THE SYNOD.

Evening Star, Issue 6808, 23 January 1886, Page 2

THE SYNOD.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—The meeting of the Presbyterian Synod just closed carries me back to the days of that grand period in the history of the Scotch Church known as "The Ten Years' Conflict," and recalls to memory the delight with which, during the sittings of the General Assembly, I used to take my place amongst the audience night after night in St. Andrew's Church, George street, Edinburgh, to listen to the splendid ecclesiastical debates which took place there ; and again aftur the disruption, such was my love for church polemics that often in the evenings during the sunny month of May did I make my way to Tanfield Hall, when perhaps I ought to have been otherwise occupied. If anything distinguished the Church debates in these now distant days it was not so much the eloquence displayed as the marvellous order and decorum which prevailed, and that in the discussion of subjects which stirred the feelings to their keenest and most sensitive depths. To one who has seen the procedure in the Supreme Presbyterian Church courts at Home, and compares it with what obtains in the corresponding court in Dunedin, the comparison is sadly 'to the disadvantage of the Colony. The greater part of the proceedings of the late meeting of Synod were characterised more or less by a total disregard of law, order, and common decency, arising in a great measure from the moderator being a man (however groat in dogmatic theology) utterly unfitted, partly by constitutional defects, to guide a popular assembly. As witness his unheard-of ruling, and particularly in the manner of it, in stopping Dr Stuart when he rose to speak on a motion that had just been moved by Mr Bannerman and seconded by Mr Will, setting forth the order of proceedings in taking up the different motions on the subject of the Moral Philosophy chair'; or again, that most unseemly action of his, when tho subject of his own appointment to the Moral Philosophy Chair Was under discussion, asking permission of the Synod to leave the chair in or&er'that he might from the floor of the house appeal to the Synod to take care, in appointing him to the propessed professorship, to protebt his financial position. Alas for the dignity of the moderator's chair !—I am, etc., An Old-School Churchman. Dunedin, January 23. '