THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1906. PRESBYTERIAN JUBILEE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIII, Issue 13307, 13 October 1906, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald. AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 13, 1906. PRESBYTERIAN JUBILEE.

One of the many satisfactions of those hardy settlers who build up new communities is found in the celebration of anniversaries which have to them a personal meaning as well as to the general public a national significance. Of these anniversaries we have recently had several in Auckland. To-inorrow there is another of special importance, being the jubilee of the Auckland Presbytery. We are not all Presbyterians, but the great majority of those who accept the doctrines of other Churches hold their Presbyterian fellow-colonists in well-deserved esteem, and oan join most heartily with them in their gratitude for the fifty years of active progress which their Presbytery has witnessed. For whether it is because of his doctrines or because he is usually of that hardy Scottish stock which has done ho much for British colonisation, the average Presbyterian is an exceptionally good citizen and found in the forefront of all good work. By the fruit we may know the tree, and wherever Ave look in every honourable walk of civic life the men who call themselves Presbyterians arc among the most prominent. As merchants and as professional men, as teachers, as shopkeepers, and as skilled artisans, no less than as fax*-' mers and pioneers, they constitute an element which the community could not afford to lose. What they are in Auckland they are throughout the colonial world. They have printed their names upon the maps, and,, as statesmen, have taken leading' part in moulding, the laws of every British colony. When we consider their comparatively small numbers in the British Isles, we must wonder not only at the immense contingent they have supplied to the hosts of British immigration but at the remarkable place which they have attained in the formation of the new British communities. It may be said that all this is due to the hardness of the region from which they came and to the long centuries of struggle by which their forefathers won a living from barren soils and learned to set a true value upon the mental and spiritual aspects of human existence. But they themselves always tell us that from Presbyterian indoctrination sprang their love of learning and their regard for thoroughness in action arid for truthfulness in thought and speech. And they themselves ought to know something of the matter and to be able to appreciate the influence upon their national mind of the stern faith which allowed no neck to bend before human authority, but held the i shepherd in his lonely sheep-fold to be as much interpreter of revealed truth as any man alive. To speak of Presbyterianism, as an "ism," is to speak of John Knox. For to the world at large it is the I Church of Knox, and while the Presbyterian himself, made by his train- | ing contemptuous of careless expresj sions, would stoutly deny this, he would not belittle in the slightest all that it owes to the great preacher. And as John Knox was the most representative Scotchman —being in a time of strife and tumult the one man whose words were the utterance of the Scottish conscience —so Presbyterianism is to-day most representative of the Scottish people. If ever a Church were a national Church, its history the history of a people, its trials the trials of a people, its dissensions the dissensions of a people, its triumphs the triumphs of a people, it was the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, shoots of which have been transplanted wherever wandering Scottish feet have found resting-place. It is quite impossible, as our Presbyterian fellow-colonists would be the first to tell us, that this peculiar inter-knitting of a Church and a people can be"repeated by them in New Zealand. For here we are not only Scotch but English i and Welsh and Irish—not only Presbyterians but Anglicans, Methodists, Baptists, and Roman Catholicswho are able to live in peace and fellow- j ship and goodwill, one with another, ' because we respect each J

other's honest convictions and have agreed to keep our Churches outside of politics. The descendants of those who marched to Scotland with Cromwell live side by side with those - who went with Bruce to Bannockburn, os do sons of those who made the last heroic stands for Welsh and Irish independence, and of those who held the Welsh inarches 'for the Edwards and later brought the sister-islands under one : king. Each and every one cof the great tribes that, have become the British people, and in these new lands are merging all their energies, have in their histories much to be proud of and something to regret. But the good remains and the evil is dead and of the good the Presbyterian can justly claim credit for much. And though his Church is not here what it was in Scotland, yet all that is best of it, its tried courage, its high standards, its ideal democracy, can influence us yet. Its hardness softened by a recognition that others also are sincere and honest, and its pity roused by the perception hatintellect is not given equally to all men and peoples, the Presbyterian Church must ever be a power for good in all British lands. Conventicles may not longer dominate Government, nor a respectful city await with anxiety the decisions of the Presbytery; but though the Old Order has changed there is as much room as ever in the New Order for religious convictions and for worthy citizenship. As much as ever it was is it necessary that if this nation of ours would live it must strive to rise higher and not be content to sink downwards, must seek to make its social life clean and wholesome, to sift corruption from its politics, to set sincerity and honesty among its virtues, and to make that Christian State which Presbyterianism, with much stumbling and amid many mistakes, stubbornly worked for and in some measure attained.