Is This their Theory?

(1) Do they maintain that the casting of lots is in itself sinful? If so, let them (a) point out wherein the sin or 'vice' or deordination consists, (b) In the second place, Let them establish their contention by a resort to the only moral authority to which they can ultimately appeal. That authority (according to their theology) is the Sacred Scripture, which—interpreted by their own individual private judgment—they claim to be the all-sufficient and 'only rule of faith and practice.' Now, in the last resort, this private judgment or .personal opinion is all they have to offer us. But what is the admittedly fallible individual opinion of the Rev. Dr. Gibb or the Rev. J. J. North to us? It has no more weight with us than the tiniest speck of fluff from a hawk-moth's wing. The whole burden of proof rests on the shoulders of the Council of the Churches. Let them take it up—if they can. We, for our part, hereby notify them that we shall pin them fast to the strict logic of their position. They cannot find in alt the Bible either 'text or margent' that would give so much as a moment's countenance to the theory which we are considering here. But if on this or on any other point they appeal to the Inspired Record, we take the page 7 liberty of reminding; them that they must first catch their hare—they must first get hold of their Inspired Scriptures. And they must, moreover, get hold of them by their unaided individual judgment, and not by any resort to authority, whether of the Jewish or the Christian Church. They must either stick consistently to their principle, or squarely abandon it as erroneous.

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(c) Having secured their Scriptures—if they can—it will then become their duty to reconcile their theory (if this) is their theory) with the fact that the Almighty Gad commanded and sanctioned and permitted the use of the lot ('goral'). The Jewish people, as everybody is 'aware, decided numerous questions by lottery—criminal cases; appointments to office; the order of the attendance of the priests in the Temple; and sundry other things. And in most cases the lotteries were under the direct sanction of the Jewish Church. (See, for instance, Schaff's 'Religious Encyclopaedia,' vol. ii, p. 1353; Hastings' 'Dictionary of the Bible,'. vol. iii, pp. 152-3; Chene and Sutherland's 'Encyclopaedia Biblica,' vol. i, col. 1118; vol. iv, cols. 5236-7). And was not the Land of Promise parcelled out among the various tribes, at God's express command, by the greatest land-lottery ever witnessed upon this grey old earth? Moreover, the lottery was a religious service, for the ceremony was performed by Josue 'before the Lord in Shiloh' (Jos., xviii, 10). Now, if our Wellington 'moralists' look upon a resort to lottery as in itself sinful, how in it that they have not placed the Almighty in the pillory? And why have they not clapped the gyves upon the Apostles of the New Dispensation for having selected by lot the one that was to fill the place of Judas (Acts, i, 26)? And will they 'urge' the adherents of their various faiths throughout New Zealand to abandon the farms and runs and mining leases acquired by lottery under our legalised ballot-systems? And if not, why not? And will they scornfully reject, as contaminated money, the Sunday threepenny pieces that are raised on property so obtained? And if not, why not? And where among 'all the moralists' will they find any that hold so bizarre a theory as that with which we have dealt in these two paragraphs?