THE FREE CHURCH APPEAL CASE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) AUCKLAND, August 8.

Otago Witness, Issue 2630, 10 August 1904, Page 62

THE FREE CHURCH APPEAL CASE. (From Our Own Correspondent.) AUCKLAND, August 8.

The Key. W. Gray Dixou, at St. David's Church, made some pertinent remarks on the effects of tht> judgment of the House of Lords' in the Free Clnirch case. He said it denies the spiritual independence of the Church' and its right, to modify its creed conflict with the f-nly conceivable j-elation of a Protestant Church to its confession. It lays a dead legal hand upon church progress. It puts a premium on eantankerousness, it discourages the magnificent movement of our time for the reunion of the Church's scattered forces. Speaking at considerable length on the subject, the preacher went into the history of the movement, a«d showed how the disruption of the Church in 1843, although it might appear at the time a movement making for confusion, really made for unity, because the Free Church Lad gathered together all other non-established churches in Scotland. The reason there was a special difficulty for a united Presbyterian Church was that it had, unlike other churches, come to adopt the voluntary principle instead of the establishment principle which was adhered to. by all others at the same time. This voluntary principle was not omitted from the creed of the United Presbyterian Church, and the dissentients from union declared that the Free Church, by uniting with the United Presbyterian Church, was abandoning the establishment principle. But because the principle had never been formally abandoned it had to be ehown that the establishment principle was an essential principle of the Free Church The. leaders of the Free Church held that it should be left an open question, as was done in this colony's Presbyterian Churches. The second difficulty was the Declaratory Act, which annulled the more liberal terms of the .Christian confession of faith that had formerly prevailed. The act allowed ministers and elders to sign the confession in a way that committed them less, and it was held that by so doing the Free Church abandoned its position. The Church claims the right to modify its creed when it feels compelled to do so. In short, it claims spiritual independence.