SPORTING NEWS.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVI, Issue 1420, 14 July 1884, Page 4

SPORTING NEWS.

Ahout 3,000 person/, attended tho Wellington Jockey Club Steeplechase Meeting on Saturday. Early Bird (10st. 01b.) easily won the big event, Wideawake (lOst.) being second, and Jumbo (lOst.) third. Coacher, Black Doctor, Parnell, Surrey, and Home Rule also started. Coacher was the favourite, but fell at the post and rail fence the second time round, and was injured so severely that he had to be destroyed. The Sessions Handicap fell to Pilgrimage, who beat eight others ; and Blackbird won the Soiling Steeplechase. £1,200 passed through the totalisator.

Tho Union Committee of the Methodist Churches of the colony meet in Christchurch on the 16th August, when the last touches will bo given to the excellent programme which is to be laid before the General Conference for their approval and ratification. In furthering this object, the local committee (if it can be called so), consisting of minister., and laymen, have arranged that, in view of the coming union of the various bodies, there shall bo a general exchange of pulpits in the Auckland circuits on the last Sunday of July ; and on the ln«t Wednesday of this month a public meeting of all tho members and adherents of tho churches in Auckland will be held, the object of which is to show that one great family on one common platform can be found in advocacy and sympathy of the Union cause. The public meeting will be held in Pittstreet, the chair to bo taken by Rev. R. Bavin. The speakers will be Revs. Reid, Macffarlane, Can-and Potter, .Mr D. Goldie, and a lay preacher. The papers will be— "Methodist Theology," "Tlie Cain to the Cause of Christianity by the Union of the Methodist Churches," " Methodism and the Evangelisation of the Masses."

In sentencing Mrs Lynch at Wellington on Thursday to IS months' imprisonment for breach of the Marriage Act, His Honor said: "Alice Lynch, I have considered your case with a view to seeing if I ought to make any difference between yourpunighment and that of the man who has been your associate in this offence. I think thoro is some ground for making a difference in your favour, though I do not think it ought to be a very great one. I think there is some ground to suppose that you acted under the influence, and one may say to a certain extent under I'^e coercion, of tho man. He appears to have threatened to turn you and jour sister out into the street. It is certainly quite a matter of opinion whether you were or not, at least, as bad as he in the matter. You owed a duty to tho child which he did not, and you grossly betrayed that trust."