KING DICK AND THE PARSONS. A Storm in a Teacup.

Free Lance, Volume IV, Issue 193, 12 March 1904, Page 6

KING DICK AND THE PARSONS. A Storm in a Teacup.

IT is a grave public scandal for the Premier, privately or otherwise, to fish on a Sunday. The Wellington clergymen have just said so m a great many alarmist words, and they are an estimable body of gentlemen, who know what they want to say, and say it very vigorously when they have a mind that way. The Premier, who either did fish or didn't, over in the neighbouring Sounds a few Sundays ago, thinks he has been very hardly used, and suggests that this intolerant spirit of the parsons explains the fact that so few men attend divine service. * * * Richard always believes m giving as good as he gets. At any rate, this Sabbatarian question is a weary and an involved one. There are many very good people who hold that even though the Premier or any other man caught fish on a Sunday, he or they did no more harm than, the biblical gentlemen who were reproved by the /hansees for plucking corn in the fields on the Sabbath day. But, about this intolerance. Are the parsons of New Zealand intolerant Will they let all and sundry denominations foregather under the one roof ? Will the parsons cease making distressful allegations about things they have only heard about, and not enouired into, and will they try to remember that all men are sinners, and that even parsons are not exactly sinless ? • * rr If the Premier did fish on a Sunday far from the madding crowd, the relaxation afforded by the gentle art probably drove some cobwebs away. If the Premier had gone to church instead of — as he was alleged to do — fishing, do you think that the average parson could have told King Dick or the average man anything better than the whispering river or the murmuring sea could have done ? Would the roof of the church inspire holier emotions in him than the vault of heaven? Would the serried rows of fashionable bonnets, and the drone of a gentleman getting through his weekly task, have compensated him for the loss of fresh air, bright sunshine, and fresh fish for breakfast ? * • ♦ Parsons want to realise that the tendency of the age is towards the abolition of "stuffiness." Congregations hate stuffiness, and dwindle because of it. Remove the stuffiness, and you fill the pewsi. The parson with the largest congregation is the one who understands human feeling* best, and adopts common-sense methods of treatment. The parson who gets on the house-top and in the press to call attention to the fact that a man who has been perhaps working night and day for weeks is sinning by taking a little innocent recreation on Sunday, won't be taken seriously. If anyone is entitled to relaxation, it is cenainly King Dick. He may, we think, be allowed to choose between church attendance and sea excursions as a means of spending the only day of the seven in which he can possibly dodge that "demnition grind."