PROFANITY DISCUSSED.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5288, 7 March 1878, Page 3

PROFANITY DISCUSSED.

Is a swearing Kanaka really guilty of profanity? (asks tlie Queenslander). The question is capable of expansion. Is profanity a form of expression or a frame of uiirnl? When a Legislative Councillor in the chrysalis form, or, in other words, a bulloek-driver, storms out a foam of bad language to encourage his team, invoking iuatant destruction to their eyes, livers, and other portions of their anatomy, as well as their immortal souls, pausing between whiles to whiff placidly and beamingly at his pipe, and tochirrup to baby sitting on the dray in his missus’s lap, and not feeling the faintest desire to see his property struck blind, billions, or dead upon the spot, let alone consigned to eternal; perdition, is he cursing and and profane ? On the othsr h ind, when Mr. S iggina, with sour self-command, remarks th'it he laments your depraved frame of mi d ajnl will pray that -you will be snatched from the burning, while all the time he is eluted with the idea that ho will sit in Abraham's bosom and see you burn, and rather looks forward to finding it his duty to refuse you the cup of cold water which the dim ite induces you to hanker after—under these circumstances is Mr. Stiggius clearer from taint of cursing than the embryo Legislative Councillors? In other words, is it by the heart or mouth a man will bo judged ; is a nbt to be esteemed by its shell or its kernel ? These difficult questions were suggested by a

story of a Kanaka who served out a sort of moral mixed pickle, compounded equally of piety and profanity. On .au original grounding of barbaric simplicity this child of nature bad received a veueer of missionary teaching, and on, arriving among the people whom missionaries pass by in, ordey to, convert the heathen, he received a finishing varnish of . the, sort of , expression prevalent in a Christian country. He "sought employment, and gave a general reference to 'll the wharves in • Brisbane, having worked at each. On being narrowed ,to smaller limits by; the enquiry whether jhe had worked ' for Bright Brothers, he gave , a ready affirmative, on the rather broad grounds, that all men are brothers, supporting, his position by adducing the opinion, of his . missionary to that effect ; and express ng his faith in the missionary’s. correctness -by .the addendum, “By G- ,he knew!” As a further- recommendation, he, produced a hymn-book, and sang a hymn in au unknown tongue; and perceiving the white man regarding {he characters in the book with a pu?zled aspect in consequence of the Fijian tongue having been omitted from the curriculum of his studies, the colored saint remarked.with humour that “ tnassa , would find . it; devilish hard to read." Massa is:confu*ed about this phenomenon of devotional profanity, and wants to be informed in which direction this colored catechumen will take a departure when he dies. . i i . ■ .