The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1882-12-09
THE PACIFIC
Commercial A0bertlser .
9. 1882
SATURDAY

SATURDAY ...... DECEMBER 9, 1882
IN answer to the mildly worded rebuke we
thought il our duty to give him last week,
Mr.. ]. A Cruzan has procured the publica-
ton of the sermon he delivered on Thanks
giving Day, and IN editor to whom any
thing which is insulting to the King or to
the Premier is always acceptable has
undertaken Mr.. CruZan's defence in terms
more ungentlemanly than those i'm which
the original offence was committed. We
must confess that we are glad that the exact
words of this Thanksgiving Sermon have
been published because many people fOund
it difficult to believe that il contained pass
agesin such bad taste, anlinftct, so Il cid
edlyinsulting to His Majesty, and To Minist-
ers who were present to listen Ia them by
special limitation. That such offensive
words are now Haunted before the public
as something to be proud of, we regret, aud
so we have 10 doubt will their author
when he has had time to cool down from
that heated and exalted condition of mind
which his study of the uneXampled great
ness of his native country had brought him
into.
Mr.. Cruzan's spread Eagle ism " might
AVE been in place had he been i'm his own
country and addressing an udien COM
p sed of the lower orders OF its population.
1t might have been in place we say--in
good taste ii could not have been anywhere,
from any mO4th, addressed to any audience.
Such sputter and froth is even more distasle-
full to the American of education and refine
ment than it possibly can be to the nom
American who only listens to il with an
amused smile. The only harm it does to
the latter, is,asa bad example which induces
i'm the mind of the listener some similar
follies about the importance to the world
and its Creator, of his own particular ma
lion. The cultivated American is more
hurt by il, il wounds his feelings and makes
him feel Inundated to think that any
fellow countryman who has the privilege
Of occupying a pulpit should expect an
audience of Americans fine enjoyment in
listening to such defamation. Delivered
in Il foreign country to an audience kne WI
to include IA considerable number of foreign
ers, and before the King of that country
present by invitation to listen to it, the
Grafton was revolving i'm its vulgarity and
sillines. But his is not the worst of it.
1t is all very well for Mr.. Cruzan's apollo
gist to say "a clergyman in the pulpit
would be unworthy of his cloth, would be
betraying his sacred calling, were he to
soften his sermon because some one in
power was present in his congregation"
Thislis quite beside the mark, and has no
bearing on the specially offensive passages
of his sermon. We have the fact before
us that it was not a sermon in the proper
sense of that wOrd-an exposition of Gospel
TRUTH, and a bringing home of Gods word
to the hearts and cOnsciences of hearers.
1t was an Grafton on the greatness of the
United States of America, prepared for de-
livery before the King of Hawaii-the
chosen representative of a nation which
has ever received Americans with hospi-
tality and special favor, which has exalted
Americans to numberless high places in its
service-which always acknowledges with
gratitude the services which Americans
from the first missionaries onward nave
endered to it, and which was that day
most cordially joining with the Americans
dOmiciIed within its borders in celebrating
what is to the latter a great national holt
day. Besides the general Offensiveness of
its phrases, as if the preacher would say to
the King-"See how big we are, and how
little you and yours are,'' it contained
certain PASSAGES, in which. whilst nothing
was clearly averred, some sland-
erS were i~nSinuated. such things are in
tOlerable everywhere and a~lways-cOming
from a minister in the pulpit. and spoken
on such an occasion, they are entirely past
bearing, and should be sufficient to cause
the utterer to be sent to Coventry by every
rightathinking man.
To those who know the man to be the
same who recently branded all his fellow
citizens as criminals who do not go the full
length with him in his t~eetotal fanaticiSIn,
such incorporate speeches as that in which
he Virtually accused the King and the
membess of His Majesty's family of, by
theirpersOnal%i influence, making drunken
necs and immortality easy and popular" in
this land, sound as idle wind. But such
statements go far and wide amongst those
whose whole knowledge of their author is
confined to the fact that he had the COM
mand of the pulpit of one of our principal
churches on Thanksgiving Day, and in
whom they therefore expect some respect
Tor truth and some discrimination of char
acter. Such people Will swallow the state
ment whole, hOwever strange they may
deem it, assuming that i'm his isolated and
ittle-known land such things may pos
sibly be.
This Mr.. Cruzan lately preached Il SER
mon about Islander, and repeated will APP
parent carnestnesS the stock hOmilies on
that subject with ingenious and rather
telling illustrations of his own. If he will
retire into his closet and re-study that SER
mon, he will find it more severe on j. y.
CruZan than anything we have said about
him.