THE REV. J.M. PEEBLES.

Evening Star, Issue 3116, 13 February 1873, Page 2

THE REV. J.M. PEEBLES.

To the Editor, “Semper ego auditor tantum? Nunquamne rppouaiii

g lßf _How long is this community patiently to listen to the disgusting and rancid blasphemy of Mr Peebles? Surely his letter in your issue of last evening is quantum svff. Surely we are not prepared for any more of that kind of thing. Does Mr Peebles thiuk that the taste of this community is so debased that he may say anything with impunity ’ Does he think we are a community of savages, Mr Peebles has miscalculated his latitude altogether. His hideous caricatures, and flagrant misrepresentations, are at once disgusting to our taste, and insulting to our intelligence. If there be, indeed, any conceivable “deep beneath the lowest deep,” any “ deceusion beneath his condescension,” we know not what it is ; but it is about tijpe Mr Peebles was informed that his language lias already descended to such an abyss of foulness and horror that no oontrovertist can follow him. Mr Peebles knows very well that what he calls “ these oredal doctrines of the Church,’ unctuously set forth by him in some vulgar and impious quotations, are not credal doctrines of the Church at all. He knows that their hideous and blasphemous imagery is as repulsive to the mind of every Presbyterian, every Churchman, and every Methodist in this community as to his own. At least if he dqes not know it, if his friends have been abusing bis confidence by slander of their fellow-citizens, it is high time that his mind was disabused. His three American divines, whose foul blasphemy he poured out upon your columns last evening, have no representatives here. And I thiuk I speak the mind of my fellow-citizens when I say we can very well dispense with his exhibition of such sfcrrcorean theology. Mr Peebles may be a skilful hand at “exposing” such uastines , but'we would prefer that he would not bring it here even for exposure, Mr Peebles has overleaped himself. He meant to cure© bis but be has

blessed them altogether. He meant to datnag? the cause of religion here, bat I believe he has served it. There is a grossnoss of caricature about his representations of our religion that neutralises their effect. The tragedy is so very tragical that it has become a fa-ce. “Py ramus is not Pyramus, but Bottom the weaver ” Of course, this caricature is dishonest; nor less dishonest is Mr Peebles’s profession of faith in the teachings of Christ and the A postles. Mr Peebles knows as well as we do that some of the m ist terrible representations of the punishment of unforgiven sin fell from the lips of Jesus. Mr Peebles knows that Christ expressly taught what he expressly calls blasphemy ; and it is not honest in Mr Peebles to shelter himself under the mayni nonwiis umbra of Jesus Christ while expressing, with every variety of adverb and adjective, the strongest detestation of what Jesus taught. Does Mr Peebles know that we read the New Testament, some of us, in Otago? Dies he know that (judging from bis inaccuracy of quotation) s >me of us probably know our Bibles even better than he does? Does he know that it is now many years since we ceased to eat each other in this island? We do not stand in need of the missionary services of the reverend gentleman,—l am, Ac., Alkph. Dunedin, January 12.