MR STOUT AND THE 'GUARDIAN.'

Evening Star, Issue 3574, 6 August 1874, Page 3

MR STOUT AND THE 'GUARDIAN.'

We are requested to publish the following letter, refused insertion in the ‘ Guardian’:— To the Editor of the Guardian. Sir,— After reaf ßng the leader in to-day’s Guardian,’ I, following the example of your contemporary the ‘ Southern Mercury ‘ involuntarily exclaimed “Pshaw!” And P think that exclamation, to those who know me and the writer of the orticle, is a sufficient answer to your strictures. Happily, however, there are some people in Dunedin, and some members of the Atbenfeum, who can view a question such as the framing of an index exmrgatonus by an Athensoum without using the “ green spectacles ” of jealousy, or being moved by personal pique or spite. It is not the first fine that I have been abused and attacked by the writer of your article, and all because I had the misfortune of bein» appointed to an office for which he was an applicant. And I must say that, seeing that you had closed your columns against me notwithstanding Mr J. G. S. Grant’s abusive letter, I cpnsider it is hardly- fair to allow, through your leading columns, a like attack. However, my reply is short I admit the papers excluded are not orthodox, if either the Westminster Confession or the Thirty-nice Articles are orthodox ; but that the papers are “obscene” or “immoral” I deny, and I challenge you to the proof. I ask for paper and page. It is easy to pen “tall” sentences, such as sneering away, knocking down, abating, abolishing, and reforming off the earth all the social decencies, all the traditional and inherited faith of the father*, the religious instincts and susceptibilities,” Ac., Ac. But when these and such like phrases glide from the pen of one who gloats over the “ Fortnightly ” and the “ Westminster,” and who is not a member of any Christian Church, but has denied “the traditional and inherited faith of his fathers,” one is inclined to characterise them in a way not complimentary. Let the writer affix his name, and 1 undertake to show that he believes neither ““ e Westminster Confession nor in the Imrty-mne Articles, and moreover, unless he has been recently “converted,” he does not believe tbe Bible is infallible or Divinely inspired. The ‘Dunollyand Maryborough Advertiser,’ on the other hand, teaches the inspiration of the Bible and the doctrine of the Trinity, And yet, forsooth, it is abolishing the “ inherent faith of the fathers.” you have admitted such a personal attack on me, I claim that you insert this letter.—l am, Ac. _ ... . Robert Stout. Dunedin, August 4.