THE PULLING DOWN POLICY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXIX, Issue 3201, 31 December 1892, Page 6 (Supplement)

THE PULLING DOWN POLICY.

The Bishop of Manchester recently preached upon the zoal of Jehu, who, he said, had zeal enough to ptill down but not enough to b'lihl up, to reform, and to restore. While all the gre;it i auses of the world had been championed by u en of enthusiastic zeal, still zeal might degenerate into fanaticism. Men of zeal and enthusiasm who loved the poor, the weak, and miserable, were wanted now to sweep aside the cynical pessimists who went about whining their dismal complaint that lit'o was not worth living. " There was, nevertheless,' said tho bishop, ' a good deal of zeal nowadays for pulling down, not for building up—for pulling down the church, the House of Lords, the capitalists, private property. Like a blind Samson, they laid hold of the pillars of the social fabric, bringing the whole structure to the earth, even though they themselves might perish in the ruins. ' Pull down, pull down,' was the cry. But any fool, any madman, could do that. We had got to live in a civilised Christian earth, and tho question we put to these enthusiasts of ruin was • What are you going to build up in place of what you want to destroy ?' Said some of them frankly, ' Nothing at all; we are for anarchy, wc are for tho destruction of law and order, we are for the abolition of every check upon human rapacity. We are for restoring the age of savage violence, when every man took what he liked and kept what he could.' That was not a zeal for love, for justice, and for reason ; it was a zeal of the devil—fpr making the. earth a hell, All the more then, should they pray to be able to resist it, with a zeal wbicb was burning with a deeper and purer and moro continuous flame, kindled by the spirit and inspired by the love of Christ, aiming at tbe glory of God and the good of man. Such a zeal was certain finally to triumph, because nothing eould quench it either on earth or in bell.'