Calvin

New Zealand Tablet, 22 July 1909, Page 1142

Calvin

Several subscribers have forwarded us reports of panegyrics preached here and there in connection with the

recent fourth centenary of John Calvin. Allowance should, we think, he made for the occasion, and for the feelings with which many of our separated brethren view the occasion. And, all things considered, the centenary addresses (so far as they may be judged by the newspaper reports) showed a marked advance in charity and kindly feeling compared with the vitriolic utterances "which' so frequently marked the celebrations of the fourth Luther centenary in 1883. Panegyric, like poetry, needs elbow-room, and frets , itself to death if tied hard down to commonplace and unromantic fact. One does not, therefore, look to a quatercentenary panegyric for a cool and accurate and scientific statement of historical fact — you might as well expect • a>i algebraic formula or a lesson in anatomy to be set down in terms of poetry. On the whole, however, the celebrations of the Calvin centenary seem to have been, on their oratorical side, conducted in New Zealand with as kindly a feeling towards the Old Faith as could well have been expected in the circumstances. From Wanganui come -i few rather bitter question-begging epithets and a hardly ingenuous effort to whitewash the burning of Servetus by Calvin — the latter in marked contrast to the frank and straightforward description of this deplorable incident, as a ' blot,' by the learned ecclesiastic who was the principal speaker at the Dunedin celebrations. Where so much kindly feeling was shown, and where attack of the older Faith was so generally eschewed, it would be evil taste on our part to manifest, on such an occasion, less charity towards others than was, on the whole, shown to us. We recall, too, the words which the great French Catholic author, Rene Bazin, said to a gathering of students of our faith in 1904 : 'It is not enotigh to hold one's opinions firmly ; one must hold them charitably, and carry into opposition all the esteem one can for one's adversaries. . . . It is by this large sympathy that you will gain the hearts of your enemies to be your allies, for their hearts are better than their heads; and in that way they will at last begin to perceive that hate is vain indeed when it sets itself against love.'