MR. VOYSEY'S FIRST SERVICE.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 213, 29 February 1872, Page 7

MR. VOYSEY'S FIRST SERVICE.

_ "A Stray Sheep" in the "Pall Mall Gazette," giving an. account- of Mr., Voysey's first service, says :— I have for some time been anxious to find a preacher who should satisfy my notions of what preaching ought to be. ,1 am not particular to a creed ; the Dissenting minister or the Catholic priest would bo almost equally welcotae. But 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 a-field. 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. Voysey spoke out like a man. He is no great orator, but he 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 cays 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 toretain his ministry in a Church whose doctrines he denounces. A " pure Theist " insisting upon his right to use the Athanasian Creed seems just a little out of place. In St. (5-eorge's Hall Mr/Voysey could not denounce "popular Christianity, " (the epithet seemed scarcely necessary) to his heart's content. He 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 (rod had dammed 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 obnoxious " than 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 be the work of Mr. Voysey and those who agree with him, and especially the destruction of the belief that erroneous opinion can be a oause for eternal punishment. That cowardly doctrine, so he held, was the chief cause of the bondage of modern Englishmen ; but he looked forward to its, being swept away even in this generation.