In the City Temple on Christmas Day, there was what
an evening contemporary calls a " new departure," but what Mr. Willing, who provides room for the advertisers of London, would call a very old departure, inasmuch as it seems to have been nothing but a new adventure in advertising. Dr. Parker concluded his sermon by reading a number of " messages " which he probably never sent to any one but the congregation to whom they were read. Here are one or two specimens as our contemporary reports them :- " To the Queen.—God bless your Majesty ! Why do you not recognise your Nonconformist subjects, and openly express your opinion that their long-continued and splendid service entitles them to every recognition due to sound conviction, heroic fortitude, and patriotism which has survived the bitterest religious persecu- tion? This would be the most glorious feature in the reign of your Majesty.
" To Mr. Gladstone.—Many happy returns of the 29th of December. God be thanked for your long and splendid service to the country and to the world. God be thanked that your character is greater even than your genius. Never did you stand so strongly in the love and reverence of your countrymen as you stand at this moment.
"To Mr. Balfour.—The good Lord have mercy upon you! Per- sonally and academically, I am proud of you ; but your Irish policy I hate with my whole heart. It is resentful, narrow, sceptical, and self-defeating.
" To Mr. Parnell.—Blessings on you for your patience and self- control. Even if it were only as a tribute to these personal virtues, as shown by yourself and the Irish people who are with you, I should certainly grant Home-rule to Ireland, even if in the first instance it were only for a definite experimental period."
We think Dr. Parker should hardly have sent such a message as that to the Queen at the moment at which he was doing his best to smear Dissent with the grease of a vulgar search for popularity. There are hundreds of his Dissenting colleagues who will writhe in their pulpits when they remember Dr. Parker's advertising " messages."
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