ANARCHISM AND SOCIALISM.

Feilding Star, Volume XVI, Issue 21, 25 July 1894, Page 2

ANARCHISM AND SOCIALISM.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR.

Sir, — Someone asked a bald-headed editor once what he attributed the loss of his thatch to 1 The scribe replied, " Oh, er, I lost all my hairs through scratching for ideas." I shall "scratch" until I am as hairless as a billiard-ball before I discover the " idea" or " ideas" embodied in " Orthodox's " letter. When I read that " Orthodox's " reply to Mr Bentley was unavoidably held over I said to myself sorrowfully, " Oh lor' ! If I haven't been and gone and done it with a vengeance ? lam committed to a perplexing interminable theloogical discussion with sonic 'pillar of the church,' or some ' shining light ' of the Anglican or Romish belief, who will paralyse me and flatten me out with bewildering chunks of Biblical history !" Imagine my unbounded astonishment then to find, over the norn de plume of " Orthodox," an epistle which I can only conclude must have emanated from the infantile branch of the local State School. He quotes a couple of texts : " For whosoever hath to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance ; but whosoever hath not from him shall be taken away even that he hath "—Matthew XIII, 12v. "For I say unto you that unto everyone which hath shall be given ; and from him that hath net even that he hath shall be taken away from him " — Luke XIX, 26v. " Orthodox " : a cantankerous cuss of a person once spat on a slate upon which a German tradesman used to do his double-entry book-keeping. The obliteration of the figures on the slate meant serious pecuniary loss to the unfortunate Ten ton, and when he gazed on the ruins of his financial memoranda and accounts be exclaimed, 11 He shbits on der shlade vere I geeps mein aggounts ; und now, py iShimminy, I don'd know vedder I bays meinselluf dose aggounts, or vedder somepody else don'd bay me dose aggounts. All I know viis I vas my shoffel file " (become bankrupt). I can only give — or attempt to give — one explanation of the self-evident paradoxes embodied in these Scriptural quotations, and it is this : Our Saviour used them in reference purely to spiritual matters, not temporal things or goods ; and he probably meant to convey the assurance that a person filled with the Holy Spirit's influence and love of God should hereafter experience a fuller and more abundant knowledge of God and eternal happiness. An contraire, those who died possessed of just sufficient Christianity to serve as a cloak or lip-profession, would have even that little knowledge and experience of Divine grace rudely takfn away from them at the Bar of Judgment. This is the only explanation I can render " Orthodox," and if I attempt to dive any deeper into the why and the wherefore of our Saviour's use of the apparent contradictions — well, I shall soon become as hopelessly befogged over the matter as our Tentonic friend was over the loss of the hieroglyphics which he called his "aggounts." His Satannic Majesty can quote Scripture to suit his purpose ; and it may be that "Orthodox" is merely a Secularist or Atheist in disguise, seeking to trip me up and put the spinal column of my theology four and a-half degrees out of plumb. I would feel more satisfied on this point if "Orthodox" would fight meinpropria persona.

I am, etc., George E. Bentley