Notes

New Zealand Tablet, 16 October 1913, Page 34

Notes

A Reminder . As mentioned elsewhere in this issue the inauguration of the reduced subscription for the N.Z. Tablet dates from Ist. October, of last year, so that the time has now arrived for those of our subscribers who began at that time to renew their advance subscriptions. They , will be duly circularised on the matter in the usual way, but many will doubtless be thankful for .this additional gentle reminder to ‘ do it now.’ The Hardest Hardship The panegyric on the Pilgrim Fathers delivered by the American Ambassador in England on the anniversary of the setting out of ‘ The Mayflower ’ from Southampton on September 6, 1620, recalls a speech of one of his predecessors in the same office a few years • ago. Mr. Choate, speaking at a dinner of the Literary Fund, paid a moving tribute to ‘ the heroic pioneers ■of. the great Republic of the West,’ adding that the same tribute was due to the Pilgrim Mothers who • accompanied them. ‘ For we must never forget,’ con.eluded the speaker, that those heroic women not only , had to put up with the same trials and hardships as the Pilgrim Fathers, but they had also to put up with : the Pilgrim Fathers themselves!’ Carson as * Pope ’ : Do what he will (says the Irish Press Agency) K Carson cannot induce the British public to take him y seriously. * King ’ Carson he was to them during Covenant week, and ‘King’ Carson he will remain to ■ the end of the chapter; but only a King pour rive; and that- is the despair of Unionism, Carson as ‘King’

we know, but how we have got to consider Carson as Pope! It is not jest, but grim, dour, determined fact. When Carson was at Hem burg, in Germany, he wrote to the secretary of "the Ulster Unionist Council ; as follows (Irish Times, August 26): —'The ; 28th September falls on a Sunday this year. ' I ; hope the clergy of all denominations will think it proper- to hold services specially fitting to commemorate the day y on which we entered into our Solemn Covenant. lam confident all Covenanters will be anxious' in this, most solemn way to emphasise the seriousness of ; their action.',., : " - ; :" : -'-'-"• ■ "

The Ulster Guardian, the ably-conducted. weekly which voices the sentiment of enlightened and patriotic Ulster Protestantism, denounces this Protestant Papal Edict' of Carsons in the strongest terms. It says: 'On the 28th September the Episcopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Congregational, and Baptist Churches are to alter their usual services and introduce a special form of worship at the bidding,, not,of ..Synod; or Assembly, or Conference, or Congress, but of a political lawyer, who has about as much right to interfere in things ecclesiastic as Primate or Moderator has to interfere in things -legal. It is a piquant situation, this would-be conversion of the entire Protestant , religious organisations into so many pawns upon the Carson political chess-board. Home Rule may mean Rome Rule, but there is no mistake that Parson Rule means Carson Rule. Is it to be published throughout the Christian world that Ulster clergymen "take their marching orders from a Nisi Prius lawyer? We cannot tell. Frankly, we are prepared for anything from a section of every Protestant Church in Ulster. ". From another section we shall be bitterly disappointed if we do not find resistance to the death against this arrogant attempt to order the affairs of Christ's Church from the Homburg branch of the Old Town Hall. And similarly we shall have a renewal of the strife and bitterness which have rent every Protestant Church in Ulster in twain and made life a misery for those ministers and hearers who set their faces against the faith of their fathers being prostituted to the service of a political caucus.'