THE LAST FROM "A.B."

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3082, 13 May 1881, Page 2

THE LAST FROM "A.8."

[To the Editor of the Daily TewegHUPH.] Sir,—Mr Sidey draws his ideas of God chiefly from the Old Testament; I draw mine, for the most part, from what Christ preached. There is little chance of reconciling these opposing ideas, and theologians may argue, as they have argued, for generation after generation, but they will come no nearer to agreement. The God that would destroy the world by a flood ; that would rain fire on a city; that would lead the Roman legions against Jerusalem ; the God, for whom, in fact, is claimed the nuthorship of every revolting act of cruelty committed by human fiends in their savagery, is not and cannot be the God spoken of by the writers of the New Testament. Mr Sidey may ridicule my theology, as he doubtless pities the snivelling sentimentality that overcame the Apostle John when be wrote his first General Epistle. John wrote: " And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is Love ; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." To Mr Sidey the above verse probably exhibits false theology, repugnant to the teachings of Calvin, and therefore contrary to the views entertained by the Church of Scotland. However, the God believed in by John was not the God that slew thousands of innocent people in order to convince King David that it was better to trust in God than in the numbers of the population of his kingdom. David's God was he that

Commanded Mopes to destroy all before him—"And we utterly destroyed them, as we did unto Sihon, King of Heshboo, utterly destroying the men, women, and children of every city." Deut., c. iii., v. 6. That is not my God; and, therefore, I do not recognise a special haze overhanging the land, a special variation of the compasses, a special net of the current, as the direct work of God for the purpose of wrecking the Tararua, This is all I have to say to Mr Sidey.—l am, &c, A. B. Napier, May 13, 1881.