PHLEGMATIC CHRISTIANS.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3832, 27 October 1883, Page 4

PHLEGMATIC CHRISTIANS.

Says "Civis" in the Otago AVitness: — Ecclesiastical assemblies are capable of queer things. The following resolution passed by the Canterbury Episcopal Synod is certainly one of the queerest:—' lbat the Most Reverend tho Primate be requested to ask His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury to send a clergyman from England, charged with the duty of stirring up the members of the Church in this diocese to greater religious earnestness and devotion to good works." The Church in Canterbury, it seems, is painfully aware that it wants "stirring up." Clergy and laity alike are suffering from religious cnniti, and languidly ask the Primate to ask the Archbishop of Canterbury to vary the monotony of their existence and keep them awake. Fancy the unworldly simplicity of a people who aro capable of being " stirred up " by the advent of "a clergyman from England !" It is the condition of the Piteairn Islanders, to whom a passing whaler is a god-send, and tho visit of a ship of war marks an era. What can one think, moreover, of a body of clergy who pass a resolution requesting somebody to stir them up to "greater religious earnestness and devotion to good works 1" AV'hy can't they stir themselves up? Why don't they get up a Ritualist row or a heresy huntr It is Baxter, I think, who remarks that " some Christians are like to wheelbarrows: thoy go only when thoy are pushed." This holds good of the Canterbury Episcopalians ; they are aware of it themselves, and propose to miport a man from England to push. The root of the trouble is, I suspect, that they havo too much money. A quarter oi a million sterling is said to bo the value ot the Church endowment estate. It is a case of fatty degeneration. I should recommend, not a clergyman from England, but exercise and depletion.