THE REV. MR. SIDEY AND THE TARARUA DISASTER.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3080, 11 May 1881, Page 2

THE REV. MR. SIDEY AND THE TARARUA DISASTER.

[To thk Editor op the Daily Telegraph.] Knoweßt thou the ordinances of heaven ? Canst thou sot the dominion thereof in the earth ?

-Job XXXVIII., V, 33. Sib,—The above question was asked by the Lord of Job, but had it been put to the Rev. David Sidey an answer would have been made that would have been startling from its apparent presumption. I say "apparent," because I do not doubt but what Mr Sidey believes that he knows a great deal more of the workings

of God's providence than anybody can tell him. It is, at all events, one of the functions of clerymen to make us believe that they are vouchsafed special oppor-* tunitieß for discerning the finger of God in human affairs. Practice tends to perfection, and after a long experience of uncontradicted assertion it is reasonable to suppose that a minister at length convinces himselfthat beis perfectly acquainted with the ordinances of Heaven and with the ways of the Lord. I myself heard a clergyman in the pulpit attribute the cholera in England, and tbe potato disease in Ireland, to the wickedness of Parliament in removing religious disabilities. It was that gentleman's belief, Mr Sidey presumably belongs to the same school of thought, to regard the Almighty as a sort of household sprite of mischievous tendencies ; to attribute to hip direct agency every occurrence in the world, from a puff of wind down the chimney that might spoil the broth with soot, to a European war ; from the birth of a child to tbe marriage of a daughter; from tbe wreck of a vessel to a bountiful harvest; nothing was too great, nothing too small for his interference, and this mterferference with family or national affairs, as well as with tbe laws of nature, could be brought about by prayer. Now, Sir, Mr Sidey, in your columns yesterday, in a frightfully involved sentence, asked me to reconcile my belef in an " over-ruling providence" with the drowning of a hundred human beings. My belief does not extend the term " over-ruling" to personal interference, and I do not attribute to the direct interposition of the Almighty the wreck ot tbe Tararua. -Mr Sidey would split straws over what was no doubt an ill-chosen word on my part. I will now ask him to reconcile Christ's teaching on earth with the idea that he cherishes of the God of the Christians being Moloch, in human sacrifices.-—I am. &c, A.B. j Napier, May Il,*<lßßl.