A. Free Church in a Free, State Coronation Indignities.

Otago Witness, Issue 2520, 2 July 1902, Page 13

A. Free Church in a Free, State Coronation Indignities.

TO THE EDITOR,

Sib, — As a Presbyterian minister I beg to enter a protest against the Moderator of the Assembly of the Presbyterian Church being officially designated in the Mayor's Coronation programme as "Right Reverend the Moderator " for the following among other reasons : —

1. Because titles which are not sham 1 ; have their source in lawful authority. whether King, or Pcpe, or ecclesiastical court. This title granted to or tacitly accepted by the moderator has the prescription of no lawful authority. It Is, therefore, peculiarly out of place in a Coronation programme, as if a sham "colonel," or "fieldmarshal," or " archbishop " seated himself on the platform.

2. Because the title bestowed by the Mayor, as civil magistrate, in this way is little better than an insult to the freedom of the Presbyterian Church, which alone has the right to say what shall be the title of its chairman of assembly.

I do not take up your space with a discussion as to whether Presbyterians should confer this or auy other title on their chairxnan of assembly. The fact is they have not; and the action of the Mayor in conferring and of the moderator in tacitly receiving a title which the one has no power to confer or the other to receive, so far from adding dignity to the occasion, covora Presbyterianism with a petty indignity.

Further, as a colonist, I beg to protest, while oh' the subject, against undue prominence ' befng given ' 'to " clerical "representatives " AS stjch at a civil function. I« this colony we have a free Church in a free State;; and. at Jhe Coronation of our King we meet as fellow-citizens and fellowChristians, and not as "churches" — i.e.. „" denominations,"— rwhether " established " or nonconformist. These distinctions ought not to be known to the civil magistrate and Mayor of our capital city. I protest as a free churchman against the doctrine that " numbers " shall settle the precedence of church representatives at civil functions. This would disinherit all the truest men in every country, and belie the whole history of the free churches, which have fought, not for precedence based on "numbers," but for equality, for equal justice, for the nonrecognition, for the ignoring on the part of th» civil powers of denominational divisions among citizens ; and for the recognition on the part of the civil magistrate, in civil funct)Aߣt solely of those qualification? of age, of learning, of character, of influence, that make a man, whether he is bishop, or doctor, or lawyer, or merchant, or minister, the honoured and acceptable speaker and mouthpiece, not of his co-religionists merely (be they many or few), but of his fellowcitizens, and as voicing their loyalty and sentiments on a great occasion. — I am, etc., Lovell's Flat. P. B. Fraseh. The Winton Borough Council has resolved to commemorate the King's Coronation by erecting a band rotunda.