CELESTIAL BODY-SNATCHERS

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 3, Issue 263, 24 January 1879, Page 3

CELESTIAL BODY-SNATCHERS

(New Zealand Tablet)

It seems, according to Mr Varley, that those Christians "who a few. years ago attired themselves in white and. marched in procession to a position a little distance from the town of Ballarat, affirming that they were to be conveyed thence by angels straight into heaven, were but a little in advance of the times. They were disappointed on the occasion we allude to, and were obliged to return to their homes in the midst of a downpour of rain, above which the angels had failed to elevate them; but, in about twenty years more, if they live so long, they will be recompensed for this disappointment, for they will one and all be whipped up beyond the clouds to a certainty. All Christians are then to be snatched up, we are told, and the newspapers will not be able to tell what on earth has become of them. It is incidentally worthy of remark that the newspapers are supposed to be edited, composited, printed, and generally be-deviled by people who are not by any means Christians, but who are to be left behind in the mud, marvelling over the fate of all the good folk who have been spirited away "as a thief in the night." No newspaper will be obliged to stop its publication because of the heavenly abduction of the members of its staff. Journalists, Chinamen, Jews and Freethinkers, will become addle-pated in the endeavour to discover what has become of all their godly neighbours; and it is to be hoped that they in turn will not be regarded as thieves in the day if they venture to appropriate to their own uses the man}' excellent things that those blessed Ganymedes will have left behind. Already we have in our own mind several snug little properties, owned by decided Christians, that it

would be most convenient to find vacated in this way, or in any other way for the matter or that. But what a pity it is that this celestial body 7 snatching is to be postponed for twenty years. Only think how charmingly apropos it would be wero it liow to occur to many most excellent Christians There," for example, aro thr.se unhappy directors of the City of Glasgow Bank—exemplary Christians every Ja-k ono of them—who would give any thing just at present to be snatched away "as a thief in the night," and such a manner of snatching would be extremely appropriate when applied to them.