CHRISTIANITY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3062, 1 March 1892, Page 2

CHRISTIANITY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sin,—ln your isßue of Saturday there appeared two letters, signed respectively " \V. N. DeL. Willis "and " A. J. Oker "—the one evidently the production nf ,1 culturad and temperate gentleman ; the other, the low contemptible ravings of a narrowminded, egotistical, and abusive bigot. With him and his wordy putrescence I have no more to do ; hut will ask you to kindly grant me a little space for a few remarks anent the utterances ot the rev, gentleman before mentioned. Soinn people will doubtless hold the opinion that one in h:a position should not descend to newspaper controversy on the subject under discussion; but I maintain a view (with which many will agree) that, as the public press is the great educator of the people, there on be no questions—eithor too high or too low—that cannot, or should not, bo dealt with in its columns, with a resultant advantage of sonio measure of good to its million readers. The pith of the arguments put forward by Mr Willis was contained in the assertion that without Christianity the world would be intolerable as a place of abode, adducing in support of such assertion the remarks made by Mr Lowell, as quoted by that ne plus ultra in ghostly lore and evidence, Mr W. T. Stoad. The assertion, from whatever source drawn, is mostly inferential and counts for nothing. The same kind of argument has been used scores of times previously by those who faucied that they saw in the decay of dogma and the purging of a creed sure indications of a moral and social chaos that never came. To continually repeat the dictum that without Christianity there could be no morality, ie simply the process of reductio ad absnrduin. Christianity may be a moral power in and through the human element that pervades it, but not through its God. Its teachings are simply repetitions of human experience and reason, and apart from it, and without its basis (the Bible), there is an authoritative morality, the principles and laws of which originate and have their final explanation in human nature. Herbert Spencer says :—"The value of the inherited and theologically-enforced code is, that it formalates, with aome approach to truth, the accumulated results of past human experience." There is also the fact that it pays best to follow a certain line of conduct, and the dread of the reprobation of our fellow-men hoe great weight with ninetynine poople out of a hundred, and goes far to secure such social morality as we have. The Christian God hm slowly conformed to the increasing morality of man —slowly, very slowly; always behind tho times, never ahead; never initiating a single reform, or giving a new commandment. They soring from the human heart, and the orthodox God, through His votaries, has always opposed them until they became popular, and then has thundered in their praise. In regard to the oft-repeated query: What has Christianity done for civilisation? we may, and do, readily acknowledge its services, and at the same time, and with all fairness, urge the same p!eain favour of the oracle at D3lphi, without which there would have been no Greek culture, and therefore no Christianity. Theology, like astronomy, is a prosressive science. It has its Ptolemys, its Keplers, and its Newtons, each enlarging and extending the ideas of his predecessors. In like manner we, who are reviled as blasphemers and scorned by the ignorant and unthinking, are the true successors of the early Christians, above whom we are raised by centuries of progress. They, in all the fervour of their faith, raised their voices and impeached the gods of stone, even as we, with equal fervour, raise onrs against gods made of ideas. We stand now in the dreary waste that divides two eras of belief, but a new era is at hand. All along the mental horizon tho new sun is shooting its shafts of golden light, illuminating with a vivid and erer-increasing brightness the dreary civerns and gloomy recssses of superstition and error, daazling the bat-like beings who still love to dwell in the ghostly tenements of their fathers. Tho golden year is coming, and— " Tho' the times when some new thought can bud Are but as poets' seasons when they flower, Yet seas that daily gain upon the shore Have ebb and flow conditioning their march, And slow and sure comes up the golden year. When wealth no more shall rest in mounded heaps, But smit with freer light shall slowly melt In many streams to fatten lower lands, And light shall spread and man be liker man Tbro' all the seasons of the golden year." —I am, &c, (tLKANKK. TO THK EDITOR. Sib,—Kindly allow me to say a few words in reply to that self righteous dreamridden driveller who rejoices in the nom de plume of "A. J. Oker." Is it, Sir, any wonder that men of ordinary intellignnce are sceptical as to the moral worth and refining influence of orthodox Christianity, when a man who poses as its exponent can make use of such coarse and nauseating expressions as the gentle Joker did in his last letter? Could anything be more damaging to the cause he espouses ? Hβ has filled column after column of your paper with vitupeartion and abuse, but has never once attempted to answer the arguments of his opponents and why? simply because he was unable to do so, hence his abuse and his grotesque babble about "bastinadoes," "stockwhips," "cudgels"etc. Here is a specimen of his colossal stupidity " I found on the subjects "they "(his opponents)' tried to caluminiate they were amazingly ignorant and the literature with which they appeared to be familiar was of the most pitiful and wretched character" Great Scott! tis thus the holy Joker characterises the foundation of his faith, the Bible ! and the writing of such men as Burns, J. S. Mill, Paine, Buckle, Gibbon, Motley. Horbert Spencer, Darwin, Huxley and others directly or indirectly referred to by his opponents J Poor beui?hted being, wrapped in a mantle of ignorant intolerance, but little can be expected of him, and yet one would have thought thnt if he really were what he would have us believe he is, a believer in the teachings of Christ, he would have taken a mora charitable view of tht«e whose opinions differ from his own and instead of abusing and trying to -vilify them, he would have tried to show them where they were wrong. It is to be hoped that, bofore your stockwhip-wielding correspondent again essays the task of teaching others, he will make himself acquainted wilh', atloast, the rudiment*, of the enbjects with which he duals. —I am, etc. CostfOPOMTAS.