LECTURE BY MR. SELBY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 913, 5 September 1910, Page 11

LECTURE BY MR. SELBY.

:Mr. Isaac Selby' lectured at the Opera House last evening on the subject of ;"Jesus, ' the Philanthropic Jew." His lepturewas prefaced by a- personal statement in the course of which he remarked that to had spent the greater part of the previous six years in prisons in Sari: Fraricisco and elsewhere. He. had been in a county - prisori, / a State penitentiary, and a lunatic asylum., At the, same time he had:taken not a single step . save from , the highest motives that could move or actuate a •man. In his- last place of detention, six. of. his teeth ' were ; extracted, although he'had protested that their loss .-would- -seriously ■ prejudice-.- his lecturing career. He wanted, he went on to state," to return to/America and' fight his case in the Federal Court there. To that end he had a proposal to submit to his friends in Australia and New Zealand. He wanted theni to provide him with a sum of £1000 to meet .his legal expenses. If he won his case he would retain nono of this money.' Sums collected in New Zealand wpuld be presented to Dunedin Hospital, and money collected in Australia would be presented to tho ..hospital at Melbourne. At -the same time he asked that the money be given unconditionally. Coming to his subject proper, Mr. Selby asserted that in the life of Jesus mankirid had an image of perfect philanthropy. This, not because Jesus was a worker of miracles and fed a multitude with loaves and fishes—that was a dubious story, and told in any caso of doubtful philantbrophy—but because tho principles that he had anr nounedd and lived tended to relieve the' suffering that oppressed mankind. This theme Mr. Selby elaborated at some length, with a view to supporting his contention that • philanthropliy should be encouraged in every possible way.