A SAD NONCONFORMIST.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 275, 28 October 1902, Page 3

A SAD NONCONFORMIST.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir, —In your issue of the 25th inst. you have a letter signed “ Nonconformist. ” Well, cf all 'he straggling, waggling, wobbling effusions I nave ever come aoross, th : s beats them. In regard to what is he a -nonconformist ? I think 1 can detect some of his little divaricai ms.

Truth ix one. He never he-ird a proper discourse on social ethics from a Nonconformist pulpit. What stuff ! Hundreds of times, if he went to church at all, he must have heard enforcements of the Ten Commandments, expositions of the Sermon on the Mount, anl of all the intensely practical portions of the Epistles. Impartiality is another. Why accuse exclusively Nonconformist churches, as if, in the matter he complains of, they -.vera inferior to all others? It is well known th-y are not. • The inteijfitij that refuse? tn jugg'e and m'si-Hpresi'nt is another. What does he mean by wealth and social position blin li' g the eyes of the preachers ? Does he nu'-iii that as a rule they are so opulent, they live so luxuriously? Well, of their o der—popes, cardinals, bishops, i-tc. —seem to be'above the pinch of poverty ; but what does hd say of the men who live from hand to mouth ; of the men who, like many an English curate, are glad to get the cast-off clothes of their wealthier thousands of cases the unfortunate cleric is not as well off as the local tinsmith or tailor, or painter, or propertied men of leisure who, from day to day, pour out on their fellow men their socialistio fad*. Once more. Chmtianitij itself is something he dissents from. He applauds the men who "will not submit to the trammels of Christianity/' Rejecting the very fountain of morals, what right has he to set up as a lecturer on superior ethics! Yes, a "Nonconformist" I should think he is, but in respect of some of the noblest principles and institutions—truth, impartiality, intelligence, religion itself. It cannot bo in another sense, in the sense of differing from some standard communion here, for here there is no such communion, Romanists Anglicans, Wesleyans etc. are each a standard to themselves. " Every tub stands on its own bottom here," and if I should be a nonconformist in respect to any other denomination, why that other denomination is nonconformist in redpectyto me. I slull uoi give you any advice as to excluding frwin your pages for the future such arrant rot and rubbish, but any day 1 would much prefer your own crisp "Notes," or even the " Temperance Column."—l am, etc., Anti-Bosh.