The New Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, MAY 22, 1913. BISHOP CLEARY IN DUNEDIN

New Zealand Tablet, 22 May 1913, Page 33

The Ne w Zealand Tablet THURSDAY, MAY 22, 1913. BISHOP CLEARY IN DUNEDIN

\a%%3 « * • XPECTATION had been pitched very high ? iS§l in regard-to Bishop deary's Dunedin meetl g -; but the realit far exceeded the wildest anticipations of the most enthusiastic of ' Dr " Clears admirers. It was a great /7S\Z§?& tribute to the speaker that such a huge' S/lfe gathering, packing the spacious Garrison L"J Hall to its very doors, should have assembled to hear him on such a bitterly cold night; it was an even greater tribute that the vast audience should have listened not merely with patience but with the keenest interest and enthusiasm right on until nearly 11 o'clock. The lecture was, indeed, a rare treat, literary, argumentative, and oratorical • and the meeting was, by common consent, one of the most memorable and impressive ever held in the southern city. •■.*•• *

No lecturer could have wished a more intelligent, attentive, and .responsive audience. The speaker em-

-ployed, with consummate skill, all the recognised arts of the orator—-rappeal,l .denunciation,: epigram, wit,and running through .all a. keen,- relentless logic that left the adversary not an inch of standing ground. - The outstanding feature of the lecture was the enthusiasm of i the audience. Again and again, and yet again, the hall resounded with tumultuous applause. The lecturer, it need hardly be said, stood fast by the old, fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith; and in this connection some of the more marked manifestations of enthusiasm were as gratifying as they were, perhaps, surprising. For example, when Bishop Cleary denounced, with vehemence and scorn, the garblers who tampered with the doctrine of the Incarnation and 'hacked from the Gospel story the narrative of the Virgin birth of the Jtedeemer, the audience responded with a remarkable demonstration of approval. ;Similarly, when Bishop Cleary arraigned the Bible-in-;Bchools clergy for their forty years' neglect of the duties imposed upon them by their sacred calling, and contrasted it with the zeal which they now displayed in the effort to transfer their obligations to the unwilling shoulders of the teachers, the point thus tellingly made was greeted with vociferous applause. Altogether, the meeting was an unqualified success and Dr. Cleary not only delighted old friends but won hosts of new admirers by his effort. * .

To those who had been presentas we had been—at the two meetings held recently in Dunedin under the auspices of the Bible in State Schools League, it was impossible not to note the contrast presented by the Garrison Hall gathering. The so-called ‘ public meeting held by the League in the Methodist Central Mission Hall on a Sunday afternoon was an absolute fiasco, a beggarly two hundred people being all that could be mustered. The ‘ demonstration of supporters, held a day or two later, was scarcely more successful. The Burns Hall, seated for 500 or 600 people, was far from full; and by no stretch of imagination could the personnel of the gathering be described as representative. At Bishop Cleary’s meeting, on the contrary, the spacious Garrison Hall was .crowded to the doors; and lawyers, doctors, business men, editors, teachers, school inspectors, and clergymen, were all conspicuously represented. The striking success of the meeting has apparently goaded the other side into making something in the shape of a counter-moVe, and Dean Fitchett is announced to deliver a reply to Bishop Cleary in the Garrison Hall at an early date — what success will hereafter appear.