A MISSION WITH A MORAL.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVII, Issue 26, 18 October 1889, Page 19

A MISSION WITH A MORAL.

TO THB KDITOI N.Z. TABLET. " These be thy gods, 0 Israel I "

Bib,—" Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of A»calon,' — breathe not in WaU-riord of the Gieen isle the Sullivan "minion" has tn led i* a fi/sco, the latr of the great religious revivals in Chustctiuic i ha* collapsed ign uniniously. The " inspired preacher "of ihe new go pel of gush, the "converlei athlete, " has raked in the skudo* and gone < n the spree. Two hundred aid fity pounds Bterlmg, -t real silver communion service, and an illuminate! address all in one ni^ht, WL'ie too much for him, so when he fouud himself in position of ill this property, and the idol of two thousand worshippers, who paid a ahilliner each to see him, hig h< ad bj^.tn tv s»im and an irresistible longns; f r the "husks of ewine " enms upon bim. Tbe great guzzle, tbe smiling a-heid ci ff <±o supper, was the closing scene of the mosc scandalous farce that has ever bet_n enacted in this city of religious theamcalp, and the fi'.ting wind-up of the whole business. " Wliat the d — am Ito do with this communion service 1 " was the exclamation of the " Evangelist" after he had got to the back of the stage when the presentation was over. " Send it to old Uncle Sam's," said one of his Iriends ; "or melt it

down and sell it for old silver," suggested another; *'or present it to the Editor of the Telegraph as a token of gratitude for all nil kindness to yon," broke in a third. Popularity such as Bulli van's hai, before now, sent many a man to the dogs, and so it is no wonder if a purse of 150 sovereigns, besides what was taken at the doors, and a petition from 1250 people, mostly women, begging of him to remain in (Jtiristchurch to minister to their spiritual wants, turned his bead and male bim d.zzy.

A frtaort time after tbe plump old lady who bad affectionately and devoutly flung herstlf on hid ehirt-fronts and besought him to change his mind and t>he would buy tbe lu»m street Hall for him, bad been g it ti 1 of, Millivan was paying bis attenti ns to a more prepossessing " convert " in another part of ihe building. It has been stid by some of bis friends that long before the last stale bun had bee a swallowed, or the laat cup of the beverage, which neither cheered or inebriated, had be.n drunk, the " mission " was nowhere to be found. A certain cabman, well knowu here, tells how Sullivan hailed him about 12.30 on the morning after tbe supper aud kept him in his service until about 5 o'clock driving round from one to another of those dens of infamy which are much too thickly strewn and too easily found in all the low suburbs of this town, and how, in tbe coarsest language, he used to boast of the " converts " he had defiled during his mission, lie seemed to take a special delight in boasting of his own rascality, and the way he took the Ohristchurch people in. When one is told that after all this, and a great deal more to the same effect, bad beta made public, a lady uitxt Sullivan a cheque for £20 to pay his expenses to Kangiora, in order to give a mission there, you caa scarcely doubt him wnen he says that if he were to give another mission in Ohristchurch next week, he would have as big a crowd as ever. That the people of Rangiora are in want of conversion no one, not even their greatest friends have the slightest doubt, but then it would take a half-dozen Evangelists like Q. T. S., to work aay reformation in their hearts, and so when he went among them he founi that tt-ey were absolutely incorrigible, that the late rise in the price of froze u mutton at Home had hardened their hearts and rendered them inaccessible to grace. The Rangiora mission was, therefore, not by aiy mean* a sucses*. The larrikin element was a conspicuous factor in the proceedings and dominated tbe " goings on " in the enquiry room. The boys of the borough accelerated its wind* up, and at its termination Sullivan's two "coadjutors" united in a joint effort to give some of the ladies a benediction.

Meantime tbe Evangelist himself retired under cover of thenight got out by the back way, and took shelter under tbe hospitable roof of his benefactress of the twenty-pound cheque. Will it be believed 1 This man, who it was said had been doing so much good for religion, who had been making converts from all the churches in the city and its suburbs, who had been looked upon as a heaven-sent messenger of a new gospel by thousands of followers, who had grown tired of their own parsons and sick of their own churches, who had even secured the sympathy of a certain close-fisted Presbyterian clergyman to the extent of twenty shillings worth of buns and cakes for his coffee supper, who made it a continual boast tbat he would make the parsons of this town preach to empty benches, and who went a good way towards keeping his word in that direction— will it be believed, I say, tbat, this man's rascality was so irrepressible, his conduct so bad, that the people wh > had invited him to Raugiora, and offered him the hospitality of their house, were obliged to expel him in the middle of oe ni^ht for coniuct which cannot be mentioned here.

Ihe moral of all this is so obvious that it needs no words of mine to point it out to those who get up religious revivals and lend them* selves as willing dupes to every Tom, Dick, or Harry, or even to, say, " Biddy," that comes its way. In the very.plainest language a certain paper in this town cautioned the public against Sullivan, told tnem he was a fraud, that he came amongst them with a buge lie on his lips, that he was a rank hypocrite, a man whose antecedents were bad, and whose present conduct confirmed the worst opinions about him. Over and over again he was shown in the columns of the Telegragh to be a man who was sailing under false colours, preaching under a f Use name; that, in fact, bis name was not Sullivan, but Cbimpett, an I hence that he was a rank impostor. Still, notwithstan ling all this, tbey flocked round him and poured their money in* to his pockets nightly I " Ne'er did faith with her smooth bandage bind

Byes more devoutly willing to be blind." And all the time, as it appears now, Clampett and Brother Marsh were laughing, fit to burst their sides, at tbe gullibility of their dupec What a lurid light does not the Clampett episode let in upon the whole system of modern Christianity as'exemplified by recent events in this city 1 A man without a character, save tbat which he claims by a feigned relationship to a low-bred American fighting man, and a previous acquaintance with vice, comes to this city a dis received with open arms. Not only do they open their church doors and make over their pulpits to bim, but he is pampered, and feted, and lionized by them like a very Chiniquy-*-and if he had the prudence of Chiniquy he miu'ht be still reigning

ovlt them, like an apostle. Hs "fine physique," his "cultured voice," and his '• simple unaffected preaching, " was the theme of all

his followers, but others said it was that nameless something which always attracts the softer s x towards tbe Irishman tbat waß the cause of Clampett'a unprecedented success among the women here. " He was ihe boy for be witching them."

The question of his moral c lamcier never seemed to affect it in the sliprh st. Even;after the ilimsteis' Association had thrown bim ov^r, aud all respectable meu hai washed their hands clean of bim, the wymeu and the modles, like demented enthusiasts, clung to him to 'he iast, and dissenting parsing all over th 6 city held private meetings to discuss the situation, which threatened vengeance with their prospects of a living. In view of wh»t a mountebank like C ampett was able to accomplish in so short a time, aud what other rroun.ebtnka may accomplish again, the situation looks grave enough for tiem, and it is perhaps advisable that breadth of cheat, a fine p'ysqi'e aud a cultured voice may not be ignored in future when selecting young aspirants for the New Zealand mission, in order to

avoid the contingent danger of having to preach to empty benches. If people could only see it, Clampett, all scoundrel as he was — and with bis scoundreliam no one oan have any sympathy — has laid bare the pregnable nature of modern Christianity, and if the followers of Lather, and Calvin, and Wesley, and Knox do uot profit by it they are incapable of taking a lesson.— l am, etc., BATHKEALEHSIB. Ohristchurch, October 12, 1889.