A Clerical Scandal.

Cromwell Argus, Volume III, Issue 149, 17 September 1872, Page 7

A Clerical Scandal.

St. John the Baptist’s is the most fashionable of the Episcopal churches in Christchurch, and the Rev. Ebenezer Bailey, its late pastor, was the most popular preacher in that city. By a portion of his congregation, and by the poor of his parish, he is said to have been beloved, but was greatly disliked in certain high places. Perhaps it was that he was too outspoken, for in his sermons and public addresses; he hesitated not to attack public abuses, and often rated the authorities soundly for neglecting what he considered to be their duty. It will also be recollected of him that shortly after his arrival in the Colony he delivered a lecture on a popular subject, which showed him to be possessed of very great talent, but unfortunately it afterwards turned out that a portion of that lecture was taken unacknowledged from an almost forgotten author. Mr Bailey was constantly at loggerheads with his brother clergymen, but their differences were likely to have been forgotten by that gentleman’s departure for England. But concurrently with his leavetaking certain statements affecting the rev. gentleman got about, and these have led to a newspaper warfare, which has set half Christchurch by the ears, and furnished the scandal-loving portion of that community with a fruitful topic of conversation. It appears that the Dean of Christchurch, in the course of a visitation to one of Mr Bailey’s parishioners, informed her in the course of conversation “that Mr Bailey had a wife in England who was separated from him on ac count of his ill-treatment of her, he having been compelled for this reason to take the young lady home again.” Of course the publication of this statement led to the dean receiving a communication from Mr Bailey, who called upon the very rev. gentleman to immediately withdraw it and express his regret “ for circulating a piece of hearsay of a nature extraordinarily wicked and malicious.” This the Dean declined to do, and supports his statement by producing a letter signed by a Mr Mortlock, of Royston, England, father of the alleged Mrs Bailey, who substantiates it in every particular ; and by a letter from Mr Spurgeon, who says that Mr Ebenezer Bailey was educated for the Baptist Ministry at his college, and was afterwards converted to the Anglican Church.” Mr Spurgeon added to his letter that Mr Bailey “ must be a prodigious factor in falsehood, if he denies having been in my college.” But that is just what he does do : he denies emphatically that he ever set foot inside Mr Spurgeon’s college, and says he lost his wife a year before his ordination in 1806. He threatens the Dean with an action for libel, and at this point this affair, which occupied the correspondence columns of the Christchurch papers fora week to the extent of nearly two columns daily,— rests for the present.