PASSING NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2360, 18 May 1899, Page 3

PASSING NOTES.

(From Saturday's Daily Times.)

I don't know who the man was that fu-st said " See how these Christians love one another!" but I. have not the slightest doubt about the tone in which he said it. The bitter taunt it carries is not always deserved. Probably Christians love each other more than appears, if less than they ought. Signs to the contrary notwithstanding,, I am willing to believe that First Church has a sneaking regard for St. Paul's, and that All Saints' cherishes a secret passion for Knox Church. The delightful quarrel in which they are now engaged is strictly a family quarrel, as any outsider who might intervene — the Roman Bishop, say, if he were here — would immediately find to his cost. Even I myself am almost afraid to put in a word — I who criticise kings and kaisers! Naturally, if unworthily, I incline to put in my word on the side of the heavy battalions. The Rev. Gibb and the Rev. Hewitson are lusty and strong ; till lately they were getting, as the Irishman complained in his own case, "blue mouldy for want of a bating." Luckily it chanced that somebody said, or was supposed to have said — for it doesn't appear who said it — that neither Knox Church nor First Church is a church at all — which is clean ridiculous. If a steepled kirk, with a congregation, and a minister, and an organ, is not a church, I should . like to know what is a church. This was an opening not to be neglected, and the two Presbyterian divines were just the men to make the most of it — Proving their doctrine orthodox By apostolic blows and knocks. Dean Fitchett's introduction of his "young man" with hymeneal projects was an attempt to confuse the issue — to draw a red herring across the scent, as they say in hunting circles, — but it didn't succeed. Everybody sees what the real question is: &re .we 9 church., or are we not a church?

And on this issue the dagger is at every Anglican throat: Under what king, Bezonian, Speak, or die!

And yet no murder will be done. Entertaining while they last, these ecclesiastical tournaments invariably come to nothing. Only the other day Bishop Nevill and his Dean, disputing about the body of Moses or some other Higher Criticism question equally exasperating, gave promise of great things. The public was all agog for an auto-da-fe ; I was preparing to carry a faggot myself ; when, 10, suddenly the body of Moses is dropped into its original obscurity, the Dean and the Bishop complacently revert to "as you were." Such is the inconsequential and disappointing logic of family quarrels. *» It will be just the same in the quadrangular duel Gibb-Nevill-Hewitson-Mtchett. Nothing will come of it. After a few more wordy broadsides everything will be understood in a Pickwickian sense; they will kiss and make it up. And then it will be found that eveiybody believes exactly as he believed before. There will be no rush of Presbyterians to accept episcopal benedictions from the Bishop, nor any sneaking away of Anglicans to confess the Westminster Confession with Mr Gibb. This being so, one is tempted to wonder what all the pother is about, and ask Cvi bono? It is useless asking. Things are as they are ; rival divines fall out and tear and fight because it is their nature to. Let us accept with gratitude the fun they provide, and bless Heaven that no real harm is done. They will hardly take a word of advice from me ; yet I am nothing if not didactic. My word is this: If the Bishop would be a little less pontifical, and Mr Gibb a little less bellicose ; if the Dean would abate somewhat his " aloofness " and Mr Hewitson his contentiousness ; if Anglicans would be just a trifle broader and Presbyterians just a trifle less narrow, we might hope to see arrive the happy time when Mr Gibb, in cope and chasuble, will " celebrate " at St. Paul's, and the Bishop, in. gown and bands, give out hymns and paraphrases in First Church.

Journalism is an honourable profession, and, for my own part, I try to adorn it; but, as it seems, I do not always succeed. In Monday's Times, in a letter half a column long, Mr A. R. Barclay feels that " obligation is certainly due " to him " for calling attention pointedly to the beauties " — [irony, of course] " to the beauties " of a passage in Saturday's Passing Notes. Personally I admit the obligation at once, for he quotes the passage with its " beauties," and so gets it printed over again. And a very vigorous passage it is; although, upon reflection, I would hardly include it in my forthcoming collection of elegant extracts from this column for Uhe in schools. In it I speak of a '" hungry pack " ; then of their " yawp " ; then of the chance that Mr Seddon may fling them a " gobbet " or two by and by, and of the certainty, in my own mind, that in the end this "kennel of ravenous starvelings " will tear him in pieces. Now see the malign influence of a metaphor. Having begun with a " hungry pack," I had to make everything else to suit; their cry, or collective vocal utterance, had to be a " yawp " — (" yawp," I believe, is an onomatopoeia ; Mr Barclay, I hope, will not condemn it on that giGund) ; their alimentary sustenance had to be " flung " to them in " gobbets " ; finally, because they never get enough, 1 had to call them a " kennel of ravenous starvelings." Mr Barclay, I am sure, wouldn't have me mix my metaphors ! Morally, the passage errs, perhaps, on the side of over-statement ; artistically, I maintain that it is perfect, and I am indebted to Mr Barclay for calling attention to its beauties. His motive lay in the fact that the " yawp " referred to was a sentence of his own : " there is not a single charge of corruption that has ever been made against the Ministry which has not been triumphantly refuted." Most owdacious ! — yet, observe, I never said that it was his. I attributed its authorship, vaguely, to "nameless myrmidons." The real author surely can't wish to be considered a nameless myrmidon. On the contrary he openly says that his name is A. R. Barclay. I really don't see that he owes me anything but gratitude, especially for the opportunity I have made him of scattering a little more ground-bait in view of angling operations at the approaching General Election.

The "marine scandal," as we all know, has been " triumphantly refuted " not only

by everybody concerned in it from Mr Seddon downwards, but by every Seddonite thac has since taken the stump, and in particular — as his duty was — by the Hon. W. Twomey in a luminous epistle to the Daily Times. And yet this week Mr J. A. Millar has been triumphantly refuting it again! Why this slaying of the slain? Why couldn't Mr Millar rest satisfied,, in the triumphant refutations achieved by his predecessors? The answer is, of,, course, that there still lurks and lingers in this triumphantly refuted scandal sufficient vitality to disturb Mr Millar's peace. Like the Irishman's turtle, the scandal is " quite dead, but not intoirely sinsible of it.'' Hence Mr Millar, arming himself with a lithographed copy of the cryptic memorandum " Jones Duec — permit exam master," triumphantly slays it once more. And yet it isn't dead yet. I know it isn't, for the reason that nobody has yet triumphantly explained the spiriting away of Jones, nor has even so much as attempted to explain it. Jones it was who alone knew the scandal in all it scandalous . ins and outs; it was Jones who could have told what the Minister said to him, and what he said to the Minister, what Mr Seddon's pai-t .in it was, what Captain Allman's, and what the part of that unlucky scapegoat, destined to bear the sins of ail the rest, Mr Glasgow. Jones, in short, was the one indispensable witness as well as the corpus delicti. Yet when Jones is called at the trial the answer is "No appearance, your Honor !" Nor could the most diligent search in Wellington and suburbs discover the whereabouts of Jones. Non csfc invenlum ! If Mr Millar will kindly and triumphantly explain the vanishing of Jones I shall feel personally indebted to him. Dear Civis, — I find the following in the Sydney Bulletin : — " The godly towns of Queensland, Ipswich and Maryborough, return Govt. supporters, as heretofore. Wherever priest and parson are strong in the North the Democrat goes down. Wherever the churches are in abeyance and the voice of the gaunt Gospeller is almost a curiosity, there the Labour .men flourish and the Democrats are returned to Parliament." Can this be true? Will it hold good of New Zealand? Are we to attribute the persistence of Seddonism to a decline of true religion? If so, then I say the best thing we can do is to import Mr Moody, and go in for an evangelical revival. — Anxious Inquirer. The Bulletin, which is not much of an authority upon politics, is still less an authority upon religion. " Anxious Inquirer," if he makes the Bulletin his oracle, may get stranger responses than the paragraph he quotes, and tfiafc is strange enough. Since when have priest and parson become the enemies of democracy? They get along -quite comfortably with democracy in Britain and America, and not altogether uncomfortably in France. In New South Wales it is not to democracy that priest and parson are fatal, but. I suspect, to the democrat. That is quite a different thing. We are a democracy in New Zealand, but we are not all professional democrats ; we are only bossed and managed by them. Here they call themselves the " Great Liberal Party." My private belief is that the morality of the Great Liberal Party leaves much to bo desired. Ask Mr Scobie Mackenzie on that point ; ask Sir Robert Stout. A dose of priest and parson might possibly do them good ; though that would probably not be the prescription of Sir Robert Stout. I have no objection to an evangelical revival in their interest, provided you get the right persons to the penitent form. When gravelled for lack of energetic expressions — a tiling which may happen not only to a controversial parson, but to any man — one is tempted to envy the licence of our grandfathers — tneir expletives, their condemnatory adjectives. I have just come across some examples from the talk of the Duke of Wellington, who, as everybody knows, was a churchman, probably — according to his lights — a religious man, in any case a gentleman. At the ceremony of the Queen's accession, Lord Albemarle, who was Master of the Horse, insisted that he had a right to ride to St. James's in the same coach with her Majesty, as he had done with William IV. The point was submitted to the Duke of Wellington, as being a kind of universal referee on questions of precedent and mage. He settled it promptly. " The- Queen," he said, "can make you go inside the coach or outside the coach, or run behind like a d d tinker's dog." When the Cabinet asked tlfe Di:ke to recommend a commtmder for an expedition they were sending to Burma, his ausAver wa& '" Sei'd

Lord Combermere." "But we have always understood that your Grace thought Lord Combermere a fool." "So lie is a fool, and a d d fool ; but he can take Rangoon." ,At a dinner party a lady said to him : " Diike, J know you won't mind my asking you, but is it true that you were gieatly surprised when you found that you had won the Battle of Waterloo?" The answer was "By G ! not half as much surprised as T am now, mum." This style of speech was not peculiar to soldiers ; ladies had it too. A great Whig duchess is recorded as turning to the 'footman who was waiting upon her at dinner, and exclaiming, " I wish to G that you wouldn't ' keep rubbing your great greasy belly against the back of my chair." The famous sisters Berry, who were the very cream of the cream of refined society, habitually d d the teakettle if it burned their fingers. Other times, other manners! I imperil the respectability of this column, not to speak of my own, by merely repeating these stories, even though I eviscerate each naughty word and snow it only skeleton-wise. And yet we are not so much better than our forbears. We say " Good gracious !" and " Good heavens !" which are really appeals to the Deity ; we say " The dickens !" and " The deuce !" where a former generation would have said straight out "The Devil!" • We talk of a " confounded fool," which ' is all one with the Duke's remark about j Lord Combermere. Morality in speech has made some progress, but how much'/ .About as much, perhaps, as is represented by transition from nudity' to the fig leaf. Civis.