A Wheen Thochts
[By Scotch Thistle.]
Our worthy representatives, tough rags that they are, after a highly sensational session. have returned to the bosom of their families, for which let us join with them in being thankful. We will leave them in peace a little, and doubtless in due time they will explain why they have done things they ought not to have done, and left undone those things they should have done. However, it is satisfactory to know we have another hundred brand new patches on our political garments. In the good old days the Lord reckoned on managing things with ten laws; but we have improved His work considerably, and doubtless will continue improving, although, to apeak the truth, it takes us all our time to keep within the four corners of the ten. But the main feature of the session is the democratic lion taking the capitalistic lamb into its bosom. The millennial cannot be far off, as the temperance orator would say. The day of perfect peace stands tip-toe upon the mountains, while the birds of paradise warble “ Wait till this time next year.’' Much of the best work done by our members has been rendered useless by that Council. Clearly tney want fresh blood there ; and that being the case where can you get better democratic blood than in Southland ? Already an influential Farmers’ Club has suggested a well-know,n Liberal, namely, Mr Kinross, while another important body saggests a certain distinguished personage ; while each one fondly hopes he may be the chosen one himself. That is one of the glorious privileges of the Maorilanders. Like the sweet singer of Israel, or the boilermaker of Christchurch, we know not the hour we may be called on to rule the destinies of a nation. But there is one man in our midst who deserves the honour as much, if not more, than any I have heard mentioned, namely, Mr Buxton. He is public spirited and honest; lie is a clear-headed Liberal, with strong con Tictions, and, what I line best about the man (although I may differ from him occasionally) ho has the courage of his convictions._ He would make a member of whom his friends could be proud; aud his enemies, who consist mainly of topers, printers, and printers’ devils, would doubtless view his sessional departure in a state of elevation. The anarchist is here, and in such an hour as they know not Seddon or Ward may be blown from a walking corruption to martyred perfection. Speaking of anarchists, reminds me of an incident in the trial of Santo. Although I in no way sympathise with his action, still in a passage-at-arias between the judge and the prisoner the latter, to my mind, had the best of it. Judge: What was your reason for killing a man who in bo way injured you ? Prisoner : What is the reason Governments send out thousands of men to be slaughtered ? Judge; They fight for liberty, but you had no such cause to strike down a man whose wife and family depended on him for happiness. Prisoner: I struck for the liberty of humanity; and thousands of those who fall in war have wives and children depending on them for bread. Santo apparently forgot that if it was wrong to kill in war for the sake of liberty, it was still more wiong to assassinate a man in cold blood for the same. But historians tell us that Csosar fell at the hand’s of his friend Brutus because Caesar's ambition was endangering the liberty of the people, so future historians may write that Santo struck down the President of France because he was at the head of a social system where my brother the capitalist lolls in wealth and has every luxury, builds a church to the glory of himself and the praise of law aud order, and dies aud is wafted to heaven by the prayers of an admiring clergy, while my sister the seamstress fails to keep soul and body together on eightpence a-day, dies and is buried in a pauper’s grave, surrounded only by the pinched faces of her companions that proclaim eloquently that “Liberty is a glorious feast.” The anarchist; lets his sympathies overrule his reason. Like the Laird o’ Cockpen and the laird of a certain populous and smoky quarter, my thochts are mainly taken up in affairs of the Kirk and State. That being so, I hope the editor will allow me to insert the following extract, as showing that things are moving ahead a little even in such a priest-ridden country as Scotland. Professor Story, at the General Assembly, said : —There are those who appear to anticipate that the Christian faith is not to survive this age of criticism and science—that the Church ot Christ is not to hold its own amid the social and democratic changes that impend. But the Christianity that survived the sardonic scepticism of Voltaire and critical assaults of Hume will not go down before the science of Darwin and the philosophy of Spencer. No doubt science has upset much that - many thought divinely true. It has made it hard to believe in many of theßibbical tales that in our youth we never doubted ; it has added to rather than taken from the allencircling mystery of life; it has opened avenues into the infinitude of space which it baffles even our imagination to follow. But I do not see that it has ever succeeded in disproving the possibility of a revelation from Cod to man ; in discrediting the belief that it is one all-pervading law; the product of one supreme intelligence, that orders in our little planet the succession of seed time and harvest, day and night, and in the immeasurabla distances tends the awful beacon of Sirius, and guides the mysterious path cf a God. Still less has it undermined the testimony to that life and death in which generations of men have seen
divine glory, the assurance of love, and the testimony ot righteousness. “ Let us get back to Christ,” should be the watchword of the Church’s teachers.” So far Story is good, and then be proceeds in true orthodox fashion to smite the Disestablishes hip and thigh. Bat once the Church’s teachers are content to follow in the footsteps of Christ and to live up to his ideals, it will hardly be necessary to tax either a nation or an individual to enable them to do so. ■
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Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 33, 10 November 1894, Page 3
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1,082A Wheen Thochts Southern Cross, Volume 2, Issue 33, 10 November 1894, Page 3
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