Rev. DR PARKER ON THE MURDERS.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1834, 29 December 1888, Page 3

Rev. DR PARKER ON THE MURDERS.

At the close of his service in the City Temple recently, Dr. Parker referred at length to the East end murders. Replying to a question how far the pulpit was responsible for such crimes, the rev. gentleman said the pulpit had undertaken instrumentally to convert society, and the pulpit "had signally failed. Always allowing for exceptions, the pulpit was . the paid slave of respectable society. The pulpit loved respectability, the pulpit boasted of respectable, intelligent congregations. The pulpit bad lost its hold on the tragic and impetuous Jife of the world. The

outcasts of society turned away from the preacher as from a man who talked in an unknown tongue and troubled himself about antiquities and metaphysics, for which the sad and maddened heart of the world cared nothing. Men were wanted who knew the country they lived in, the sorrows which surged in billows round their very homes, the poverty that was completed by hopelessness, and the mental unrest which could not be touched by dead fathers or living pedagogues. Every pulpit in the world should denounce the crimes which London mourned, but denunciation was a poor part of pulpit duty. Every congregation should offer a reward for the recovery of the criminal. What the Home Secretary was doing, or thinking of doing, passed his (Dr Parker's) comprehension. If offering a reward for the discovery of the criminal did not detect the perpetrator of the crime what harm was done? But if offering a reward should end in the detection of the criminal great good was done. (Applause,) This quick murder of women, however, was nothing compared to the slow murder that was going on every day. Compared with many who were cruel deliberately, the perpetration of these East End crimes was gentlenessmercy itself. The Magistrates should be armed with greater powers. Nothing would really make a certain class of criminals feel their crime more than bodily chastisement. It was no use trying moral suasion upon garotters, violent robbers, cruel husbands -and fathers—they must be flogged. Church congresses and Nonconformist assemblies should suspend their sittings, that these tremendous grievances might be attended to. They had papers enough on distant subjects, addresses enough upon things that were only in the air. What were they to do with the real concrete intolerable life immediately around them ? It was in vain to meet as quiet, respectable, gospel imbibing congregations drinking orthodoxy to the full, and setting down the empty goblet with a sigh of impious satisfaction. The Devil laughed at the sacrifice. As to denouncing the criminal, better ask how far they were responsible for his creation by making labour a disappointment, by running profits down so small as to turn young men to gambling, by surrounding men with drinkeries, and then fining them for drinking. Away with piety that trifled with the stream when it might dry up the fountain.