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New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIII, Issue 20, 11 September 1885, Page 15

The Bishop of Dunedin will lij the foundation stone on Sunday next the 13tb inst., of a church to be erected at Rangiora. Our Evangelic il friends, we perceive,— continue to be troubled, as tney have been since Calvin's time, at their own invention concerning the false relics to which Catholics pay divine worship.— Just at present, however, it might almost seem as if the Evangelic* house itself required to be set in order, and the time of its occupants might find full employment in doing so. — They occupy themselves with silly and monstrous stories about relics and their uses.while their fetich, the Authorised Version, is radically deranged and contains false passa ges, according to high Protestant authority.than, even more according to Calvin the father of this particular branch of lying, there are false relics in the world— and yet they continue to preach from this discredited version, and to give it all their accustomed veneration, believing themselves damned if they depart from a word it contains, as if its most important passages and those most quoted in establishing what they regard as their vital doctrines— had not suffered a radical and authoritative change.— Hardly a trace, for example, of the Mes-iah is to ba found in the revised version of the Old Testament, and the prophecies hitherto taken as referring to him have now a totally different meaning.

The failure of the Bill for the abolition of the Gold Duty, may be regarded as one of the chief misfortunes of the session.— This duty is a tax that falls heavily oa one of the most deserving and useful classes of our colonists and weights an industry in which the welfare of the Colony is closely involved. An ugly feature, moreover, in the failure of this Bill was that pointed out by Mr. Pyke— to wit that it was owing to the opposition of the Northern members. — Thedisiegard of all but mere local interests thus shown is very suggestive, and may well have a part in shaping the future policy of the South.

la opposing Captain Russell's proposal for the reduction of the public works estimate?, Mr. Moss makes a strong point of the necessity that under such circumstanc 's would arise for checking the expenditure on school-buildings, — But, at the need for reduction arises altogether from the lavish expenditure on education, the force of the Hon. Member's argrumeut may, perhaps, be doubted without extravagance, and by unprejudiced people.— An allusion, however, to the possibility of any curtailment of the sums devoted to providing instructiou and accommodation for the children of well-to-do people at the public expense cannot be without its effect in the present temper of the community, and must tend to defeat any proposal against which it is urged. Secularism must be supported even if th Q Colony should starve in doing so.— But if men suffer in an attempt to destroy the belief in God what can be more just?

A meeting of aspirants to the women's branch of the Sodality of the Sicred Heart will be held this (Friday) eve ling in St. Joseph's schoolroom, Dunedin, on the conclusion of the Rosary in the church.

Wk clip the following from the Nation of July 18th.— The most outspoken and thorough-going deliverance on the Home Rule question that has yet come from any English politician of Ministerial rank is, undoubtedly, that of Mr. Herbert Gladstone at Leeds on Tuesday night. Mr. Gladstone, having made some remarks on the abandonment of coercion by the Tones, spoke the following remarkable words :— " They (the Liberals) had refused a great number of the measures of Mr. Parnell because they were loyal to classes in Ireland wLom they believed were threatened — whom they were weak enough to believe were loyal and straightforward men (hear, hear). These men hid betrayed them. He askt:d them, then, who was there in Ireland to fight for, and whom were they to stand up for against the national patty ? There was no one in Ireland whom they might stand up for, as his point was that, for good or for evil, Mr. Parnell represented the Irish people. Lat them end, then, the mockery of what was called constitutional government in Ireland, and let them form a system of goverument which was based em inly upon popular wisties and on a popular sentim»nt (loud cheers). His experience of what twenty or thirty determined Irishmen could <io in the H mse of Commons showed him that eighty could make our present sj stem of government practically unworkable. If that system did become unworkable, it became so to the harm of the British Empire (cheers). This muse be taken into consideration ; and they must either satisfy the reasonable demand of the liish people or must eject them from the House and govern the

country by marthl law (cheers). If then the Irish nation desired a Parliament on a federal basis, if the Irish leaders 'agreed tbat they could formulate ami work a practical scheme— and he believed they could— if they loyally accepted the supremacy of trw Crown and of the Imperial Parliament, then, in God'a namn give them a Parliament in College-green (loud cheers). The Tories must settle this great question of Home Rule in Ireland with Mr. ParneU himself. He believed, however, that in spite of the disgraceful behaviour of the Tories, ample compensation might and would he found in the national aspirations of Irishmen, and in the life-giv-ing effects of a free and constitutional government." Here at all events there is no beating about the bush : Mr. Gladstone goes straight to the point, and, of course, when we consider whose son he is. his words must carry double weight, What a blessed thing happened when the late Government was beaten by the Irish vote on that memorable 9th June I