The Daily Telegraph. THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 1883.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3658, 5 April 1883, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. THURSDAY, APRIL 5, 1883.

Tiikkk seems to have been a lively discussion at the Synod meeting yesterday on the motion of Mr Pierce in reference to the abolition of entertainments in churches. Mr Pierce , s object w.is, he explained, to prevent places of worship being brought down to the level of music halls. The Bishop of Duncdin, in seconding the motion, compared "sacred" concerts in churches to the conversion of the Temple into a market. A church concert attracted a mixed audience, including '' Jews and heretics of all kinds," drawn together to get good music at a cheap rate. Ho had no strong objection to the performance of sacred oratorios or Bach's Passion music on proper occasions when no fixed charge was made for admission, but he refused his sanction to entertainments the primary object of which was to raise money. Archdeacon Maunsell took an opposite view of the question, and is reported to have said that a certain number of people preferred raising money for good objects in this way to raising it by means of bazaars and lotteries, against which our good men never raised their voices until the laity took the matter up and made lotteries illegal, and then the good men thanked God that the Legislature had done it. The Bishop of Auckland took the same side, and did not think it was wrong to hold rehearsals of sacred music in churches, and he could see no objection if people chose to pay to hear those rehearsals. The right rev. gentlemen was evidently somewhat mixed in his ideas about "rehearsals " and "performances." The motion was eventually lost, but not till Mr Pierce had replied that his resolution had application to thruo churches iv Auckland, All Saints', St. Matthew's, and St. Paul's Churches. At St. Matthew's one of the trustees appealed to the bishop, but the minister defied him. In nine cases out_ of ten the clergy were, he thought, the guilty parties, for they derived benefit from the entertainments. The proceeds did not always go to the clergyman's income, but they' were often spent in improving the parsonage, and so forth.