REVIEW.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2710, 24 October 1871, Page 3

REVIEW.

Periods and Persons, Points and Prospects of Contact between the Presbyterian and Episcopal Churches. Keith and Wilkie, Princes street, Cutting, Dunedin. This is a reprint of a lecture delivered by the Right Rev. A. B. Suter, D.D., Bishop of Nelson, when in Dunedin. The republication of this lecture at the present moment, when the minds of the inhabitants of the Colony are directed towards educational institutions, is opportune, for it directs attention to the weaknesses arising from disunion. We are not of those who believe that any good could arise from a dead uniformity of religion, faith, or doctrine. Where there is no doubt there is no progress. We quite coincide with Bishop Suter’s condemnation of a reproduction of the superstitions of past ages. “As your fathers did so do ye,” he professes to look upon as an obstacle to the spread of Christianity, but yet it seems to us that the whole lecture is an apology for acting in that spirit. It is now about ten years since a question was raised in Adelaide similar to that discussed by Dr JSuter, when the Kev. Thomas Binney, a most able and learned Independent minister, had been invited by laymen to preach in an Episcopalian pulpit, and like controversy was provoked there. Looking upon the Church as an educational institution, laymen cannot understand those impediments that keep men professing similar religious views apart. They go to an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian, an Independent, a Wesleyan, or a Baptist Church, and wherever they listen to an educated minister, they hear the same grand truths. They look. into various religious works by authors of different denominations, and apart from theories based upon idiosyncrasy or doubtful reading, they have the same principles enunciated. The differences seem to be merely those of form, and to be comprised in a white gown, a black gown, or in no gown at all; or in a ritual or no ritual. So far, then, as teaching is conorned, the contact between all these sects is complete, and most educated laymen regard the points of difference with indifference.

“ Yet what boot they, and what boots all Our garb ecclesiastical — The white robed priest, the altar high— If we do err from charity ? ” The learned Bishop had a difficult task : he has evidently had to reconcile the standing a’oof from other sects with his own convictions —the traditions of his Church with the enlightenment of reason. If we arc to judge of the repulsion which prevents hearty cooperation with other Protestant sects by the Anglican Church, it is merely a question as to who shall define the terms of union. The Anglican Church prescribes what the other Churches cannot accept. Bishop Suter’s lecture is the best excuse we have scon for this ; but ingenious as it is, it is not calculated to convince impartial men of its validity. There is one word used by Bishop Suter to which we strongly object—the word “toleration.” It is nonsense, in the present day, for any ecclesiastical teacher to use the term. It implies permission by an ecclesiastical superior to think and act contrary to hia doctrines. Thank Heaven! in these Colonies there is no dominant sect. Society, more charitable than the Church, asserts, and will maintain, the right of every man to freedom in everything that relates to thought and conscience ; and that narrowness of mind that would go back to an age of “toleration ” is only to be met with in those who fail to comprehend the duty of man to man. It may be fairly said of the Bishop’s lecture, there is much in it to think about, much to approve, and pinch to condemn : for each of these reasons it is well worthy of study. It is now published in a handsome form, in a peat cover, and, as marking what we hope will prove a transition period in our religious history, is valuable as a memento of a step towards the mutual recognition by the various Churches of their religious equality. At the same time, it is plain that the Anglican Church has much dead weight to throw overboard before its clergy can freely and heartily welcome other sects as co-workers.