THE NEW EVANGEL.

Gisborne Times, Volume X, Issue 930, 1 July 1903, Page 2

THE NEW EVANGEL.

A PROPHET MAKES THINGS

LIVELY.

(Auckland Observer.)

Seth Rimmer has been doing his little bit during the week to relieve the tedium of humdrum life in Auckland. He has had his windows smashed, and has been arrested by the police, and bound over in sureties to keep the peace for six months. And all this because Seth was not satisfied to enjoy his own opinions, which were nasty, and calculated to hurt the feelings of other people. He must needs, after the fashion of intolerant individuals of his class, attempt to thrust them down the throats of his neighbors. Seth is chiefly known in Auckland as the author of several prophetic endeavors to bring the world to an end. His intentions were thoroughly well meant, but his calculations were evidently astray, because the world has continued to go on in the same old-fashioned way, without regard to his arrangements for the millenium. Also, he is a coffee grinder, and the owner of certain shop windows in 'Wellesley street. When business is .dull, Seth finds his pastime in placarding these windows with leaflets glorifying his own opinions and abusing those of other people. This is how he got into trouble.

Some little time ago, when the licensing elections were pending, he found much pleasure in baiting the brewers and hotelkeepers. However, they did not take Seth seriously, accepting his placards as evidences of uoamiable eccentricity, and nobody was hurt. It was quite otherwise * last week, however, when Seth began- to issue bulletins scandalising the Roman. Catholic Church and its popes and priests. If hiß purpose was to draw a crowd, he succeeded admirably. Then the crowd drew him, and to such good purpose that he was cernpelled to telephone to the police for protection. Nobody thrashed Bimmer, , which was surprising in view of the offensive placards in his window, but some of tbe crowd enthusiastically broke the windows as the most emphatic method of protest open to them.

It ia satisfactory to find that there waa no sympathy whatever with Catholics or Protestants who were attracted to his shop. Indeed, the spirit of intolerance and' fanaticism that prompts a man to ridicule or abuse the religious convictions or observances of his neighbors finds scant sympathy in Hew Zealand at any time. And it is well that it is so. Nobody finds fault with Mr Rimmer’s religion, or even his erratic prophecies. Therefore, enjoying religious freedom himself, why does he deny equal religious freedom to other people ? However, there are always Rimmers; though some of them' do not declare f themselves quite so openly, and thus sava - their windows. *