REAL SCOTCH.

Auckland Star, Volume 55, Issue 63, 14 March 1924, Page 8

REAL SCOTCH.

AND TRUE PRESBYTERIAN. OLD-FASHIONED FORMS. A PRESBYTERY SKETCH. (By "BLUE BLANKET.") Everyone is so much like his neighbour to-day that when one- comes across a bit of character it is like a drink on a dusty day We all read the same things, see the same plays, talk the same scandal, and lounge through the same games. Fifty years a"ti a fashion or an innovation took months to drift from one continent to another, and we in the colonies were invariably about a year behind. To-day the latest whims of some fair Parisieime —such as wearing the bangle above the elbow instead of below—is flashed around the world the morning after, and every Gwendoline and Mary Ellen that you meet the day after in Queen Street has a bare wrist and a more or less appropriate bit of jewellery round her biceps. News travels too fast nowadays to allow the restless to develop anything but an insipid similarity to their neighbours; they are like' a chemical solution that has never been given time to precipitate. And because of this dead level of the town one hails with glee such an institution as the Presbytery. Our free and easy style of life has invaded nearly all other conclaves. At most public body gatherings it is the exception to-day" not to smoke, instead of the other way round; and in place of the once formal manner of conducting the business we have a free and easy talk round the table, and trust to "luck (and the clerk Ito put things into something like decorous language. But at the Presbytery they still cling to the old formalities, and though they can say very hard things when once they get their "dander"' up. they go about the business with an oldworldness and sincerity that would be difficult to find in any gathering where the predominating element was not Scotch. Quaint Wording. In the Presbytery they still cling to the phraseology that has been used any .time tlic last hundred years in kirk affairs. The notice bidding them to the meeting (which starts at the unfashionable hour of seven —it used to be six) tells the members that the meeting will be "within" St. David's Hall —"in"' would be tpiite a different matter. The minutes have a wording quite their own. Members are not present, they speak of "sederunt." If an emergency meeting is to be called they don't say so: they simply call it "pro re nata," and another favourite expression is an "in hune effectum" meeting, which is so near to a "special meeting" that no one but an "an Id licht" could distinguish the difference. Each meeting is of course opened with "praise and prayer," but sometimes during a session that bids fair to lead to some ruffling of the waters of brotherly love, the debate is suspended whiie someone "leads in prayer." It is the Presbyterian way of "counting twenty-five" before answering a wrathful person. And sometimes it is a very wise precaution for these hardy Scots are "no blate" when it conies to "uphaudin' a matter o' preenciple." When a true blue Presbyterian considers that he is in the right he never minces matters when he starts to "ding down" a misguided opponent. An "Old Standard." Apart from the instinctive love of the Scots for all that is old and Scots and Presbyterian there is in the Auckland Presbytery a picturesque reason for # the rigid way in which the old forms and customs are perpetuated, and that is the venerable clerk, the Rev. Robert Somerville. Tall, well-built, silver-locked, with a Roman "neb" that one always associates witli a leader of men. and dressed in the orthodox tailed coat buttoned at the neck (while the younger generation of ministers comes in prey tweeds) he has dominated the Presbytery for over 40 years. In spite of bis 84 years, and the' tact that to read he has to wear two pairs of spectacles (or is it three: i he still sits at the Moderator's table in his oltl seat of office and in bis strongly Scots accents still reads the correspondence. He has a genius for drawing up those long, scholarly worded resolutions, (hat the Presbytery delights in passing. How be keeps up his hold on the details of the business is a marvel to a less virile generation. When on the occasion of a vacancy it becomes necessary to choose people to "moderate" in the call, a couple of elders for some other purpose and then arrange for the minister to "address the congregation," another "to preach," and so on—it is quite a business "changing horses" in the Presbyterian Church— the aged clerk gets 011 his feet, half doses bis eyes, and strings off the list with hardly a pause—and you very seldoni hear any objections "sustained" if some luckless minister or elder chosen has the temerity to hint an excuse. And like the rest of his race he has a "pawky" humour which neither time nor the cloth has ever quite erased. The other night he explained that he had a letter addressed to the Rev. Soineriield. clerk of the Presbytery. After the '-field" he paused for the merest fraction of a second, but never lifted an eyelid, and the picture conjured up by the almost imperceptible pause was as good as something out of Barrie. "Hoot, mon; tae no ken the clerk!" The Rev. r>. D. Scott now acts as a tactful assistant clerk at the Presbytery meetings, takes the minutes and so on. but the venerable clerk is still clerk "in his own right," and likely to continue so. Most of his contemporaries he has seen pass away to the "Land of the Leal" and one remembers' that, there were giants in those days. It will be a bad day for the church if the traditions they bequeathed are allowed to die out, but while the clerk lives one thing is quite certain, and that is that the affairs of the Auckland Presbytery will be conducted with a due observance of all the old customs and forms that are so characteristically Scottish and Presbyterian.