MR. A. R. ATKINSON AND HIS CLERICAL CRITICS

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 45, 21 August 1913, Page 8

MR. A. R. ATKINSON AND HIS CLERICAL CRITICS

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE YEN. ARCHDEACON HARPER. Mr. A. R. Atkinson has addressed the following letter to the Yen. Archdeacon Harper : — Sir. — I am personally almost a stranger to you, and it is not unbkely that you have no desire for a more intimate acquaintance. But the liberties that you took with my name and reputation in your pulpit on Sunday last seem to justify this intrusion upon your attention. As I have already stated more than once in public, the information from which you inferred that I had stated of implied "that the tens of thousands of Christian people who were supporting the Bible-in-schools movement were simply gifted with hypocrisy, insincerity, and bigotry" was entirely erroneous. The ground of your inference was an incorrect and grossly misleading report of what I had said. That, report imputed to me tho use of language that I never used and that is entriely alien to my thoughts. I ask you to accept my assurance that not a sentence or a word in my speech conveyed any reflection upon the character or motives of the supporters of the Bible-in-schools movement or was so intended. I have never regarded wholesale imputations of this kind as legitimate Weapons in any controversy, and in the present case I have not been under the slightest temptation to break this rule, for it is constantly before my mind that the Christian men and •women whom you charge me with defaming include a majority of those with whom I have been intimately associated for more than twenty years in the chief labour of my public life, besides a large number of others personally known to me for whose character and motives I entertain an. equally profound respect. Having unwittingly done me a cruel injustice and allowed your pulpit to be made the vehicle of slander, you would, t hoped, have felt -bound to exercise the utmoat promptitude in repairing the ■nrong. That hope has been disappointed, but I still look to you to recognise on Sunday your obligations as a Christian and a gentleman, and to give the withdrawal of a grave and baseless charge just the same publicity through the pulpit and the press that you gave to the charge itself. In making such inadequate reparation as after a week's interval is etill possible, you will, I trust, not overlook what is also dne to Mr. John Caughley. He was included in your -censure on the ground that he had expra&ed a general approval of my speech. Had you known that Mr. Caughley is a prominent and highly reepected member and office-bearer of one of the churches which I am supposed to have insulted, you would surely nave inferred that there could have been no ground for that supposition in what I actually , said. .The amende honorable which you owe" to m© is- plainly due in equal measure to the other innocent man whom you held np to equal opprobrium with myself. — Yours faithfully, A. R. ATKINSON. Wellington, 21st August, 1913.