SCOTTISH EPISCOPALIANISM. TO THE EDITOR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 7075, 18 October 1884, Page 4

SCOTTISH EPISCOPALIANISM. TO THE EDITOR.

<. y^' » -would not b8 difficult to retort upon Viator in his own tone, and thus "answer a fool according to his folly." The tenets and practice of any denomination of Christians may be caricatured, and Presbyterianism would lend itselt to this treatment as readily as any church system that I know. But cm bono' It ib bad citizenship, not to say bad Chris«T7- !*' *°» si' r up str!fe between neighbours. Viators flippant ridicule of Episcopalianism is certainly calculated to stir up strife, but, in inditing a few words of reply, I hope to avoid being thought like unto him. It would be a pity if anyone writing on the Episcopalian side should follow Viator's " vicioua example. Bishop Nevill's offence is that, preaching in an Lpiecopal church to an Episcopal congregation, he justified Episcopacy, quoting the v £"«,.?* "£? rly writers and early canons" that the Church is in the bishop as the seed is in the flower," and, further, that referring to the Seabury commemoration at Aberdeen he had the temerity to state that during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Scottish Episcopalians were grievously oppressed and persecuted. What is there in all this to set Otago Presbyterians in a ferment? Why should Dr Stuart go upon the war-path, or Mr Bannerman be hurried home from .Puerua? In exaggerating the effect of the .bishop s deliverance, " Viator " does not flatter his co-religionists' self-respect. The tenderness to the touch, and the bellicose excitability he attributes to Presbyterians would be the Bigns of a morbid condition which I do not believe exists.

There is f nothing in Bißhop Nevill's sermon to justify " Viator's " mischievous insinuation that, in the Bißhop's view, Presbyterians are "barbarians ot the; Gentiles," who "have no blessing to expect beyond the uncovenanted mercieß of God." As members of the Church of Lngland we ara taught, indeed, to think of Presbyterians as within the wider pale of the Church Catholic, and to hope that by the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ they will be caved even as we. We think they walk disorderly, even as they think we walk in a vain show—each thinking of the other, probably, with too little charity. In moral qualities and signs of grace Christians of ail names are very much alike. I have never yet been able to recognise an Episcopalian by hiß superior goodness, nor a Presbyterian by his hardness of heart. There is just aB much conscience in the one as in the other, and just as much loyalty to truth and right. But for the interested labours of mischief-makers like " Viator,'/ they would have little difficulty in appreciating each other's sincerity, and coming, porhaps, to a better understanding. Anglicanism appeals to the sympathies of every Christian who believes that Chrißt meant his Church to be a visible organic unity, and not a chaos of rival sects. It ib the Anglican's fidelity to this conviction that holds him to the form of govornmont which came into Britain with the first missionaries from the Apostolic Church, and eaves him from inventing something new which might be mora to his natural liking. He enjoys the profound conviction that the principle of one church in oue country will infallibly triumph in the endnot, as " Viator" charitably suggests, because bia minister wears his shirt over his coat, nor because Church is more " genteel" than Dissent, but because he knows, on the highest authority, that organic unity was the ideal of Christ Himself.—l am, &c, Ad Rem. October 17.