The Clutha Leader. BALCLUTHA: FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 1876.

Clutha Leader, Volume III, Issue 138, 2 March 1877, Page 4

The Clutha Leader. BALCLUTHA : FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 1876.

Our readers will find in another part of this issue, letters of Dr Stuart and Dr Nevill in connection with the recent action of the latter in the appointment of an Anglican native minister to labour amongst tlie Maoris at the Heads, Port Chalmers. A history of the mission hitherto conducted there, first by the Bremen Society, and thereafter by the Presbyterian Church of Otag-o, we also give. That history also details the doings of Dr Nevill, ac which we are somewhat astonished to find Dr Stuart giving 1 expression to his feeling of surprise. Had Dr Stuart reflected for a moment upon Dr INevill's past action since he assumed a title appropriated before him by another, the title, viz., of Bis Lop of Dunedin, he would have seen at once that Dr NevilPs doings at the Heads were in perfect accordance with his past action, and that they arose out of the ecclesiastical arrogance displayed by Dr Nevill in ignoring the existence of the Presbyterian Church — denying it to be a church at all, and couniing its ordinances and services to be without Christian sanction, and destitute ot Christian benefits. All this Dr Nevill has over and over again openly declared, and his conduct, animadverted upon by Dr Stuart, is just the outcome and practical illustration of his publiclyavowed High Church intolerance and bigotry. Before Dr Nevill entered upon his episcopal functions, while hn was yet in England making preparations for his return to Otago, in a lecture delivered there, and which found its way to the Otago press, he told his hearers that he was going to a spiritual desert, to a country of dimensions nearly equal to that of England, but where there was then but a few to minister in the gospel, specifying only the exact number of Anglican clergymen laboring in Otago and Southland. He took no account of the more than thirty Presbyterian ministers, who were preaching, at least as fully and as faithfully as the Anglican clergymen, the great leading doctrines of evangelical truth embodied in the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England. Dr Nevill also ignored thu presence and labors of the many Wesleyan, Independent, Baptist, and other Protestant ministers of the gospel, all doing the work of their common Master, and each in his own sphere scattering the good seed of the word, and making Otago to abound as fully with Christian ordinances as any portion of Her Majesty's Colonies. On his arrival in Otago, despite his lecture had preceded him, Dr Nevill was acknowledged and welcomed as a fellow-laborer by the ministers of all Protestant denominations in Dunedin, and wherever he went throughout the Province he was met with by their brethren. It had been the custom of the Presbyterian Synod at its annual meeting to dine too-ether and to invite the protestant ministers of all denominations in Dunedin to be present on these occasions. Dr Nevill was invited by the Moderator; he accepted the invitation, and took his seat beside the Moderator. Dinner over he was requested to address the assembly. He did so ; but as we learned then and have frequently heard since, he carefully refrained in his reference to those among whom he stood, from alluding to them as ministers of the Presbyterian Church, but constantly made use of the term " the Presbyterian body," thereby not only manifesting the utmost discourtesy to the ministers and officebearers of the Protestant church longest in the land, and whose guest he bad willingly consented to be, but so disclosing the cloven foot of his High Church arrogance as to disgust his hosts, and lead to the exclusion from that time of Dr Nevill and his subordinates from all similar friendly gatherings. Not long after this display of presumption and discourtesy, Dr Nevill appeared as a lecturer in Dunedin, and denied to any denomination of Christians the character and position of a church that was not episcopally governed— declaring that the Presbyterians, the Wesleyans, and others were fractions of the" Christian church, portions broken off from it, but not forming parts of it, and that these could only become parts of it were they to have ruling over them bishops such as himself, who could trace an ecclesiastical genealogical descent from the Apostles, which he professed to be able to do. Regarding these churches as not churches, their ministers as not ministers, their ordinances but vanity of vanities, it is not to be wondered at that amongst settlers and natives Dr Nevill, proud of his apostolical SU c Ces , sion, and assuming to himself the hMisounding title of «• Lord," i n oppositkm to his professed Master's orders and without Her Majesty's permission,— from whom alone such a title can come, —should set up churches everywhere and institute ministers of his own denomination, whether they were needed or whether they could be paid, Jt is here that is to be found the reason of what he has done at the Heads in setting up an Anglican conventicle where another church had been at work, taking possession of the place of worship actually employed by another church and altering it so asto suit the Anglican ritual, without in the least deoree communicating with the Presbyterian

Church, that had expended large sums on the mission premises, and which had entered upon their possession only with tho 'consent and concurrence of the Bremen Society, whose representative had hitherto conducted the mission at the Heads. This conduct of Dr Nevill is in no degree surprising to us. It is just what we would have expected from his antecedents. But we do wonder that the members of the Anglican Church should allow their bishop to lead them by the nose as he 'has been doing in the erection of churches not needed by the population, involving them in debt, and causing them to have recourse to secular concerts, lotteries, and other questionable means for its liquidation ; and it will be a matter of wonder to us if the several Anglican vestries throughout the diocese do not one and all of them publicly condemn the lack of Christian courtesy shewn by him to the Presbyterian Church.