permitted to take to themselves a plurality of wives, and he may argue himself into the conviction that .what was lawful for others, thousands of years ago, is equally lawful for him, in present days, and, having thus satisfied his judgment, he has the intrinsic right both to practice and to preach polygamy. Some time since, a Protestant parson contended that it was lawful under certain circumstances, to commit suicide, and of course the "individual conscience" it is which is to determine when the " proper circumstances " have arrived ; therefore man may take his own life, practjpally, at bis own will. Certain individuals are even now preaching that the idiotic and deformed should be slain, in order to improve the condition of the human race ; and men of such views, do no wrong in advocating their •bominable theories, if they have only convinced themselves that they are right. And to go a step further, still upon the line of private interpretation, any one of these " advanced thinkers " may put his theories into practice, and innocently kill an idiotic or deformed brother ; provided only, the slayer begins by satisfying his own conscience that this is the proper thing to do. And Martin Luther, with other of the early reformers, so-called, approved of adultery ; and might not others follow in these opinions, theoretically and practically, and come to banish entirely the marriage relation ? But, we might follow in this train, ad infinitvm. Suffice it, therefore, to remark, that Protestant doctrines are assuredly among the number of the things that are strange and wonderful.— Exchange.