THESE WICKED HERETICS.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume 2, Issue 204, 2 July 1878, Page 3

THESE WICKED HERETICS.

To the Editor of the Akaroa Mail.

Sir, —I thank yonr correspondent for ■putting me right with regard to the influence of the Church on society. We are •all liable to err, and ignorance 'is too often the mother of prejudice. I was not aware that Connaught was such a sweet Arcadia as your correspondent says it is. But I am glad to be undeceived. It is gratifying to find that the Eoman Catholic religion has. so much better influence <m society than the Protestant, and especially the Presbyterian, Church has. For this will at once show that the statistics which make Roman Catholic countries the most •criminal are false and one-sided. It will show that the reports that reach us of treacherous murders from behind fences and ditches are malicious lies—such " immoralities " could only hail from treble wicked Scotland and double wicked England. I often wondered why the Queen made one of her sons " Dulee ■of Connaught," but I now see that, m keeping with her usual good taste, she has selected -a title which, from the exceptionally high tone of the district, must reflect credit on her son. I, however, wonder very much why Her Majesty is so fond of living among such an immoral set as the Scotch seem to be, and in a county said to be the worst in Scotland. Why does.she not remove her Court to Connaught, where her womanly modesty would never be shocked, as it must be in Aberdeenshire.

With regard to the Scotsman, paper, whence your correspondent obtained that delicious tit bit which he gave as, it is no more a Presbyterian newspaper than the Tablet is, and everyone knows that, like many other newspapers, it is not by any means averse to dealing in what may bring the cause of religion into disrepute. We heard some time ago fiom an immaculate source that the United States is a nation of infidels, and that five million infants (the natural increase of one him dred and twenty million people) are massacred yearly. They who can believe ■that may, if they choose, believe that T dealt "in peculiar" notions when I said that " the Church had a beneficial effect on Society alike spiritually and temporally, and as such had a claim on the sympathy, not only of her professed members, but •even of outsiders ;" may believe, that is, that Scotland, England, the North of Ireland, and the United States, too, would be much more moral than they are were they not heretics, and so many of them, alas! of the worst stamp— Presbyterians. Yours, &c, WM. DOUGLAS. P.S. —The statistics of crime in connection with churches is a most important subject, and I am quite willing to take this matter up; I do not, however, think your correspondent's " fling" worthy of a serious reply. W. D.