MR VOYSEY’S FIRST SERVICE.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 116, 22 February 1872, Page 3

MR VOYSEY’S FIRST SERVICE.

“A Stkay Shkkp” in the Pal! Mall Carjcfte, giving an account of Mr Yoysey’s first service, says : —I have for some time been anxious to discover a preacher who should satisfy my notions of what preaching ought to be. lam not particular to a creed ; the Dissenting minister or the Catholic priest would be almost equally welcome. Pint I dislike humbug, and I abhor twaddle. These two elements enter so largely—by some strange infelicity in my geographical position—into the sermons delivered from neighbouring pulpits, that I have decided to go further afield. I can listen with pleasure to anybody who speaks like an honest man, who has some moderate faculty of utterance, and who is not too great a fool. . . . ‘ Mr Yoysey spoke out like a man. lie is no great orator, but lie affords the rare and pleasant spectacle of one who has really something to say which he believes to be of the last importance, and which he says without reservation or equivocation. Indeed his plain speaking makes one regret the strange subterfuges to which so obviously sincere a man had recourse in order to retain his ministry in a Church whose doctrines lie denounces. A “ pure Thcist” insisting upon his right to use the Atlianasian Creed seems just a little, out of place. In St. George’s Ilall, Mr Yoysey could denounce “popular Christianity” (the epithet seemed scarcely necessary) to his heart’s content. lie denounced the doctrine of the fall of man, which implied that the primeval man was perfect instead of being in “ the lowest rank of savages,” or as he might have said, a monkey. He denounced the whole doctrine of Atonement —The belief, on his interpretation, that God had damned countless millions of the human race for no fault of their own, and pardoned a few in consideration of the punishment, of an innocent sufferer. He denounced as “only less noxious” that these cardinal errors so long a list of doctrines that one asked half nervously where he was to stop. A single sentence was sufficient to abolish the devil, eternal damnation, the doctrines of the trinity and the divinity of Christ, the Sacraments, the spiritual authority of the Church, and sacerdotalism in every shape and form. The destruction of these superstitions is to he the work of Mr Yoysey and those who agree with him, and especially the destruction of the belief that erroneous opinion can ho a cause for eternal punishment. That cowardly doctrine, so he held, was the chief cause of the bondage of modern Englishmen ; hut lie looked forward to its being swept away even in this generation.