“Take Notice, My Son.”

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 2, Issue 241, 13 January 1881, Page 2

“Take Notice, My Son.”

The Burlington Hatvkcye is not ex. actly a religious newspaper, but,,the following advice to a young man, which we find in its columns, is nearly as good as the average sermon :— (l 'Did you ever notice, rny son, that the man who tells you he cannot believe , the Bible is usually able to- believe almost >anything else? You will find men, my son, who turn with horror, gnej utter, dipbelief from the Bible, and joyfully embrace the teachings of Buddha. It is quite the'thing-qust how, my son, for a civilised, enlightened man, brought up in a Christian country and in an*age of wisdom, J to be-a Bbddhist. And if you ask six men who profess Buddhism who Buddha was, one of them will tell you he was an Egyptian soothsayer, who lived "200 years before Moses ; another will tell you that he brought letters from Phoenicia and introduced them in. Greece; a third will tell you. that she was a beautiful woman of farther. India, bound by her vows to perpetual chastity ; a fourth will, with little'hesitation, say he was a Brahma of the ninth degree and a holy disciple of Confucius; ; and ‘of the other two, one will frankly admiP that he doesn’t know, and the other will say, with some indecision,' that he was either a dervish of the. Nile (whatever that is) or a felo de sc, he can’t be positive which.

“ Before you propose to know more than anybody arid everybody else, my son, be very certain that you are least of two thirds of your fellow men. I don’t want to suppress any inefinatidn you may have toward genuine free thought and cai'eful honest investiga-. tion, my son. I only want you to avoid the great fault of atheism in this day and generation ; I dont want to see you try to build a six-storey house on a one-storey foundation. Before, you critise, condemn, and finally_reYlle_ the work of creation; be pretty confident that you know something about oj u is blder. in years and experience than yourself—don’t, let me implore .you, don’t turn this world upside down and sit down on it, and flatten fit entirely out, until you have made or secured another one for the rest Of us to live in while you demolish the old one.