CROMWELL'S TERCENTENARY.

Otago Witness, Issue 2358, 4 May 1899, Page 10

CROMWELL'S TERCENTENARY.

On Tuesday evening, 25th, Rev. J. MuirheacT lectured on "Oliver Cromwell" to a largo and appreciative audience in South -Dunedin Baptist Church. After 'referring to the boyhood and youth of the Protector, he sketched the reigns of James I and Charles I, not only speaking of these two kings, but also of Whitgift and Bancroft/ Wontworth, anil Laud. To Wentworth the lecturer traced all future troubles in Ireland, since m him " lha very genius of tyranny was embodied." And Laud, he called the father of High Churchmen. To Sir John Eliot, John Pyra, and John Hampden the lecturer dealt out unlimited praise. When Cromwell' raised his New Model, the lecturer said,' ho, was face to face with three tyrannies, which fie had to oppose with all his might — (1) the tyranny of the King, (2) the tyranny of the .bishops, and (3) the tyranny of Presbyterianism. The fight was therefore political, ecclesiastical, and? religious. And these tyrannies , Cromwell sought to oppose by means of (1) copatitu* tional freedom, (2) freedom of the church to rule herself, and (3) liberty of the individual conscience in matters of religion/ While Cromwell, the lecturer maintained, did nofc see as fai* as the Congregational Free Churches of to-day in the matter of religious liberty, yet he was far ahead of any man of his day. Under no English Government, as Macaulay says, had there been so little persecution. And the lecturer said that if Cromwell had had his way there perhaps would have been r.one. Referring to the massacre of Drogheda, the lecturer said he would not seek to justify it. While ho believed that Cromwell was wrong, Cromwell himself believed that hevraa doing God's work. Probably Cromwell •would have justified the massacre by an appeal to a text in the Book of Deuteronomy.. Still, it was to bo remembered that Cromwell permitted no outrage or cruelty to be committed upon helpless women and children 1 ,) or upon men that had not taken up arms against him. " The Drogheda garrison," Baya Fronde, " suffered no more than the letter of the lawp "of war permitted." As the lecturer's time had expired, he dealt but very brienV witli the Lord Protectorship, the offeu of Kingship, the New Tyranny, and the failure of Puritanism at the Restoration* But he intimated that he intended in % few", weeks* time to deal more fully with these matters in another lecture.

A wbale, 35ft long and lOffc in girth, vraa found by Dan Tiney, stranded on the beach &fc Tekaloa Bay, Canterbury*