THE PRESBYTERIAN ELDERSHIP AND BANK SWINDLING. TO THE EDITOR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 5268, 7 January 1879, Page 3

THE PRESBYTERIAN ELDERSHIP AND BANK SWINDLING. TO THE EDITOR.

Sir,—l do not know how Ur the editorial wisdom of tho Daily Times gives approval to tho extract in to-day's issuo, taken from the Pall Mall Gazette, on the above subject. Jn any case, circulat!on ie given to vile insinuations against the character of a most worthy and upright body of men, which you will, perhaps, permit me to refer to. The fact that some men who took part in the disgraceful corduct which lias been revealed by the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank had assumed the profession of religious character and dovotedness, cannot be held to operate, as your authority states, "as a serious blow and great discouragement to the credit and status of the ordor of r.fflcars known in Presbyterian churches as oldorg," unle-s it be thown that their swindling was known and permitted (if cot approved of) by the authority of the churches with which they had connected thomselves. Tho inference which the fact rightly points to is entirely of a different kind, H shows simply that the credit and status of tho Presbyterian eMers have teen maintained hitherio in a mar.ner which raised those who occupied that office above the suspicion of any dishonesty, and that some worldlings (sharper and more unscrupulous than theirfellows) recognising that fact, insinuated themselves by fs.lse pretences into that office, and worked out their villanous schemes the more successfully by means of this assumed character. The disclosures just made certainly teach a 16350u to the Presbyterian Churches to guard themselves more c»refully than they have sometime? done against the admission of hypocritical worldlings into their ranks, either as members or office-bearers, and it is to be hoped that the lesson will not be taught in vain. But tho attempt of the Pall Mall Gazette, to which you gave currency, to throw discrei't on the whole body of Presbyterian elders because the office was assumed by sosne unscrupulous swindlers, is as senseless and futile as would be the assertion ct oumo weahlln? that any m »n who drew cheques on a bank account was to bo branded as a hypocrite or a swindler because somo swindlers have resorted to the same means to work out their villany. The extiaet betrays a spirit of malice towards religion which has blinded any candour or logic which the writer may be possessed of. Its insortion in your paper, I presume in charity, must be attributed to the haste when resorts to mere clipping, instead of selection, to supply the demand for " copy."—l am, &c, A PRBSBVTBRUN Ml-ISTER AND KIDER, 6th January, 1879. [The clipping in question represents the opinion, not of the Daily Times, but of the journals which are quoted, and did not pass under the editor's eye Ed. 0. D. T]