"OLDER THAN CHRISTIANITY ITSELF'S" LETTER.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1902, 4 June 1892, Page 3

"OLDER THAN CHRISTIANITY ITSELF' S" LETTER.

(To the Editor ) Sir, — As the writers who have attacked me in your columns have not the courage to put their names to their letters, I must decline to reply to them. No one has a right fo expect me to answer writers who attack me by name in the public Press aud skulk behind auouyipous signatures themselves. To those Episcopalians who are so very irate over my address at Waitahuna, I would simply say that when I speak as a Presbyterian minister to a Presbyterian congregi tion, I am not only within my rights, 1 üm only discharging my duty when I explain aud defend the polity of our church. Possibly it was a mistake on my part to allow part of what I said to appear in the newspaper. But if such is so, we have to remember that representative speakers of the Episcopal Church do not hesitate, on the platform and in the Press, to unchurch non-Episcopalians altogether, and treat us as mere schismatics. And members of the Episcopal Church take all that quietly, aa if it were 9 matter of course. When Bishop Neville insulted the Presbyterians of Otago at the last Anglican Synod in Dunedin by attacking uot merely our principles, but our religious character even, not a single Anglican protested against it, either in the Synod or in the Press, as an outrage on Christian charity. Some of us must, therefore, be excused if we have the feeling that members of a religious body, many of whom, even in these colonies, and especially at Home, seem to think so lightly of hurting tho feelings of others, are rather out of court * hen they ci-y out so readily about their own susceptibilities being wounded. It is surely unnecessary to add that in nothing that I said at Wnitahuua had I the slightest local reference. — I am, etc., Isaac Jolly.