PARSON AND MENDICANT. Gaol for the Mendicant.

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 273, 23 September 1905, Page 6

PARSON AND MENDICANT. Gaol for the Mendicant.

THE Rev. Mr. Gillam, of Auckland, was approached by a "beery mendicant" the other day. The "beery mendicant" begged, from him. The reverend gentleman, very properly perhaps, refused the "beery mendicant" the price of a meal — which, being interpreted, probably meant the price of three "long beers" — and eventually handed the derelict over to the police. The mendicant is now undergoing two months' imprisonment for having asked the reverend gentleman for the price of a meal. • • m The newspaper report doesn't tell us whether the cleric tried to reform the 1 man, or whether he enquired whether thei beery person was in necessitous circumstances, or whether the "drunk" was mentally responsible for his state of health, or anything about it. Only that he had committed the offence of asking a parson — who is an acknowledged guide-post to the narrow way — for a meal. * • • If the beggar was an average "drunk," he could no more help being intoxicated than the parson could help giving him m charge. If he was sent to gaol asi a punishment for begging of the parson, the parson ought to' give m charge all the broken-legged and diseased mendicants who appeal to him for help, for of a verity the "drunk" is as much diseased and as incapable of resisting his particular sin asi a man with any other disease. * * • It is a particularly sad circumstance that clergymen, who live by begging themselves, should consider it so heinous a crime in others, and that they should advocate punishment and not cure. "Beery mendicants' " particular cross is beer. Clergymen's particular crosses may be big collections, or church raffles, or hardness of heart. The "beery mendicant" cannot resist beer; the clerygman cannot resist raffles; therefore, on the cleryman's showing, both ought to go to' gaol f Simple, isn't it? * ♦ » Clergymen ought to fight beer, but not beer drinkers — the sin, and not the sinner. You cannot make a man holy by putting him m gaol, and you cannot make a man good by dragging him out of a clerical college and clothing him in black cloth and a "choker." The parson who has never felt the temptation to drink beer is not necessarily more to be admired than the mendicant who' feels the temptation all the time and falla. There is no< brotherly love shown in booting a sinner into a cell because one is not a sinner of the same brand. * * ♦ The average parson is some sort of a sinner, but ne would be angry if a mendicant gave him in charge* for it. We don't know that parsons are called upon to live better lives than anybody else, and if they don't the excuse is that they are merely human, but we do say that no man, parson or layman, should kick a man into gaol instead of hospital. The higher classes of society are largely responsible for the decadence of the lower, and the higher class has a right to see that the results of their neglect don't fall still lower by their actions. If all beggars were sent to gaol, lay-readers would take all the church services next Sunday.