CHARITY V. RELIGION.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3881, 27 December 1883, Page 4

CHARITY V. RELIGION.

[To THE Editor of the Daily Telegraph.] y ln) —Iv tho closing remarks of his sermon on Sunday tho Rev. D. Sidey touched upon tho spread of infidelity, and upon a form of disbelief that showed' itself in the absence of reverence of the Sabbath day. Mr Sidey alluded to tho means intended on that very day to be adopted to secure contributions to tho hospitalbox, audit was with evident fcclingsof sorrowthathewas obliged to admit tho thought that those means would be successful. And they proved to bo so. And what wero those means, Sir? No less than the performance of sacred pieces of music by a brass baud! A brass band played under the blue vault of flic canopy of Heaven. Tho same pieces arc constantly played as voluntaries under the roofs of churches. But churches are consecrated, while the sky abovo us of course is not. There is yet another difference, the collection in a church goes for tho most part into the pockets of tho parson ; tho collection at tho Botanical GardenslastSunday was to be devoted to more charity. If I recollcctrightly, Sir, the Presbyterian Church in Napier last year set the examplo to tho English Church in this town of refusing assent to a " Hospital Sunday." I am afraid that if our charitable institutions depended on the charity of ministers of religion they would soon cease to distinguish the form that infidelity takes in the present day. Sir, I would rather have the cloak of Charity to cover my infidelity than I would stand a naked Pharisee glorying in my hollow observance of tho Ten Commandments. —I am, kc, S.A. December 21, 1883.