RELIGIOUS PEACE.

Mataura Ensign, 14 December 1911, Page 5

RELIGIOUS PEACE.

♦ A PRIEST'S APPEAL, Rev. Father Sheridan, • a Roman Catholic priost, made a notable speech *i Eskbank (N.S.W.) lately, the purport of which was an appeal for a cessation of sectarian strife. Si>"aking at a welcome social tendered to Rev. J. T. Thorburn, the new Presbyterian minister at Eskbank. Father Shoridan said he looked upon it as his duty to do everything in his power to keep the religious peace and t. avoid religious disturbances in any place he had been to, and whilst he was in Lithgow they would never find him coming forward, either in the press r out of it. to abuse his fellow-man because he wished to honor God or worship Him in a different way from himself and before a different altar. (Applause.) 1 was, be added, Moore who wrote: "Shall I give up the friend whom I've valued and tried, if he kneels not before the same altar with me?" Why should he personally give up the friend he had valued and tried because he chanced, by the merest accident of birth, to worship God in a different way? They were directing their course heavenward, all working their passage there, maybe in a different way, but at the same time they all hoped to get to the same place of rest. -•''-- +hough+. it highly creditable to the good sense of the community that not a single word was said from day to day to break up that kindly good feeling that should exist at all times between the different denominations. They were, after all, only a short time hero. •'!<• it not a pity," he said, "that we should ever disturb the peace of religious harmony by falling out among ourselves, and it would be si. mistake for the heads of the religious denominations: t< p . advertise themselves by abusing their neighbors' religion because it was different to their own. Let us do all we can to keep peace and harmony in "i-his little community of ours." '•ev. P Smith, spooking immediately afterwards, expressed his thanks to Father Sheridan for the spirit in which he had come to the meeting and the spirit of his words. He was sure he was voicing the thanks of all present. (Applause).