SOCIALISM.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 270, 5 April 1898, Page 3

SOCIALISM.

DR. HOSKING IN REPLY. At tha Trinity Wesleyan Church, Hamilton, on Sunday evening last, Dr. Hosking delivered a sermon iu reply to that given by Rev. leather Ainandolini, aud published in out issue of Tuesday last. The address was a very lengthy one, and we are therefoie unable to print it verbatim. Dr. Jlosking took his text from Lamcntions ill. 35 : " To mm aside the right of a man before the face of the most high." In Father Amandolini's sermon there were some statements which he thought required a little correction. As ii whole, the sermon was one a Protestant could take but little exception to, consideiing the preacher and his church. It was one of the most liberalising sermons he had ever heard from a Roman Catholic Priest, and it was a very gooil sign that they found their priests taking an interest—and publishing that interest—in worldly affairs and society and city life. Instead of dealing with a number of statements, they wanted, if possible, to get right at the root of Socialism, and he tcck this text for the purpose of tiying to explain the more fundamental rights of man and to show how these rights are turned aside in our own life. The rights of man were divided into several classes, natural, adventitious, alienable and unalienable. The natural lights are those which rule a man's life and limbs and liberty. The adventitious rights are those of a king for his subjects, a general for his so'diers and a judge for his prisoners. The position he laid down was that freedom was unalienable the enjoymeut of that happiness for which man was created, for every man had a right to be happy. We are placed in a world which is full of the manifestations of love, and the Bible states that God is love, and to realise

thorough happiness we must have physical love. The body is said to be the temple of the High Christ, the shrine of duty, the handiwork of God. Man therefore has a right to perfect physical freedom; to walk the green fields and breathe the air. To put a man in a monastery was therefore a violation of right, li umanned him, uncivilized him. Every man has a right to work. Labour is not a personal infliction, but it is a Divine institution, and the man who is willing, has a good right to work, and if he cannot get work to do someone else robs him of his right. There are meutal rights, as well as physical rights ; a man has a capacity and craving for knowledge and to deprive him of the means of acquiring knowledge is a violation of his right. Knowledge is essential to happiness and the tree of knowledge blooms everywhere, and its fruits are free to all. Ignorance is unrighteousness. We have a right to the free use of our faculties, to a public freo press, we have a right to have free libraries and free schools. To join a man to the car of hard labour from morning to night is to make a slave of him. There is more white slavery in the world today than many wliite people were aware of, and although it is nice for the man who is free himself to say there is no sUtveiy in the world, it is not nice for his slavish neighbours. Man has not only a body, but a conscience, a moral sense of power by which he perceives what is right and wrong. A gi od conscience is necessary to a man's happiness. Every man has a right to his own thoughts, convictions and creeds, and no man has a right to impose a creed upon another man unless they are acceptable to him. Therefore any man who makes a creed and says unless you believe this you will go to hell is an unrighteous man, and any church that teaches this is an uurighteoua church. This is a violation of man's moral powers. No man liveth to himself says the apostle Paul, and do man dieth to himself. Man is a link in a vast chain of influence. Every man is a unit of society and any man can act apart from other people's actious. Man is constituted for love ; he must love and he must also be loved. No man can love or be loved if he is coDfined within the four wa'ls of a Benedictine Monastery. Man has a right to mingle with his contemporaries. Men are the salt of the earth says Christ. What do they do with salt ? Put it in a box under lock and key ? Certainly not. They rub the salt into the mass they want to preserve, and so man is intended to be rubbed into society if he is well. If he is as rotten as the carcase then the fooiier he is taken to the monastery the better. If life is worth living; do not reckon him among dead bones. To speak of St. Benedict as the founder of Socialism is about the most amusing piece of history he (the speaker) ever heard of. It was enough to turu many men's bones in their graves. Man has a right to understand the laws by which he is regulated. If religion means binding of the heart, and it is derived from a Latin word which means that, then we must know a supreme body, and if we are to love Him supremely we have a right to know what Christianity is, as far as we are able. We have a right to use the works of modern science. The pulpit, he said, htd lost power through the preaching of effete dogmas. Intelligent artisans were driven from the churches by monkish mountebanks and preachers, from the pulpit and platform to the press and to Tom Pain. Should this be ? Waß not Christ the grandest preacher of the human race, ever found on this earth. He did not wonder at intelligent men leaving the church ; his only wonder was that they had remained so long. Talk about Socialism ! They required Socialism as much in religion as in the world. They were expected to believe iu the dead bones of a psalm, in the creed of St. Veronica wiping the face of the Saviour with a handkerchief,and on which His face was imprinted. Right enough it was only by the bones of St. Bartbolemew they ware supposed to woiship. There were two bodies of his somewhere about—where he could not say. The speaker then read an extract from a book published by an English Church clergyman upon this subject, which caused an audible titter throughout the church. They were told that unless they bowed before these relics they were outcast—excommunicated—pests. The text implied that no man was to turn aside the rights of man. It seemed to him that men had also wrongs. It was very fashionable to talk about our glorious Government and constitution, and he was bound to say that the Anglo-Saxon constitution was the very best in the civilised world. But whilst he was prepared to admit the excellence of the British constitution, he was not blind to its faults. The land laws were not perfect by a very long way. God gave the earth to the children ot man and not to the children of squires, not to any class. It wa& intended to be as free as the air we breathe, or the water we drink. This was one of man's unalienable rights he cautiot do without. Land was essential to man's existence. The speaker then quoted numerous statistics to show how the land in England, Ireland and Scotland was held by the few, while thirty millions of people had no land at all, and therefore sang with John Wesley " No earthly land do 1 possess while travelling through this wildomess." There were thousands who when they had one meal did not know where the next was to come from. Was it any wonder that starving men became restless and dissatisfied? It was a monstrous injustice and crushing tyranny iu which many people lived, and it was enough to fire any man's blood and make' it gallop through his veins. The speaker dealt at some length upon the subject of unearned increment. He hoped that before people attempted to talk Socialism they would try and understand it and read a standard work upon political economy; they would then know what they were talking about. The purpose of our Creator was that

every man should have an adequate, if not an equal, participation in the resources of the soil, and the time would come when the Government will have to step in ami limit a man's income. If no man had an income of more than £20,000 a year, and the rest were distributed, millions ot people would be lifted from .starvation r.nd be able to get a meal. The starving man and the niau with £20,000 a year were brothers ; they helonged to the same Christianity, chanted the same songs, and prayed the same prayers. It was mockery—downright mockery. It was no wonder we had unscrupulous dishonesty, fraud and falsehood rife in society. Lawyers swindle their clients, doctors impose on their patients, masters impose on their servants, servants cheat their masters, paisons stupify congregations, congregations grind parsons, and a Catholic priest advocates sending us to St. Benedictine, so that we should not have any pleasure and get up a social dance to get funds to keep the monastery going. A minister was judged according to his capacity for " raising the wind," and the man who raises his salary and keep the funds of the church intact for the year was the best parson ; at anyrate, that was the case with the Methodist Church, and yet Methodists did not believe in it. If a minister tried to do something very special or get up something for the purpose of attracting young people and making them comfortable and happy he was accused of trying to make money. They had to preach many things Methodists do not believe, tie bad been told he advocated Socialism. Certainly he did ; he would advoca*e what he thought was right whether in the church or in the market. The speaker then referred to the imperfections iu the laws of divorce, which he considered were greatly in favour of man and grossly unfair to woman. In Christianity they had the best form of Socialism— better than the Benedictine Order. There was true Socialism as well as false, and true Catholicism as well as false. "Do unto others as you would they should do unto you," was the Socialism they wanted. By Socialism he did not mean Anarchism, Nihilism, Feuianism, Secularism, nor did be mean extreme Individualism, Communism, Collectivism, or'the abolition of capital, private ownership of laud or a general division of wealth, but the Socialism as was now advocated by the British Parliament, the Press and the Pulpit, and it was bound to come. Man could not endure wrongs for ever, and the cries of mankind are being heard today ; they are rocking aud reverberating right through society, and a grand bloodless revolution was coming, and he believed that Christianity would take the lead. Christ was the greatest Socialist of all nearly 500 years before St. Benedict. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. Apply that to society and war will cease ; dishonesty and commercial rapacity will cease, and you will have education and reform and restitution. He had a profound respect for any man who differed from him ; in fact he liked him the more. He did not wish to case any reflection on Father Amandolini or the Roman Catholic Church, to which had belonged some of the most holy and self-sacrificing people who ever lived. Cardinal Manning he considered to be one of the finest men of the 19th century. The Pope was a good man, and he could not forget the name of Dr. Newman. No man in that church was more Socialistic or more Christianlike t.ian he was. He admired the sacrifice displayed, the grand institutions established, and the principles underlying some of these men's lives. He merely said these things for the benefit of those who had a wrong idea of what Socialism is. It might be summed up in the one Golden Rule, '" Do unto others as you would tkey should do unto you."