PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1834, 14 January 1887, Page 21

PASSING NOTES.

The advertisement ".Wanted a Ruler ; apply (enclosing testimonials) at' Sofia or St. Petersburg," is still standing in the European papers, and there seems an unconscionable difficulty in filling the vacancy. Of course none but bona fide princes -who have served an apprenticeship to the business need apply; but the international directory is full of these, and it ib strange there are not more candidates for the appointment. A smart young man with an empty purse and an intelligent readiness to do as he is told by the Czar—this is what is wanted, and it should not be so monstrously hard to find. The billet would have been the very thing for Nicholas of Mingreha, Prince, if the Bulgarians could only have been induced to take him. He ib a young man in a chronic state of impecuniosity and highly noble. However, it was not to be. Ferdiuand of Denmark, Prince, another likely candidate, was objectionable to Russia; and at the present moment it looks as if George of Leuchtenberg, of whom nobody knows anything except that he is of course a duly registered prince, will secure the billet. If he feathers his .nestas neatly as Alexander of Battenberg, who went to Bulgaria with nothing but the Czar's cheque for three pounds ten in his pocket, and now owns a considerable slice of the United States, he will have cause to congratulate himself. Of the brothers Battenberg; who have both been " taken up " by a mighty Empress Alexander is perhaps the more to be envied. Piince Henry, notwithstanding his domestic good fortune, has a mother-in-law ever present, whose conciliation is absolutely imperative, At certain Balmoral festivities the young Prussian, to whom top boots and spurs are almost a necessary of life, wasactually compelled to shiver in bare blue legs and a kilt. Ihere must have been a procession of long German oaths in the Battenberg chamber that night. No : the Bul1 garian throne is undoubtedly the snuggest I appointment that has been thrown open for I competition among European princelings for years past, and the man that gtts it need not envy even tbe husband of Princess Beatrice and the resident son-in-law of our Most Gracious Queen.

Sir Robert Stoat's Christmas preachment at the Lyceum was little to the edification of either believers or unbelievers, but it has had one result of an unexpected and most gratifying nature. It has extracted from Bishop Moran an opinion, a favourable opinion, bb to thi-. possibility of Sir Robert's ultimate salvation. The Bishop thinks Sir Robert may hope to be saved by his " invincible ignorance." This seems an easy way of salvation, much easier, iv fact, than the way provided by the Church. It ought to become popular. Moved by a not unnatural curiosity on the subject, I have obtained from a competent authority at St. Joseph's a statement of the various ways in which ignorance may be helpful to sinners, which statement is as follows :

"'lgnorance' is, in Roman Theology, the absence of knowledge in one capable of acquiring it. It is of two kinds : 1. Vincible— (a) Simple, when some, but not sufficient, pains are taken to remove ifc; (b) Crass,"when scarcely any means are used; and (c) Affected, when a person wishes- to be ignorant in order to sin more freely. 2.. lnvincible, which is held to excuse altogether from sin, since no moral guilt can be incurred without an intention, direct or remote, of violating the divine law." This is an important definition, and I am glad to get it into print. Being myself a heretic, I humbly hope to come under one of th?se categories of ignorance, but under which — whether my ignorance is " vincible " or " invincible," audj if the former, whether it is " simple " or "crass,"' or affected" — my ignorance itself prevents my knowing. Clearly it is better iiot to know. This is a case in which ignorance, if not itself bliss, is at least the title to it, hence 'tis folly to be wise. ' Respecting Sir Robert Stout, however, there is no harm in knowing that his ignorance is certainly of the 'saving sort. The Bishopfind its abysmal, hopeless, incorrigible, and has written 6even letters to prove it so. The Bishop himself applies to it the all-impor-tint word "invincible." Sir Robert Stout, therefore is on the high road to salvation. This is consolatory, since there must be a good many people who are quite as ignorant as Sir Robert Stout, and some even more co.

Looked afc in its purely mundane aspect, and leaving the interesting question of the Premier's personal solvability out of view, the Stout* Moran correspondence is, on one side at least, an egregious piece of folly. What has the Premier of New Zealand to do with Balls, Encyclicals, Allocations, Papal Syllabuses? Why should the head of the Government expose himself to be politely snubbed by '& bishop, and to be promised salvation in virtue of his "invincible ignorance?." In some respects the Laird o' Cockpen would have taken a jus>ter view of the duties of a Premier than Sir Robert Stout. The Laird o' Cockpen would have felt himself too proud and too great to preach Lyceum sermons, and his head wonld have been too much ta'en up wV affairs of the Stase to permit his writing " No,, Popery " letters to the newspapers. It seems' perilous for the Premier to come to Dunedin. As soon as his foot is on his native heath old associations get the mastery, and he sinks the statesman in the theological Isbmaelite. I have given Sir Robert a good deal of advice gratis in years gone by, and Sir Robert has always expressed tbe pro* foandest veneration for it. I will venture to give him a. little more— comßr^ssed^to a single g^tejjce. li'«% hinj atsoro ftw Ijyc&'ra p'uipH

and make a sympathetic study of the' character of the Laird o' Cockpen. ! If he could be induced in addition to take seats in Knox Church his regeneration would ba provisionally complete^

Faith-healing, or magnetic healing, or any mod« of healing not recognised by. the British Pharmacopoeia is at the best a precarious and comfortless industry. A " worker" fthat, I be lieve, is a correct tabernacular term) ia this cause may be acclaimed in one town to-day and stoned in another town to-morrow. There ia an early apostolic flavour about 'the career ia this

respect, but in, no other. Take the Revl Mr Dowie for example. In Dunedin he laboured ia an atmosphere of perfect serenity,, disturbe only by a difficulty with 'a certain sh'nbone which refused to be lengthened summarily by faith, and a slight brush with " Civis," whom I am informed he called a fool. But in Invercargill Mr Dowie found a cross awaiting him. One Gordon, a Presbyterian clergyman, proclaimed, from the pulpit his belief that Mr Dowie's socalled healing power was simply animal magnetism, that Mr Dowie's arguments were bias* phemous, and further expressed the opinion that his so-called inissioa was not free from a suspicion of selfishness. Upon this Mr Dowie got into his pulpit and waxed not a little warm in reply, being (bo says the telegraphic report) particularly unguarded in his references to those who asked questions. That is where it is. You must not go to a faith-healer and say you wan to know, you know, especially. a faith-healer who has been made a little angry by a follow labourer in the ecclesiastical vineyard. What the Rev. Mr Dowie wants from his patrons is faith— in Dowie ; and faith is incompatible with the asking of very many questions.

Continuing the perusal of these proceedings in the Invercargill Wesleyan Church, it will be seen that Mr Duwie had scope for the exercise of those most apostolic virtues patience and meekness, and that he wholly missed the opportunity. Among the questions asked, the one which ap« pears to have particularly irritated the reverend gentleman was an inquiry as Jfco when he in* tended visiting the hospital to heal the sick there. This querist was promptly ordered out of the church. The suggestion is akin to one I myself made a week or two back, and it is evidence that a summary expulsion from^he Dowio congregation would have awaited me also had it been made verbally instead of in print. Fol« lowiug upon this, another gentleman remarked that Mr Uowio's mode of procedure was "al bounce," and upon him the reverend cure-all retaliated with the epifchefc "lying scoundrel." Drifting farther and farther from apostolic models, it will ba observed. To call hla a66ailant a lying scoundrel was evidently the last thing that occurred to the Rev. Dowie in the way of argument. It was his ultimate resource, or nearly so. Possibly if the discussion had been continued he would have vociferated " Yah ! " from the pulpit as an absolute " clincher." Scratch a Russian, is the saying, and you will find a Tartar. - Scratch a clerical faith-healer aud you will find a highly abusive party, whose language aud manners are really shocking. It may of course be merely the New Zealand air that has braced Mr Dowie up too sharply ; and if so, the sooner he returns to his Melbourne pastorate and relaxes, the better" But let him heal a broken leg before he goes.

Sir Julius Vogel " fancies himself "oh his late Dunedin speech, and' "will back his opinion, against that of the editors at even money, £10 a side. This sporting offer of the Treasurer's, considered as a sporting offer, looks all fair, square, and above board ; why can't it be taken up ? Because, say the editors, it is im» possible to find anybody intelligent enough, and at the same time impartial enough, to be trusted with the decision of the wager. Curiouc, isn't it, that they do not seem to have thought of "Civis"? No. doubt " Civis" is a Freetrader, and the subject in dispute is the wicdom or folly of the Treasurer's arguments for Protection, but for the purposes of this bet '• Civis " could be a veritable Rhadamanthus, aud would confiscate the stakes as costs of court rather than incur the . suspicion of awarding them against tho weight of evidence. However, as the Treasurer's sporting offer is not going to be taken it is useless to offer my services. All the same it is an offer that sets one thinking." A good many things in the financial history of the colony grow clearer in the light of it. A sporting treasurer implies very naturally an airy and speculative finance. Many remark, however, that the Vogelian method of settling a dispute might be applied in some quarters with' manifest advantage. The Stout-Moran controversy is an example. If the Premier and the Bishop had skied a copper, the question between them could have been decided in five seconds, seventeen columns of unintelligible argument would have been spared, and we should have had the satisfaction of knowing — what, as it i», we don'fc know — which of them had : won. The faithhealing Dowies are another case in point. The formula of application to be used by' a patient ought to be — " I bet you £10 you don't heal mj leg," — and the Dowies befoto beginning opera tions should be required to stake the mon«y. 1 this rule were adopted, I fancy we should no long be favoured with the society of th Dowies, .„ -

There is certainly nothing to laugh at in tie dismal tragedy of the big dredge, an event which .is money out of everybody's pocket, yet most people seem to find it distinctly humoron*. Witness the following epistle :— fc f

Dear Mr Civis,— Being in- r contemplative mood when I heard of the big dredge dfrnbttr, the vague consciousness grew upon n c that yonr acute mind might expound .the Jbifctcifcnl analogy between that most :famoiis^'t»itking: famoiis^'t»itking transaction mentioned in the Bible,- of we have all of us heard since chijdhoodj bow* Moses ajjfl Cp, reined. Pharaoh aijdj Oo% <$ttiu3 pit the Red Sea Bapjr, and what is pmably ijm

most notable similar transaction in the annals of Ocago, how our Harbour Board having b^en exhausting their deposits in the Otago Provincial Marine Bauk, ingeniously sought to square the account by paying into the Bank the Big D. itself — the last draft on its account hiving been noted. Kindly expound for the benefit of your thirsting dibciples. — Yours, &c,

Embryo C. "Which things are an allegory, to be puzzled out by those who have a taste for such studies. I siid above that the shipwreck of this colossal marine mud-scraper was money out of everybody's pocket, but of course I except the Port Chalmers people. Whilst awaiting the conatruction'of the big dock the Port people will make a tolerably good thing out of the destruction of the big dredge. Moreover, from the Port point of view the event is a salutary illustration of the perils of navigation in the Upper Harbour and a warning to shipmasters not lo venture abovo the islands. Equally is it an admonition to underwriters that they will do well to restrain foolhardy mariners from entering those narrow and treacherous waters by imposing prohibitory rates of insurance. Altogether the catastrophe to the dredge is a very special dNpemation of Providence for the benefit of Port Obahners, the only thing to be regretted being that the monstordid not embed berst-lf in the bottom of tho "Victoria Channel. What a bone in our throat she would have been ! The ihips at the DuneiHn wharves would never have got to s>ea again till we had blasted her to little bits by dynamite. Civis.