A Sermon by Henry George "THY KINGDOM COME."

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 392, 10 August 1889, Page 6

A Sermon by Henry George "THY KINGDOM COME."

On Sunday night; May; 12, Mr Henry George delivered a sermon in the City Hall, Glass gow, on " Thy Kingdom Come." The halwas crowded to suffocation long before tho advfirtised hour. *Bey. Mr Cruickshanks occupied the chair. Mr Henry George, received with loud cheers, said : We have become accustomed to think that God's kingdom is not intended for this world, that virtually this is the devil's world, and that God's kingdom is some other sphere to which He is to take good people when they die, just as it is that Twhon good Americana die they&go to Paris. (Laughter.) If that be so, what is the use of praying ior the advent of His Kingdom ? Is God the Chris tain's God, the Almighty and loving Father of whom Christ told? Is He such a monster as a God of that kind would be -a God who in this woi-ld .«ee.« sufferings and miseries, sees high faculties aborted, lives stunted, innocenco turned into vice and crime, and heartstrings strained and broken, and yet who, having it in His power will not bring that Kingdom ? Is he some selfwilled despot whom we must coax? 1 say /it with reverence, the Almighty could not bring that kingdom by His own efforts. What is the kingdom ot God— the kingdom which we are ro-night to pray for ? It is in doing Ood's will — not by automata, not by animals who were compelled, but by intelligent beings 'made in His linage, clothed with free will, knowing good from evil.

"Anyhow n'.s aix Right." Our lans &ay that this Gcd's earth if net here ior use of all His childicn, bub only for the u^e of a privileged few. There was a little dialogue published in the United State* some time ago Possibly you may have seen it It is between a boy and his father, who go to a brick-yard. The boy looks at the men making' bricks, and he asks who those dirty men" are, why they are making up the clay, and what they are doing it for? Ho leains, and then he asks about the owner of the brick-yard. "He don t make any bricks ; he gets his income from letting theee other men make bricks. " (Laughter.) Then he asks about what title there i« to those bricks, the men having made it. and then he wants to know how the in-in who owns the brick-yard gets his title to the brick-yard — whether ho made it? "No, he didn't make it. God made it." Was it God made it for him ? Whereat his father tells him that he must not ask such questions as f jhat — (laughter) — but that, anyhow, it's all right — (laughter)— and it is all in accordance with God's law. Then the boy — who, of course, was a Sundayschool boy and had been to church — goes ott mumbling to himself that God so loved the world that He gave Hi« only begotten .Son to die for mankind, bub that God so loved the owner of this brick-yard that he gave him not merely His only begotten Son, bub the brick-yard too. (Laughter.) That story has a blasphemous sound. T don't like to speak lightly of sacred subjects, but nevertheless there is a deep meaning in that, and it is well sometimes that we should be fairly shocked into thinking.

Worm- titan Athm-im. Better is the atheist who says there i* no God than the professed Christian who, prating of the goodness and Fatherhood ot God, tell us in words, as some do, that millions and millions of human creatui'es are being brought into the world daily by the creative fiat, and no place in this world provided for them. (Applause.) Aye, tell us that by the laws of God the poor are created in order that the iiuh may have the unctuous .■satisfaction of dealing out charity to them — (laughter) — tell us thac a state of things like that which exists in this city of Glasgow as in other great cities on both sidea of the Atlantic, where little children are dying every day, dying by hundreds and by thousands because having come into this world — these children of God, coming here with His iial, by His decree, find that there is not space on the earth sufficient for them to live, and driven out of life and out of Ihe world because they cannot get room enough, cannot tret air enough, cannot get sustenance enough. I beiie\ cm no such God. (Applause. ) If I did, though I might bend before him in iear, I would hate Him in my heart (Hear, hear.) Not room enough tor the little children here \ Look around at any country in the civilised world, is there not room enough and to &paie? JS'ob food enough ? Look at the unemployed labour, look at the idle acres, look thiough every country and see the natural opportunities going to waste. (Applau.se.) That Christianity that puts on a Creator the evil, the injustice, the suffering, the degradation that are due to a man's injustice is far worse than atheism. That is blasphemy, and if there be a sin against the Holy Ghost, that is the unpar- ! donable tin. " Give us this day our daily bread."

A KiNftDO.to. or Equali'L'v. [f Adam when he gob out of Eden had commenced to pray, .and prayed till this time,Jic would have got nothing to eat unless he^worked. Yet food is God's bounty He does not bring the meat all cooked, vegetables all pi*epared, nor lay the plates and spread the cloth. What He gives are the opportunities of producing: these things by labour. It is written in Holy \yrit and graven in every fact of nature that by labour we shall bring forth these things. Yet in all civilised count?ies what do we? Men, as they say in California, have coralled these bounties. Thus it comes that all over • the civilised world the labouring class is the poor clas», and that men who do no labour, who pride themselves in saying that neither they nor their grandfathers ever did an honest day's work, enjoy and revel in the superabundance of the things that labour brings forth. It is impossible to imagine heaven treated as we now treat this earth without seeing that no matter how salubrious its air, how bright its light, how magnificent its vegetative growth, there would be poverty, suffering, and division if heaven were parcelled out as we have parcelled out this earth. No one could think of the Kingdom lor which he prays without the feeling that it must be a kingdom of justice, equality —not necessarily equality in condition, bdt of equality in opportunity. No one could think of it without seeing that the very kingdom of God might be brought on this earth if men would but seek to do justice, would but acknowledge the essential principle of Christianity —thatf of doing to others as wo would have others do to us —and ot recognising that we arc all here equally the children of one Father, and equally entitled to share His bounty —to live our lives, develop our faculties, and apply our labour to the raw materials that He has provided.

It; was a drunken gymnast of whom the policeman remarked that he was celling a tumbler full of whisky. When Daniel Webster sa^ there was " plenty of room iri the upper storey" he must have been fchiiiking of \\n Auckland dude.