AN ANSWER TO MR SIDEY.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3090, 23 May 1881, Page 3

AN ANSWER TO MR SIDEY.

[To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph.] Sib, —I have read with considerable interest Mr Sidey's latest addition to his commentary on the Tararua disaster, and feel considerably impressed thereby. He appears to me to be, not only an extraordinary logician; a consummate etymologist (vide his statements concerning the word " truculent") a law unto himself in the matter of English Grammar; but also a man gifted to a marvellous degree witbrthe power of rapidly changing front.

Writing on Saturday, and criticising your article of the evening before, he says, " Your leader furnishes us with an illustration of this perverted sentiment. You say,' When it is endeavoured to be Bhown by ministers of religion, that the Almighty, in his mercy and long suffering, is the direct author of indiscriminate slaughter.' When have ministers of religion ever done anything of the bind ? Can you point to any modern example ? Moat assuredly you will not find it in anything I have said or written on the Tararua disaster." Now is not this surprising? Surely, in the press and hurry of numerous engagements; and the keenly felt weight of the awful responsibility attaching to a man who is, as he himself says and can without doubt prove, " separated by God to teach mankind the truths of the Gospel," he must have forgotten his previous utterances, more particularly his pulpit ones. If newspaper reporters are to be trusted, Mr Sidey taught in his place at St. Paul's Church that the Tararua disaster was owing to the " keeping back of God of the grounds of a right judgment from the captain;'' and, having promissed that much, went on to show that this was done to teach the Union Company what a sin it was to run their boats on the Sabbath. Now he ought to have said « Sunday " instead of " Sabbath ;" but, passing that by, I would like to ask Mr Sidey this—ls " the keeping back by God of the grounds of a light judgment " a free Presbyterian rendering of the old proverb "whom the gods wish to destroy they first drive mad ;" and is Mr Sidey alone responsible for all that is involved" in that method of stating the case; or is it the " word of God " and was it revealed to him by the Deity ? If it proceeded from Mr Sidey alone, it is very wrong for him to try to shirk the responsibility logically attaching to him (unless indeed he owns in a manly way that he was mistaken) and if it were a revelation to him it is worse than cowardly to shrink from the consequences arising from the fact of his being God's mouthpiece. Would it not be better for him to say boldly—"I said such a thing; I believed what I said to be a fact; and I believe so still;" rather than to attempt to wriggle out of a self-created difficulty, under the shadow of a cloud of words ?■ Would not anything, in fact, be better than trying to pervert plain words from their plain meaning ? If " the keeping back by God of the grounds of a right judgment" means anything in the English of mere laymen (and the English of all logicians who are not clergymen) it means this The captain was compelled to err by a Power outside of and superior to himself; the ship was lost through the captain's error; therefore the ship was lost through the interference of a Power other than and superior to the captain. But, further; the loss of the ship resulted in " indiscriminate slaughter." This Power was, Mr Sidey, says, the Deity; therefore, in your words, Sir, "it is endeavoured to be shewn by ministers of religion, that the Almighty, in His mercy and longsuffering, is the direct author of indiscriminate slaughter." Mr Sidey does not like this conclusion. It appears more ghastly and more plainly than it did in the mataiological formula delivered from St. Paul's pulpit; but there is not one iota of the conclusion, ghastly though it be, that was not involved in the oracle as first delivered. Let Mr Sidey be calvinistic and candid. He has the authority of the Bible to back him up that God does all things, even to creating " the wicked for the day of evil" ; and, I suppose, reasoning analogically, Indian famines and Nihilist insurrections also; and he will find traditionary literature connected with his church in which men " separated and consecrated, &c, &c," have not refrained from referring to the existence in Hell of babes " a span long." All this, and more he may find and assimilate : and no person will md fault with him for holding old-world opinions; but all right thinking persons will blame him if, after having promulgated opinions which the majority of thinking persons reprobate as being hostile to true religion, to science, and to common sense, he should shuffle and wriggle, and face about; if he should "run with the bare and hunt with the hounds." In conclusion I wish to say this; and in this conclusion I join issue with Mr Sidey as to the worth-

lessness or otherwise of his theological opinions. It is a very easy task to believe in a Deity who governs the Universe by fixed and unalterable laws imposed from eternity; and who is of those laws the Power, Centre, and Aathor; and by the operation of which lrws all that we call justice aud injustice, good and evil (the sum of material and mental phenomena, in fact) is brought pbout; but very difficult to believe (not persuade ourselves we believe) in a Deity who rains fire and brimstone on a large city, sends bears to tear in pieces little children, and, culmination of all, compels a young and gallant sea-captain to involuntary error, in order that a ship might be wrecked, and her passengers drowned, to teach some persons who were not on the that they ought to keep Sunday in the ship true, Presbyterian manner. Another mistake Mr Sidey makes also—he conveniently assumes that there are only two classes of men religion has to do with; christians and atheists. He is wrong in this; very wrong; utterly wrong. There are thousands of good earnest men who think with reverence of the Deity, and have strong spiritual aspirations, and who lead just and righteous lives, who utterly repudiate Church, Dogma, and Assumption because they honestly believe the most part of this same Dogma to be false, frivolous, impious, and unsupported by reasonable testimony.—l am, &c, Misocorbie. Napier, May 23rd, 1881.