A WORD TO J. OKER.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3048, 28 January 1892, Page 2

A WORD TO J. OKER.

TO THE EDITOII. Slit,—Tain not a subscriber to your paper but the fair play you have invariably shown to correspondents induces me to ask your permission to say a few words re the controversey going on in your columns between A. >T. (Jker and two lower order men. The language of the two lower order men seems to me to be altogether, tr,o flowery and not sufficiently clear or definite to enable me to understand what they mean. Mr A. J. Oker on the other hand makes any number of assertions but gives very few explanations, He tells us the lower order men sprang from monkeys, well I don't suppose they will object to that for if that is so they must be exempt from " original sin." I never heard of an Adam and Eve of the monkey .species eating forbidden fruit. A. J. Oker's ten points of resemblance between the lower order men and the monkeys has nothing what ever to do with the question at issue, and is, in short, nothing but gas and wind, and the two lower order ir.en might reasonably suppose Boreas was A. J. Oker's father, and one of Peter Wilkin's flying wives his mother. A. J. Oker's reading must be very limited indeed, seeing that he classes Thomas Paine as an atheist. I'aino never wrote an atheistical work in his life, and a.s for A. J. Oker's tirade against his private character, the fact of Paine being George Washington's private secretary, and his being sent as American ambassador to France is, or ought to be, sufficient to give A. J. Oker'-: statement the lie. But to return to the dispute between the lower order men and A. J. 0., let us have no more bold a-seitions; let A. J. O. tell us how a Creator made the world, or the ten thousandeth part of the smallest) atom of mattar out of nothing. I will grant him a Creator, and any quantity of nothing, and A. J. O. can furnish his Creator with a wool press, and then let A. J. C. explain how his Creator can turn out a bale of mud. (I spealc of " nothing " in the sense in which the word is used in 1S!)2). Let A, J. 0. give us some explanation, however wild or absurd, only lot him explain. Wo don't want the old stock Christian answer that " God's ways are not our ways." He told us that Himself—that is, He is alleged to have told somebody so—but then, like A. J. 0., Ho did not always tell the truth (see Genesis 2, verse 17), and Ho also told others to tell lies (Samuel 10, verses land 2), and perhaps Christians of the A. J. O. stamp t ike such teachings as a basis for their morality. It is this sort of thing that makes your socalled Christianity so abhorent to many an honest man who loves truth. With referonce to the lower order man's statement that Christianity is dying out, I would remind A. J. O. that by passing too much of his time among his sheep he becomes sheepish himself, and runs or is driven like one of his own flock. Were ho to read a little more he would find that Christianity does not rest on such a " rock " as he supposes, he would also discover that about 'JO per cent, of the theological professors are atheists. Tho Rev. Professor Momerie of Loudon, ways : —"That orthodox Christianity is degrading, tho story of the Crucifixion, jargon and nonsense, and that the whole thing is immoral, and when questioned by a " Christian World" reporter declared that hundreds of clergymen thought as he did, but that they had not the courage to admit it. Come uway from your sleep A. J. Oker, open your eyes, and look around you, count the Churchgoers and the noil Church-goers, see how poorly clergymen are paid. Head tho scolfs and sneers, in every paper, at religion. A 13. A. of Kdinbiirgh, since gone to rest, told me that out of five professors at college, four were rank infidels and the fifth made such a mess of the creation story, that he might as well have baen an infidel too. Hoping that A. J. Oker will explain that Creation »tory in his next.— I am, elc. A Man in thk Wilihskskss,