MR. BUDDLE'S FAREWELL MEETING —DENOMINATIONALISM.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXII, Issue 2723, 9 April 1866, Page 5

MR. BUDDLES FAREWELL MEETING — DENOMINATIONALISM.

To the Editor of the Daut Southern Ckoss. Sic, — May I beg a brief space in your columns for a few remarks on an expression made use of by one of the speakers on this occasion— an expression which I heard with some surprise and muck rdgret? He congratulated the meeting that there had been "no nonsensical talk about rising above our denominational distinctions." I regretted the expression, both from the esteem in which I hold the speaker, and from the conviction that it could not fail to produce a wrong impression, and to awaken false feelings. I believe J speak for a large number of Christians in all sects when I say that there are times when we all feel it to be a very salutary and sacred thing to rise above these distinctions ; and I know of no time more appropriate to it than an occasion of bidding farewell to a minister whose generous spirit, through more than twenty years, has endeared him to the hearts of the Christian public, and whom we shall probably never see again till that time when all these distinctions will certainly be lost sight of. A transient anticipation of that time, in a CatHblic love, scarcely deserves to be called " nonsensical." Whether these distinctions shouldbe upheld or not is, at least, an open question, and one of sufficient moment to shield the advocates on either side from a charge of "nonsensical talk." I would remind my friend that -those who, like myself, think that these differences should no longer keep Christians in different sects, hold that conviction in no spirit of hostility to, still less contempt of, any existing sect, while they have reached that conviction, not through underrating those differences, but through a sorrowful perception of the wounds inflicted on the Church by its discords, and a devout longing for a purer manifestation of the Church's power and love— a spirit which I trust will never lead ua to indulge in an off-hand and, I think, flippant rebuke. There are moments in the history of man — come when and how they may— felt to be among the sublimest in our history, when the feeling of our common brotherhood ob-

literates for the time the consciousness of our personal idiosyncracies and social distinctions. Much more should such an hour of holy and solemn brotherhood be welcomed in the Church; et it cannot be without a proportionate losing sight of our denominational differences. I sincerely trust that the expression adverted to fell inadvertently from my friend ; for if he desires, as I think he does, the maintenance of the different sects, in a spirit conducive and n»t detrimental to the universal Church, I am very sure it cannot be accomplished by the substitution of such language for devout argument^ Were I here entering upon that argument, I need desire few better reasons for abandoning all sectarianism than its tendency to create the feeling which could find utterance in such an expression. — I am, &c, Catholic us. Auckland, March 4, 1866,