CHARLES BRIGHT & SIR HERCULES ROBINSON.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 19, 22 January 1878, Page 2

CHARLES BRIGHT & SIR HERCULES ROBINSON.

To thb Editor ov the « Evening Mail.' Sta —There has recently been amongst us a man who, for the sake of the few shillings he could pick up at his vile trade, has been endeavoring to shake our belief ia the faith in which we were brought up by ridiculing all that we have been taught to reverence, and sneering at that which we have learned to hold sacred. Under these circumstances I would ask you, Sir, to reproduce a short extraci from the very excellent address of Sir Hercules Robinson to the youth of Australia, which you published one day last week. It is but a brief quotation, and runs as follows: — "There are graver matters, boys, on which I scarcely dare to touch. We live, as has been truly observed, in an age when the traditional solutions of the great mysteries which surround our life— solutions which were generally accepted as formulas by our fathers and grandfathers— are now subjected to ruthless scientific examination and criticism ; and when many brains are bewildered, and many hearts made to ache, by the vain effort to solve problems impenetrable to human reason. I scarcely like even to allude to such a subject, but I know that you cannot fail, every one of you, to feel the influence of the restless, probing spirit of the age in which you live, and I will therefore say to you that in my opinion the happiest state is that in which a man can cling with firm, unquestioning faith to the belief, whatever it may be, in which he was brought up at his mother's knee." The italics are my own. The words themselves are those of a greater than Charles Bright. lam, <kc.,