REVL.M. ISITT INTER VIEWED.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume V, Issue 538, 1 September 1897, Page 4

REVL.M. ISITT INTER VIEWED.

The Rev. L. M. Isitt, interviewed in Sydney with reference to the statement made by him to the effect that a Presbyterian minister in Sydney had been picked out of the gutter by a Wesleyan minister —a statement that excited the warm indignation of the Presbytery of Sydney— distinctly denied that he had ever inferred that the Presbyterian minister was a Sydney minister. “ What I did state,” Mr Isitt said, “ was that Mr Rutledge had found a Presbyterian minister drunk in the streets of Sydney. Immediately prior to that statement 1 bad instanced a case (without mentioning the name, of course) of a prominent member of the Wesleyan Church in another colony who had fallen a victim to the drink evil. Immediately after —if not at Singleton, tlion at one of the places I delivered this lecture—--1 stated where a minister of another denomination was seen in a drunken condition. It seems to me to be almost childish to resent every case cited of the hurt and injury done to our common Christianity by strong drink as an attack upon the Church in which the incident occuis.” The Rev. W. Rutledge, when interviewed on the subject, said the statement with regard to his finding a minister of the Presbyterian Church drunk in the gutter was only too true. The General Assembly was sitting at the time, and ho was a country minister who was down in Sydney for its sittings. It was on the night of Dr Clifford's reception that lio found him aud acted the Good Samaritan to him.