THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1905 THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY'S ATTACK

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXIII, Issue 47, 23 November 1905, Page 17

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 1905 THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY'S ATTACK

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♦ (-VOKDIMJ to KieiiU'i, all men aie bolter ' than their ebullitions ut evil. 'J ho founda1 Uon of tiuth m this statement -will, per- \ haps, hene to palliate the epidenne of illtemper which broke out m .sundry firecracl.ois oi anti-Catholic a^a,i essneness at lasi week's moot ings oi Ihe Piesl)y tenan (Joncial Assembly in Auckland. The Assembly, for instance, neither consulted its own dignity, nor the interests of truth, noi the claims of justice when 'i(7 .set its hand and .seal to the following statement :—

1 In parishes where the Roman Catholic element is strong, Protestant young men are liable to be- drawn away on Sundays to the football field, to bicycle outings, and other forms of pleasuring.' Here the Assembly suggests, or leaves the average reader to draw, three unwarrantable inferences : (1) That ' pleasuring ' on a Sunday is in itself a grievous infraction of the divine law ; (2) that Presbyterian young men are ' liable ' to be ' drawn away--' into Sunday ' pleasuring ' only in ' parishes where the Roman Catholic element is strong ' ; and (3) that this ' liability ' to alleged sinful Sunday ' pleasuring ' is implanted in the aforesaid Presbyterian young men by the fact that ' that the Roman Catholic element is strong ' around about them. * The first of these inferences is a question of theology ; the remaining two are questions of fact. Each member of the Assembly claims the right to determine the question of theology by his own private and admittedly fallible judgment or understanding of the Written Word of God. But— on Presbyterian principles — is not the private judgment of any Catholic as good upon this subject as the private judgment of any member of the General Assembly ? The noted Presbyterian writer, Schaff, points out the fact, well known to every properly instructed school-child, that no regulations for the observance of Sunday are laid down in the New Testament, ' nor, indeed,' he adds, 'is its observance even enjoined.' Neither, says the same writer, is the Sunday ' a continuation of the Jewish Sabbath. 1 Catholics, falling back on the authority of the Church, which gave us the Christian Sunday, know from her both what is commanded and what is forbidden on that sacred day... So far as the present issues are concerned, these were briefly and clearly set forth in 1896, in circumstances similar to the present by the Archbishop of Melbourne :—: — ' The first duties of all men on Sunday,' said that distinguished churchman, ' are his religious duties. After that the day should be a day of rest for the body as v ell as the mind, for Sunday takes the place of the Sabbath, but there can be no objection to a little innocent recreation. If a young man who has been cooped up at his business all the week, takes a run into the country on Sunday afternoon, after attending to his religious duties in the morning, he does no harm. But there may be excess in all things ; and excess m bicycling is as much to be condemned as excess in anything else. A ride into the country may keep young men from drinking and other evil practices, and I would by no means condemn it in moderation. Above all, the religious duties must first be attended to.' What— on Presbytenan principles— have our Assembly critics to urge against this ? They profess to determine questions of doctrine and morals by an appeal to the Scriptures, interpreted by their own private judgment. But who enabled them to distinguish between Scupture and non-Scripture? Who constituted them judges in Israel ? Who appointed them guardians and interpreters of the Word of God ? When and where did they receive the divine commission to declare and apply the law of God— to teach, to direct, to reprove, to bind the consciences of their fellow-men ? Even if they could show such a commission — and they cannot — howi could they make it appear that they do not misapprehend or misapply the will and intention of their Sender, setting that they are each and all confessedly liable to error '> But it so happens that on this question of Sunday observance the Good Book spcaketh not. And our friends of the General Assembly dare not fall back upon Church authority or Catholic tradition. But even if they could or did appeal to the Written Word here, what would it avail them ? Ls not the judgment of the Catholic Church on this matter— even on Presbyterian principles — at least as good as that of our critics of the General Assembly ? Here is how Dr. Brownson gets this idea home :—: — ' The Church, at the very worst, is only fallible, and therefore, at the very worst, is as good as you at the very best, for at the very best you are not infal-

lible. Consequently, your allegations of what is the Word of God can never be a sufficient motive for setting aside hers. Nothing, then, which you can adduce fronx the Scriptures— even conceding you all right to appeal to them you claim— can be sufficient to invalidate her title. As she, at worst, stands on as high ground as you can even at best, her simple declaration that the Word of God is in her favor is as good as any declarations you can make to the contrary.'

We hereby offer a gold medal to any member of the General Assembly who— on Presbyterian principles — can establish an obligation to sanctify the Sunday or to icfrain from ' pleasuring ' on that day. On what principle can a body of men that profess ' the right of private judgment ' force their individual private judgments as binding precepts upon the consciences of others ? Who gave them authority to make others amenable to them ? If the Presbyterian young man's private judgment favors the Sunday bicycle, on what principle can any member of the General Assembly say him nay "> Do not the good men see that they are, by necessary implication, giving their blessing to Sunday ' pleasuring ' and consecrating it as grounded on a sacred ' right ' or principle ? We are, of course, assuming that the General Assembly is consistent. But that is a big assumption. For in their latest pronouncement those grave and reverend seigniors say, in effect, both to Catholic and to Protestant young men : ' You are free to judge that what we believe is true, that what we disbelieve is false, and that what we command is right.' This is, in fact, the effect of the creeds and Confessions of Faith and laws and ordinances drawn up by our separated brethren of the Reformed denominations. They all limit, where they do not destroy, the alleged ' right' of private judgment. But is not this a freak of whimsical inconsistency ? Is it not the tyranny of mere opinion over opinion ? As regards the Assembly's implied claim to lecture Catholics on the subject of Sunday observance : On this, as on other points of faith and practice, we know our own principles, and claim the right to be judged by them, and not by shifting theological theories that were ' made in Germany ' or in Geneva or in Glaisgie.

We may bnefly dismiss the suggestion that Catholics, where they are strong, lower the icligious tone of Presbyterian young men when the circling week brings Sunday around. Now this is a question of sheer i act But (1) the General Assembly has not ad\ anted so muc h as a scrap of evidence m support of its inference or insinuation. And the situation is fully met by a call for proof, and by a gentle remindei to our accusers that the good old legal motto lias not lost an atom of its force : 'De non apparentibus, et de non existentibus, eadem est ratio '—evidence that is not brought foiwaid is to be treated as evidence that does not exist. (2) The conspicuous example of church-gomg set by Catholics to all Christian denominations in the Colony ought, in itself, to tend towards a light appreciation, by our separated brethren, of one of the chief obligations of the .Sunday — an obligation the discharge of which the Church's precept of rest is mainly intended to safeguard and facilitate. (3) IE the inference left to be drawn by the General Assembly were veil grounded in fact, we should rightly expect to see ideal conditions nourishing wheic — as in Otago and Southland — the Presbyterian body is numencally and otherwise m the ascendant and ' the Roman Catholic element ' repiescnts a smaller percentage of total population than m any other part of New Zealand But what do we find in the great southern stronghold of Piesbytei ianism ? The same familiar old plaint of thin church attendance ; the same old [treatises on ' how to attract the young men' ; melancholy head-shakings m the secular and Presbyterian press about the ' appalling ignorance ' of the Bible displayed by children, and the many thousands of the using generation that, even in Dunedin, never show their faces within any place of worship. A note of despondency sounds even through some of the reports

on ' the state of religion ' that have been adopted and circulated by the Presbyterian Synod of the southern provinces. One of these reports, now before us, states that ' the difficulty of influencing young men so as to get them to join the Church is frequently acknowledged and lamented.' ' Cases of lapsing ' among the young arc declared to be ' frequent.' Many of them, we are told, ' forsake the Church altogether,' and ' the prevalence of atheism ' is deplored. Here, indeed, are conditions which neither favor Christian faith nor Sunday observance. The chief blame for these evils is laid, not upon the Catholic minority in Otago and Southland, but, upon evil influence and neglect of Presbyterian parents, and (in another connection, at the same Synod) upon the indifference of the clergy to ' the absolute need ' of properly fulfilling one of the elementary duties of their ministry.

When a man, walking with careless stride over lumpy, ground, stumbles and bangs his head against a stone wall, his first impulse is to issue fulmmations against the wall, its owner, its builder, and the world at large. He blames himself last— if at all. The clergy of the Presbyterian (Jeneral Assembly have been acting upon such an impulse. Conditions ha\c arisen for which they nre chiefly responsible and they are dinging angry anathemas all round the compass — except in the quarter in which they are descned. There is no need to seek in ' the Roman Catholic clement ' the causes of such decay of icligious life as may exist among our Presbyterian friends. That would be, m principle, a w r orsc folly than that of the troopers who hanged a ' Jacobite ' wagon for high treason. A sufficient explanation is furnished by the action of the very clergy who ha\e presumed to sit m judgment upon us. We might, for instance, lemind them that inconsistent and shifting and contradictory principles of belief do not make for stable and well-grounded religious faith. We might furthermore point, to the flagrant neglect of the spiritual interests of children m the schools which has been so deplorable a feature of ' Reformed ' religious hie m New Zealand during the past twenty-eight years. We have had our bow upon this string full many a time In 1899 the Presbyterian Synod m Dunedin declaied that the facilities afforded under the piesent Kducation Act for religious instruction 'outside school hours' would, if properly utilised, ' alter the face of the land ' in twenty years. But of all the clergy that took part in, or weic lepiesented at, that .Synod, only eight in Otago and three in Southland took the trouble to perform for the little ones of their faith a duh which they had declared to be an ' absolute need ' And (according to the same Tarlianientai v leluin, published in l ( ju;3) only thirty-two Presbytenan c'.eigjmen in all JNew Zealand passed the portals of the State schools for the purpose of ministering to the minds of the little ones of their flocks To these causes of detenoiation we may add the neglect of youth m their aftei-school yeais, the popularising of the unscientific and destructive form of the higher criticism, the outrageous mutilation of the Sacred Scriptuies perpetrated m the interests of tho Biblc-in-sehools party, the state of flux to which the Reformed creeds arc reduced, the decay of dogmatic faith among them, and the natural read ion against tho, sombre and, kill-joy Jewish-Sabbath Sunday of Puritanism. In all this you ha\e an abundant explanation of the loss ol religious tone of which our reverend Presby teiian fiiemls complained m so unjustifiable a lorm at the General Assembly in Auckland.