ON SUICIDE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 3782, 18 January 1908, Page 3

ON SUICIDE.

Rev. R. J. Campbell’s Remarkable Sermon. The Rev. R. J. Campbell, in the course of a remarkable sermon at the City Temple on the subject of Christ feeding the multitude, in which he referred to a recent suicide in the Thames of an author and his artist wife, “ who perished for want of bread,” asked the congregation if they really believed the New Testament story in its literal sense. The men who told the story were Orientals and were not deceived in the least- They used it to illustrate the spiritual value of Jesus to the world. The feeding of the multitude was not the feeding ot the body, but the feeding of the soul with the bread of life. It was a felicitous and beautiful symbol, but its beauty was destroyed and its teaching ruined when they sought to reduce it to the physical plane. This statement evoked two or three cries of “No,” and one member of tne congregation indignantly explained, ‘‘Certainly not ” Mr Campbell: Very well, don’t interrupt. The preacher proceeded to state that the average representative of the Christian Church argued that it was physical food, and “ Now,” said Mr Campbell, 11 see the pretty mess into which they have landed us to-day. “ If Jesus came to Minister to us to-day, and did not say who he was, do you think His Own church would receive him gladly ? (“ No. ”) It would not, I am perfectly sure. It would regard Him as a dangerous revolutionary, engaged in upsetting order in the Church and State. ‘‘ He would expose the whole system and hollow sham of giving people good advice, or putting sticking-plaster on a running sore and calling it a cure, while we continue to profit by their material disadvantages.” Referring to the suicide of Mr and Mrs Good, Mr Campbell said that they had chosen that end because the struggle to live was too much for them. “ Here were two people of refinement and culture,” continued Mr Campbell, ‘‘brought up in good circles, able to produce beautiful thoughts aud • things, and yet they perished. As they had lived, loved, and suffered together they thought they would die together and end it all. I suppose there are some people who would say these two poor things would go to hell, (“No.”) If so, it cannot be very much worse thau the hell they left. (Applause.) Who makes that hell ? I make it. You make it. We all do our little to help to make it —not willingly, but thoughtlessly. ‘‘lf we had only known in time there is not a man or woman in this congregation who would not have shared his or her last crust to save this couple from the end of which they had heard. We are all sorry. Yet for every one of the cases we hear of there are 10,000 which are not heard of, and which we never shall hear. ’ ’