THE CHURCH ARRAIGNED. A Startling Christmas Sermon.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 312, 31 October 1888, Page 3

THE CHURCH ARRAIGNED. A Startling Christmas Sermon.

Tkxt. — "Go to now, yo rich men, weep and howl for your 1 miseries that shall come upon you. Behold, the hire of the labourers wholiavo reaped down your Holds, which is of you kept, baclc by 'raud, cricth ; and the erios of them which have reaped arc entered into the cars of the Lord of Sabaoth. Ychavclivod in pleasure on the earth and been wanton ; ye have nourished your hearts as in a day of slaughtoi. Yo have condemned and killed the just, and ho doth not i*esist you.' 1 —James 5 : 1, 4, 5, 6.

I IThLLOw Citizens, — The text which I have iu&fc read you, and from which L .shall ! pi each the last sermon as bishop that 1 taha.ll e\or deliver from this pulpit, is one which is probably as unfamiliar to you comfortabl c well-to-do people as it is tamiliar to all Uioso who since ib was originally ponnerl have toiled and sufTerod for humanity. Although it is read sometimes in the ordinary course of our church service, yet, [judging by your conduct, your ears have been deaf to its terrible denunciations. From the days when 1 was an humble curate until now, 1 have had a large and varied experience of cathedrals, churches, preachers and sermons, but J have never [ heard a discourse based on these woids, and I cannot learn trom any of my brother bishops or priests that they have used them, or heard them so used. I can scg by your uneasy demeanour that you are asking yourselves why, on this Christmas Day, when, m accordance with custom, L should be pi caching --inooUl things to you, I should be mad enough to olleiid your delicate susceptibilities by emoting the saying of one of the common people- -words written eighteen centuries ago — which might have done veiy well then, but which cannot possibly be applied to you to-day ; you who come here, clad in purple and hno linen, who, tome of you, lnc in kings' houses, who faie delicately every day, and who consider that you have iulhlled eveiy moral obligation when you have dropped a coin into the collection box, before you step into your carriages to be driven to your luxurious home. It is because 1 believe thai not onl) James, but Jesus Christ Himself, it He could stand mmy place bo-daj , would hurl these words at you with a force and a passion of which we, in the nineteenth century, have but little conception. Xot as a bishop, but as a man, 1 repeat them to you, haidly hoping that they may touch youi health, but more as a justification of my new and strange position. For year.s 1 have been one ot you. My home has been not whore Christ's home was (with the masses), but with the classes. I have an abundance of this world's goods. I have been a dignitary ot a church which is the chuich of the rich, and not the church of the pooi. Without a protest I have mixed in society with men and women whom Chiist would have denounced as bitterly as He denounced the scribes and Pharisee^-. In the Hoii^e ot Lords I have sat silently side by side with whoremongers and adulterers, and silently have [ welcomed a*' my fiiends high-born women — some of whom I see before me to-day — with whom no decent workingman would allow his wife or daughter to associate. I have .seen among you, spreading like a canker, the lust of the flesh and the piide of life, and instead of reproving you, as Christ would have done, I have taken refuge in geneialities, and ha\enot dared to denounce your individual sins. All this time there has been going on around me, in this large city and throughout the land, the surging, toiling life of humanity — the sonow, the sufl'erngs, the poverty, the disease, the sin and the shame which I realised but dimly, a something altogethei apart from my own existence, but ior which I at last see clearly you and I have been up to the piesent time mostly to blame. We and our class have kept back by fraud the lure of the labouiers who have reaped our fields, we have lived in pleasure on the earth and been wanton, we have nouiished our o\\ n hearts while we have starved the bodies of those to whom we owe the very bread we eat, and the clothes we wear, and now we are condemning and killing at our own very gates the people whose inaiticulatc ciy it. enteiing into the ears ot the Loid of Sabbaoth, whose faithful servants avu pietcnd to be. My fellow-citi/ens. I know not how it may be with you, but tor me this catcles^, selfish life is ended. Little by little 1 have awakened to the fact that all my days I have entirely neglected my real duty to my fellow men, and at List 1 have come to know that my proper place is not heie as a well-paid bishop of a clnuch which, in its present condition, is utteily opposed to everything which Chiist taught, but among the poor, to whom He declared that the gospel should be preached : among the labourers whose hire we have kept back by fraud. Too long have I neglected the miserable social facts of our so-called Christian civilisation. Too long ha\e I spoken to you smooth things and cried peace \\ hen there was no peace. I have kuown by :eputc that there was misery among our people, {starvation in our midst, and prostitution on our streets. But hitherto I have taken these as something tor which you and [ were not lesponsible, but which were leally due to the inherent wickedness ot nature, But now I have learned that our pleasmes andourwantonnesshave been builtupon this hideous foundation, and having learned this — as you may also learn if you will —I have resolved that from this Christmas Day my new life shall begin. To day I lay down my robes, I give up my bishoprick, my palace and my income ; I give up my seat in the House of Lords ; 1 give up my pleasures of society and ol the world, and at last I take my place as a man among men. Ib is, I know, a bold step that I have taken, bub I have fully counted the cost. Resolved no longer to live on the labours of others, I shall probably have to join the great army of the unemployed. To-morrow j I shall attempt be preach my fir&t sermon bo them in Trafalgar Square, from the .same text that I have used hero to-day, and it is likely that L shall pass to-morrow night in a police cell. But there 1 shall be no worse off than Jesus Christ would be it He attempted to enter this abbey (Westminster) now, for He would be arrested and locked up as a vagabond without visible means of subsistence. To you and your class He would simply be a labourer whose subsistence you have kept by fraud. To the abolition of that fraud, and of the misery and degradation which result from it, I shall henceforth devote my life. It will be no easy task, not near so easy as being a bishop, bub the reward of a good conscience and of noble work well done is better far than a palace and ten thousand pounds (&48.000) a year. In this place 1 shall probably never spoak again. Bug when freedom shall have opened out her arms and gathered all men

into her wide embrace, when justice and truth shall have taken the place of oppression and fraud, some man of the people shall stand in this temple of the dead, and inspired by the best traditions of the past, tho noble aspirations of the present, and the ideal hopes of the future, shall send ringing through these lofty aisles that living Christmas message, which till then can never have its full significance — '"Peace on earth and good will to men.' [It is needless to say that tho bishop who preached tho above sermon is a myth, and that the article is from an Amciican source.]