The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1897. THE PRESBYTERIANS AND THE JUBILEE.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 32, 17 December 1897, Page 17

The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 1897. THE PRESBYTERIANS AND THE JUBILEE.

T is eminently right and fitting that the Jubilee of the Province should be made the occcasion of a grand public demonstration. It is true that the jubilee business ha 3 been very much overdone of late, but the grounds for general gratitude and rejoicing are so solid and substantial that there can be no question whatever as to the desirableness of making public and united recognition of the occasion. Everyone is interested in his province ; everyone is proud of the progress it has made, and if the celebration be wisely managed there will be no lack of enthusiasm on the part of the people either of town or country. That the community is thoroughly enthusiastic on the subject has been abundantly shown by the superabundance of suggestions that have been made as to the most suitable form or forms which the celebration might take. We have no intention of entering into the merits of the various schemes proposed. The question of the programme for .Jubilee Day is in the hands of a large and representative committee, who may be safely trusted to carefully sift the multitudinous and multifarious proposals they have received. A\ r e wish to refer very briefly to one proposed item of the programme, which, if adopted, will, we arc certain, seriously endanger the success of the celebration. We allude to the request made by the Presbyterian Church authorities that special, and to some extent official, recognitiou should be made of their religious service in connection with the Jubilee. According to the report appearing in the daily paper of the last meeting of the Jubilee Committee, the Rev. W. Hew itsox, convener of the Presbyterian Synod's Committee, wrote requesting " the Jubilee Committee to keep the morning of the 23rd March till noon as free as possible from arrangements that might interfere with the holding of thanksgiving services. The Jubilee Committee of the Synod of the Presbyterian Church desired to hold a service during the morning to commemorate the Jubilee of the Church and of the settlement. It was quite probable that other churches would also wish to hold similar services." As thus put, the request is harmless enough, but the real wish of the Presbyterian body in the matter is to be gathered from other public utterances of representatives of the Church. Thus the Rev. Mr. Giun at a previous publicmeeting is reported as having said: "As Mr. Begg had stated, the Jubilee of the Province was also the Jubilee of the Presbyterian Church, and they as a church meant to make a good thing of it. They would like to make their own arrangements, but they would like to come into touch with the committee for a religious service. . . . He thought that the Pirxbi/ierian Church should lead in ike matter of a put/1 ir scrciro seeing it was their Jubilee." And Mr. II kwitson himself at the same meeting spoke as follows : " It was right that they (the Presbyterfans) as a Church should hold a service on the Anniversary Day, and they were

anxious that it should be really a prominent feature in connection with the celebration, that it should not be crushed into a corner, and that while the service was going on there should not be a procession or fireworks. As early as 10 a.m. they might have a religions service. That was really one thins: the Presbyterian Church asked to be prominent." The Chi ixlian, Outlook of last week gives expression to the same sentiments and thinks it a fair thing to request that the Presbyterian service " should be regarded as in some sense official." It is, of course, perfectly legitim.ife and natural that the Presbyterians should w ioh to make the jubilee of their Church synchroniser ith the jubilee of the province even though as a matter of lact the establishment of the Church was at least a foriniuht later lhan the founding of the province. It is also natural that they should wish to hold a special religious service on the occasion and under the circumstances no one would object to their desire to, as Sir. Gibb rather significantly expressed it, " make a good tiling of it." But to make such religious service in any sense part of the official programme for. Jubilee Day would be a fatal blunder. The demonstration on that day is in commemoration not of the jubilee of Presbyterianism, but of the jubilee of the province, and the programme should be such that every man, woman and child in the community, of whatever religions persuasion, can enter heartily and enthusiastically into it. But how can Catholics, Anglicans, Wesleyans, Baptists, etc., take part in a Presbyterian jubilee service, and on what principle of justice can a programme be adopted from any part of which such large numbers of citizens are thus necessarily excluded. Once let it be understood that the first item on the official programme is to be the glorification of Presbyterianism and the enthusiasm of the members of other religious bodies will be at once effectually damped. The demonstration will then be partial and unreprescntath c, and therefore from the highest and best point of view, a failure. The Catholics of the community are prepared to join heartily with their fellow-citizens in making the celebration a success, but anything like an official recognition of sectarianism is a plank in the programme with which they could have no possible sympathy whatever. In the best interests of what should be a grand united demonstration we sincerely hope that the Jubilee Committee will be warned in time and will be careful to avoid so palpable a pit-fall.