MEETING OF CREDITORS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 9130, 1 June 1891, Page 3

MEETING OF CREDITORS.

Re Heinbich Schapeb. A meeting of creditors in tho estate of Heinrich Sehaper, restaurant keeper, of Moray place, Dunedin, waa held at the official assignee's office on Saturday morning. Mr Calvert appeared for tho bankrupt, aud there were eight creditors present. Tho bankrupt's statement showed his liabilities to bo £152 I7s sd, and his assets £165, there bsing an apparent surplus in the estate of £12 2s 7d. The following aro tho principal unsecured creditors:—H. Dodd, £12; Wm. Patrick, £56 8s 9d; M. snd J. Meenan, £4 ls 4d ; James Jack, £4 Iss 2d; P. Alexander, £7 8s 2d; Wm. Bates, £4 10s; W. Duke, £6 2s 4d. The total amount due to unsecured creditors is £122 I7s sd. The only secured creditor is E. J. Bryant, who holds a bill of sale for £30 over the bankrupt's stock-in-trade, furniture, &c, the estimated value of whioh is £75. Tho assets consist of stock-in-trado at tho Star Cafe of tho value of £75, and bonk debts to tha amount of £248 is Gd, which are estimated to produce £120. The Bankrupt stated that he had been in the restaurant in Moray place for about four years. He bought, the furniture and fittings when he went in for cash, aud he had about £10 to the good. The business paid him for the first two year 3, and afterwards fell oil. During the last four months he ouly took about 25s a day, not iucludicg Sunday.*. He paid £6 a month for rent lately, but originally paid £8 a month. He paid £2 Is a week for wages, besides gas and water rates. He lost a good deal by bad debts. A number of those who owed bim money went to Melbourne and Sydney during the strike. He gave a bill of sale iv Maroh, getting £30, and pajiog £2 lOj or £2 7s to Mr Bathgate. He paid away the money he got on the bill amongst his creditors. His daughter had a piano which was bought for her with money left by her grandmother. She also had a sewing machine of her own. At tho time of tho exhibition bankrupt incurred an expenditure of about £30 for furniture and for alterations. Tho Assignee said there were three persons in the family who faid that the piano and the Bowing machine belonged to the daughter. He thought, ti'.-refore, that they could not be claimed for tb9 estate. Mr Bryaut stated that when the .bankrupt gave him a bill of sale he stated that he would include the s>i»uo and sewing machine in it if he wished, but he hoped that he would not press him to do so. He (Mr Bryant) therefore agreed not to include them in the bill of sale. After some diecussioD, the Assignee said it ssemed extraordinary that the bankrupt 6hould have allowed 6uch a sum as £240 for debts to be run np. He did Dot know how far the mau was to blame, but there was no doubfc that he had been severely victimised. The debts were apparently a legicy of the strike. With regard to the advertisement calling the sale of the stock-in-trade, furniture, &o, he would like to say tbat there had been some misapprehension. It was stated in the advertisement that the estate would be sold under distraint for rent, whereas it was under bill of salp. It was due to the landlord that this shoold be stated. Mr Emanuel Solomon subsequently moved— " Tbat the bankrupt be recommended for his discharge." Mr Walker seconded the motion, which was carried. The meeting then adjourned sine die. BISHOP NEVILL ON JOHN WESLEY. TO THE EDITOB. i Sir,—Replyiug on Tuesday to Mr Spence's i letter in your issue of last Saturday for clearness' sake I put aside those assertions or questions which had no direct bearing upon tho point ! under discussion, and disposed oniy of the stock arguments of modern Wesleyans that after his "evangelical conversion" Wesley gave up his churchmsnship and founded another church. I would gladly here leave the matter, but to pass over somo of the remarkably bold statements, which I do uot doubt Mr Spence has made in good faitb, would be to leave people confirmed in utter mistakes, aud in the persuasion, so very injurious to the Christian faitb, that, with regard to ecclesiastical questions, all is confusion and conflict of opinion. Mr Spence says: "When Episcopalians like the late Bishop of Durham .. . repudiate the theory of apostolical succession! may leavo tbe bishop to answer the arguments of these distinguished ministers of his own sect." My reply in short would be a simple denial of the assertion made—at least so far aa concerns the first nud greatest of the names he gives—l have bufc little knowledge of the others: but I should ba sorry to dismiss tha matter thus abruptly, and particularly because I believe a great number of persons, uot in tbe least acquainted with Bishop Lightfoot's works, have jumped to such a conclusion as Mr Spence has statod, on the ground tbat he put forth a view es to tbe origin of diocesan episcopacy differing from that which had been the unbroken tradition of the church. The older idea had been that the episcopate is simply a continuation of the npnstleship uuder another title (transferred, as Theodoret tells u°, from the second order to the first out of respect to the original apostles) and without tho miracatou3 gifts. Bishop Lightfoot considered tbat there is evidence of th*.! creation cf a distinct order by ths original Apostles between their own office and fchat of the presbyter. This is a narrow point, resting unon its own proper evidence; but I havo now before me the last published work of the bishop, the magnum opus of his life—on which be spent some 30 years of labour—his defercs of the genuineness of the seven Epistles of Ignatius, Bwbop of Antioch. As competent scholsrs think tbafc Lightfoot has settled this question for all time in favour of their genuineness, tho succession of bishops from the Apostles is hardly debateable, as the one ground upou which these epistles has been callsd in question is the strength with which Ignatius insists upon episcopal authority as well as thafc of the other two orders of the ministry. It should be remembered that Ignatius was some 50 years contemporary with St. John. In Lightfoot's introduction to the Epistle of Polycarp. Bishop of Smyrna, ho points out that after the destruction of Jerusalem (a.d. 70), Proconsular Asia became the centre of Christiandom, that theae—St John, St. Andrew, and other apostles—followed up the work founded by St. Paul, and by ordaining bishops in various places perpetuated existing churches and founded new ones, I cannot sea bow the Bishop of Durham "repudiated " tt(!s theory pf spostolioaS

ted succession. The fact of its soundness few ha liy moro fully proved. I had tho honour of beii jnfc introduced to him somo 27 years ago,and vißite ale bim when last in Eugland, and I never hear* oa, auything from hia mouth which woull lead tc ior the idea that ho did not believe in tho gifts ier which tho ascended Lord bestowed upon hiho churoh (1 Cor. xii, 4 &o.; Eph. iv, 11-12). Xt It may be worth while remarking that Wesley he was ordained by, and always claimed to receive eh his ministerial authority from Archbishop he Potter, who wrote a very learned work on cburch ig government, which strongly upholds tho older ty view of thio subject. 3y Mr Sponco goes on to assert that "Dr a- Coko was ordained a bishop in the to New Testament sense." Wesley refused in io the most decided mauner to admit that ha a, or Ashbury wero ordained bishops in auy ir sense. Writing to tbo latter, when he heard ts that both had assumed th's title, ho says," How ;a oau you, how daro you, suffer yourself* to be d called a bishop ? I shudder, I start at tho very i. thought!" Then, after saying lhat no ono :e should ever call him bishop, Wesley adds, " For ie my sake, for God's sake, lor Christ's sake put a 11 full ond to all thiB1." It seoms that Coke is himself did not think ho was a bishop "in tho c Scripturo sense," since ho solicited consecration a from Bishops White and Seabury; aud this y proving unsuccessful, 29 years afterwards, n though ho had beeu using hia professed episcopal j powers all through the interval, he applied to the Prime Miuister of England in 1813—with many injunctions to secrecy—to bo made a bishop for India, and "ho promised to return most fully I and faithfully to tho bosom of the Established Ohurcb, and to submit to all such restrictions as the Bench of Bishops might think necessary." ! It is from these two that tho American Episcopal , Methodist Church has sprung. I would hero take leavo of Mr Spence, but 1 that ho presses mo to show by quotation tho ■ truth of my observation that tho Methodist Hymn Book deprives the members of that body of auy right to complain of high sacrameutal teaching within tho church. I om 'restricted by space from giving more than two or three examples out of more than a dozeu hymns whioh would prove tho point:— Now on the sacred table laid, ' Thy flesh becomes our food; Thy life ia to our souls conveyed In sacramental blood; Who shall say how the bread and wine Hod into man couveyß ? How the bread His fleah Imparts— How wine transmits His blood ? g And through this sacrament we hold | The substance to our hearts revealed, I We need not now go up to Heaven I To bring the long-sough saviour down— I Show Thy real presence here. I Yet we may celebrate below, B And dally thus Thine offering show— j Expressed before Thy Father a eyes I In thiß tremendous mystery. 8 (Present Thee, bleeding on the troe— i Our everlaating sacrifice. g Now let me get away from tho unwelcome I task of proving Mr Spence to bo wrong all along | tho line. I imagine the truth to be that Mr I Spence and thousands of others, hearing tbat Wesley was instrumental in stirring up the dry deism of tho 17th and 18»,h century religion to a strong and vigorous evangelical revival, read into that history their owu couception of what evangelical religion is, and ao suppose that Wesley and his allies must have held that compound of Zwinglianism, Calvinism, Lutherauism, Moravianism, and several other isms, which in our day passes current for the Gospel among those who only hold the tradition of certain post-reformation elders. The Wesleyana have latterly drifted almost entirely into the position held by pietists la thia class. But what ia the Gospel ? Surely not tho confused representation of a Bet of opinions upon particular subjects, traditionally received, only half understood, and which never wero more thau a partial view of truth, so commonly proclaimed as the Gospel! What "glad tidings of great joy" i 3 it to any one to kuow that a fellow creature held such and such an opinion upon an abstruse point ? St. Paul tells us what his Gospel was iv the opening verses of the 15th chapter of 1 Cor and we find it to be with him, as with all the ofcher apostles, tbe witness to the truth of certain facts of tremendous importance, to the human race. Tho cburch inherits the function 1 of bearing witness, and ber.ee, as Irenaeus argued in the second century, the immense importance of the succession from tho Apostles when connected with the promised gift which was to be with them to the end of the world. That spirit is hidden from the world by divisions aud heresies. I humbly hope to be executing my commission by tho call to reunion. I accept the inevitable misrepresentations to which anyone making such an appeal must be subjected ; but I know that thia question has with multitudes got beyond the stage of being laughed at. I know, too, that the spectacle afforded by so many of our up-country villages of establishments needlessly multiplied aud struggling for existence ia little less than shocking to many of our visitors — as, indeed, Dr Macgregor was bold enough to say. The Wesleyans wero the last to separate; should they not be tho first to return, particularly when they see the wishes and intentions of the man whose name thsy bear ? It is not difficult to foretell what tho official reply to such au appeal would be. I have already been told how many Wesleyans there are in the world. I havo no intention of- disputing the statistics, although this 13 done by others, and it is certain that these numbers can only be reached at all by uniting I for once th?, perhaps, 40 divisions which have I already taken place. But I am not moved by the question of numbers, be thoy less or more, cave that if more my argument would bo tho stronger, for the greater the need. Ido kuow, however, that the return current is waxing in strength from year to year, that in England it means already a return from Wesley's self-styled followers to Wesley's cburch of over 40,000 souls a year. A private letter from a bishop's chaplain recently received tells me that the writer (a clergyman) had co conception until be came to occupy his present position of tha number of Wesleyan and olher separatist ministers who apply for ordination. There aro some every week. There ia therefore a yearning for reunion, snd as to this country my large acquaint- ! ance with its young people of both sexes enables me to say that thera is among them a great distaste for the mistakes and quarrels of the past*. Unhappily this leads too often to the rejection of religion itself; yet atill there remains tho religious instinct, and macy, I know, j desire to sco a better state of things; not a i few pray for it daily. Therefore, at whatever risk of misapprehension, on such an occa-; sion aa this, I shall press the point. Foolish persons may talk of narrowness and uncharity! As if it were charity to leave persons in a quagmire because you fiud them there! Cuarity with some seems to be tho synonyme|of ignorant indifference ! Ob, if thero be those who are taught to satisfy themselves with the poor, tiio, dry bones, of a religion, which is without Heavenly gifts, which is littlo more than eyatomatised opinion and fruitless signs, surely it is no breach of charity to invite them to receive in its fulness the vitality of the body of Christ? To introduce thoso who have not before believed in sacramental grace to the consecrated fountain of sacramental benediction, to bring the lamps but dimly lighted to the golden pipes which pour the golden oil from the diviue olive trees and thus revive the flame—tbis can be no breach of j charity; but if to think God's plans and modes of working are better than our own be breach of charity, then I have done, for I can say no mor?. —I am, &•?., May 30. S. T. Dunedin.