NOTES FROM AUCKLAND.

Freethought Review, Volume II, Issue 15, 1 December 1884, Page 15

NOTES FROM AUCKLAND.

(from a correspondent.) Auckland is to have its Museum opened on Sunday at last, and it is the last city in the colony to come to that decision. Yet the people of Auckland are as pleasureseeking a community as there is in these islands, but they make great profession of what passes as piety while owning very little of the genuine article. In September a requisition was presented to the Council in charge of the museum, requesting that it should be opened on Sundays. Several Christian sects regarded such a proposition as heretical, and, with that intolerance which has for centuries been synonymous with Christianity, they got up petitions to keep the museum shut. These petitioners were of the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian type. They were not joined by the Homan Catholic and Anglican Churches. On the contrary, it is now said that Bishop Cowic, of the Anglican Church, has long been in favour of opening. The puritanical observance of Sunday is a modern phase of Christianity not three centuries old. It is also a local phase, manifested chiefly in England and Scotland, but utterly repudiated on the Continent of Europe. It has been imported here as other home matters have, and though somewhat diluted to what it is in the parent country, is nevertheless the backbone of what a large proportion of the population consider genuine Christianity. This opinion is held in defiance of early Christian tradition, for if New Testament narrative possesses a grain of truth, Jesus was a most violent opponent of Sabbatarianism. Yet these Sabbatarians, in the most fulsome manner, profess to be the close followers of this same Jesus. The infatuation of these sectaries is due, first, to their ingrained egotism—they are confident that none mean so well as they do; second, to their passion for domination. Except liberty to themselves they have no other conception of liberty, nor have they any disposition towards it. To bring over such minds to the side of liberty, you must touch them through their pockets and interests, then they may be brought over to be professed supporters. That the Auckland Museum is to be opened on Sunday is due to a fortunate chance. Pecuniarily, the Museum has been embarassed. The revenue was derived in part from subscribers of £1 each per annum, A large majority of these subscribers have been for years in favour of opening, but the minority threatened that if it were opened they would discontinue their subscriptions. The Council quailed be lore the intimidation of this minority and deferred indefinitely the action they would most willingly have taken. However relief came, and from a most unlikely source. Over a year ago an old man named Costley died. He lived as if he were poor. An old clothesman would not have given more than ten shillings for his wardrobe, but he died legally worth about £IOO,OOO, unearned increment on city property he had bought away back from the year 1810. The bulk of this large sum he apportioned by will amongst seven public institutions. The share which fell to the Museum was about £12,000. This relieved that institution from all embarassment, made it independent of the bigoted governing minority of the Institute, and now the public will be able to enter it on •Sundays. With the new lights that have lately been shed around on the land question, Mr, Costlcy’s very liberal act may be viewed from a very different stand point to what it would have been viewed a few years ago. From that new stand point, Mr. Costley in bequeathing his property to institutions designed for the benefit of. the community did merely an act of justice. The increase in the value of his property was due entirely to the numbers and enterprise of the community, and not his exertions. He may have acknowledged this —-may have been a disciple of the Henry George school, and, following up his convictions to their practical end, have resolved honestly to return to the community that increment which the community had earned. It is not an uncommon opinion that Governments are backward in reforms and improvements, but in this instance that.opinion is not borne out, for the Government years ago imposed this condition on the Council of the Museum, “that it should be opened on Sundays as soon as the other Museums were so opened,” but the Council have for years been boycotted by the illiberal, and no doubt in their own estimation, pious minority of the members of the Institute.