A GRAVE CHARGE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 59, 29 May 1907, Page 3

A GRAVE CHARGE.

SENSATIONAL I' U LPIT V ITEM ANCE. PKKACIIER LOSES HIS KUTII. During the course of a senium on foreign missions on Sunday mm nil!" at the Wesley Church, VwNlinglon. Jlrl Jieesoii. a visitor from America, made a v.-ry eandid and Hmsalional stntciunii, /e----(lccling seriously on the mor lUv of Ywvlinglon. savs the "X.Z. Time,."'

.Mr Jlce-um had given several tuyny incuts in support of his contention that it was our bounden duty to go forth, according to (he Bible injunction, ant preach the Gospel to every creature, and had triced the rise and progress ant the issue of Christian missions, when he made a startling digression.

"I have seen death," lie said, "in many hideous and grue-ome forms, hut T have seen hy far the maddest and most heartrending spectacle I ever saw in Wellington. 1 have been present when the breath left the body of one of your fairest daughters—one who was the'victim of the most inhuman, brutal, and cowardly crime. This sounds like sensation, It is not sensation, hut the truth. I went in search of a public! conscience to condemn this crime. I could not find it. Only in the heart of one man I found it—the heart of a mm

[yon aIJ know and love, and whom you jliave honoured by i.-, .king great. I'he brute who lias lcl'i o atlt in his train, j wrecked chastity, a-ad destroyed f.ie I sanctity of homes, i, in the service of the New Zealand Government." I

'■l say this to yon," continued Mr Beeson, because you New Zealandcrs have I talked glibly of the necessity of sending I ('missionaries to New York, I know New

York, and I «ty that tint aspersion is uncalled for. What I have seen and heard here in Wellington has been most

terrible. I was unnerved by it, and tcsolaled. My very f liih went, and it las not come back to me yet, although I si and here and try to preach to you today. Von have been told that yon are indifferent towards the plague. I Say that you are indifferent and suffering from inertia in the, face of a plague more terrible that is in your midst. The Christian conscience in Wellington ind

in New Zealand needs rousing. It nrist assert iiseif. It is not as if crime could not be rooted out here.- The country is small, and, if the public conscience, de-mand-d it, yon could uproot every ves-

tige of crime." Mr Reesou vent on to express the opinion that- visitors to New Zealand who. on leavimr the Slat', bestowed '-n-

discrimin-ite praise upon it, were lot on'y wrong in so doing, but absolutory immoral, lie insisted liiat this coun-

try's regeneration, in vi -w of our gejgv'aphiciil isolation, mu-t come from J within. I