ORANGE CELEBRATION.

Southern Cross, Volume 10, Issue 16, 19 July 1902, Page 7

ORANGE CELEBRATION.

On Sunday evening the members of the Sons of Levi, L.0.L., attended St. Paul’s Wesleyan Church, Leet street, and were accommodated, with seats in the middle of the building. The Pev. S. F. Prior expressed his pleasure at the presence of representatives of the Orange institution, and explained that he would not deliver anything in the nature of a special sermon, seeing that he would have an opportunity of speaking to the members at their anniversary gathering. The members of the lodge, held their annual concert in the Temperance Hall on Wednesday evening. The building, which had been tastefully decorated, was crowded to the doors, and the gathering was voted one of the most successful ever held in connection with the Order in Invercargill. Bro. Rev. T. A. Pybus, Grand Chaplain, presided, and said that some people objected to the Orange institution, but that was due to the fact that they had wrong ideas regarding it. They thought it existed for the purpose of persecuting those of an opposite faith, but such was not the case. It was only necessary to read the rules to be satisfied on that point. It was not fair to blame the Orange institution for the riots that sometimes occurred at Home in connection with the anniversaries and processions. The Order existed to defend the Protestant faith, to defend the Bible, and to uphold true liberty—“not for the purpose of abusing those of the opposite faith. Our late beloved Queen declared that the secret of England’s greatness was the Bible, and it was the Bible that Orangemen wished to maintain. They believed in the Army and Navy, but alone they were not sufficient. The Bible was the foundation of Orangeism—they believed in the Bible, and in liberty to all, and they claimed for themselves the liberty which they extended to others. The Rev. S. P. Prior said that as he looked round the hall, and saw the different banners and their emblems he was reminded that he was speaking to an Orange assembly, and the words that he was thinking of were these :— ‘ Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience above all other liberties.’ Most of them would know who uttered those words. It was that great Englishman, that renowned patriot, that sturdy Protestant, that man who feared God and loved the Bible, that great poet, John Milton ; and in speaking to Orangemen and their friends he might take it that those words expressed the spirit and the ideal of British Protestants. He was glad to know that they were especially expressive of the mind and will of Orangemen, whose watchwords were ‘ For God and the Bible, for King and Constitution’ —for the King so long as he says ‘ the Protestant religion I will maintain,’ for country, for hearth, for home. Liberty was the watchword of a true Briton—liberty of thought, of speech, and of argument. As bearing on this point, the speaker referred to the Hyde Park demonstrations and the action of the magistrates at Eastbourne in sending Salvationists to gaol for preaching in the open air. He did not hold with everything the Salvationists do or say, but he was tender on this point —of the right of a man to utter his thoughts in the open to all who might choose to hear. We believed in putting upon each man the due weight of personal responsibility, we believed in an enlightened conscience. He sometimes thought that we Britons carried this spirit to excess. He sometimes wondered how the House of Commons stood it when the Irish Nationalists rose to their feet to cheer a Boer victory. But they stood it, 4 Let them let off the steam,’ they seemed to say. We all felt that it was better to give liberty even to an extreme point than to withhold it. It was this liberty that the Orangemen wished to maintain that the Roman Catholic Church throughout the ages has denied, and that was

1 why he did not like the church, while 1 he had great sympathy with many who professed its creed, for he believed that there were good people among the Roman Catholics. The ) Church denied this right to think, to speak, and to utter freely according j to conscience above all other liberties. He might speak of the intolerance of the Church, and recall Galileo’s famous muttered ‘ But still it moves,’ when he was made to recant his statement that the earth moved round the sun. The Church was always the same, and not many years ago put the late St. George Mivart under ban because his utterances as a scientist were not in consonance with the creed of that Church. A little while ago it was said that while the Church might have cursed people centuries ago, it did not do so now ; he would not inflict on them a curse that the church had pronounced in 1837. But against the rock of personal responsibility and freedom of conscience all the waves of Roman Catholicism beat in vain. The Stuart dynasty, a Roman Catholic dynasty, failed because it insisted on the divine right of kings to do as they liked. Think of Charles I, Charles 11, James 11, the trial of the seven Bishops, the Siege of Derry and the Battle of the Boyne. At the latter a French commander said to one of the English officers —‘ Let us kings and then we will see.’ But no. What made William II the man he was was his belief in God, his love of the Bible, his love for personal liberty, and his desire to give it to others, and if they had changed kings they would have had to change creeds as well before they could have won. The late Cardinal Manning bad expressed the desire of the church to conquer England for Roman Catholicism, but there was one thing that would hinder them—our Protestant memory. A bill had recently been found in the British Museum, giving the items in the cost of burning the bodies of Latimer and Ridley, the total being £1 6s Bd. That sum and other similar £1 6s and eightpences stood in the way of England’s neck being ever put under the foot of the Pope of Rome, and the Orangemen, if the need ever arose, would help to say no to that being done. We remember; we shall never forget. Bro. Rev. T. H. Lyon said that the Rev. Mr Prior bad emphasised the difference between the Roman Catholic Church and Protestants as regards the place given to liberty. He had shown that the Church was not a friend of liberty. He (Mr Lyon) would deal with another aspect of the matter. All thoughful people would recognise ■ that there were dangers in front of the British Empire in the shape of certain evils that were at work amongst us. He referred to intemperance, imparity, and gambling. The rev. gentleman then referred to the permits granted to the Roman Catholic church in connection with art unions to show that it was wanting in this respect, and as to intemperance, he compared the number of advertisements referring to liquor published in the Tablet with the fact that none appeared in The Onfclook, and held that in view of these facta, and in view of its statement that those who did not belong to it could not be saved, there was still room for the Orange institution to protest against the encroachments of a church that was nob going to meet the moral needs of the colony. During the evening an orchestra under Mr D. Black played two selections very well indeed, and the promoters were not less fortunate in their choice of singers, Mrs Ross, Mrs Blue, and Miss Stevens and Miss C. Stevens giving some delightful examples of their ability as vocalists. Songs were also well rendered by Messrs Crosby Smith, A. Dickson, S. Perry, and L. Broad, the last-named scoring well even for him, and supplying the fun of the evening in abundant measure. Mr Le Petit’s flute solo wes greatly appreciated, so was Mr Sutherland’s dancing of a hornpipe to the pipipg of Mr Wilson,

wbile last but not least Miss Richards, a mite of a few years, surprised and pleased everybody by her clever recitations.

The gathering closed with the singing of a verse of the National Anthem.