A CLERGYMAN ABROAD.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2366, 5 December 1908, Page 5

A CLERGYMAN ABROAD.

RETURN OF REV. DR. GIBBS

SOME IMPRESSIONS

[Special to “Times.”] WELLINGTON, Dec. 4

Q’he Rev. Dr. Gibbs, who lias just returned to Wellington irom a trip abroad, lias been giving his impressions to a “Post” reporter. . “I have seen a great many cities of the world at one time or another,” lie said, “but London is the most wonderful and fascinating of them all. You have often heard me speak of the way the immense traffic of the London streets is controlled by tile policemen. It positively thrills one to watch these men at their work and tii© splendid response which the people make to their injunctions'. The thing is intensely interesting in itself, but what chiefly impresses one is the fact that it is syinptomic of the spirit of England. All over the British Empire people enjoy (he maximum of individual freedom but their lives and possessions are better protected than anywhere else ill the world. In Paris, if you want to cross a busy street, you take your life in your hand and run as you have not run since your boyhood. In the still busier streets of London you get across without loss of dignity or any kind of risk. There is the quiet self-possessed constable in the middle of the street ; up goes his hand; instantly the traffic stops and you go over as comfortably as if you were in a desert. Foreigners are loud l in their admiration of this phenomenon but, as I may say., it isn’t the tiling in itself that most impresses one. It is the .light the thing casts on the law of England .and the people of England. It is a good thing to be a free-born British man.” In connection with Church work the most interesting tiling that Dr., Gibb had to say was about the Homeward tendency. “There is one phase of Church movement, at Home,” he said, “which is disquiotening to a convinced protestant. Wliat the end of it all will be no one knows, but it can hardly be questioned that there is a Homeward movement on the part of a very considerable section of the Church of England. The direct activities of tho Roman community did not impress me so much, though they are very much in evidence in many quarters, as tho Romanising processes that are taking place in other communions. It is scarcely credible that north of the Tweed, in the Established Church of Scotland, there should be any symptoms of this'kind of tiling, but there are. Jacob Primmer, of whom you may have heard, is doubtless something of a. fanatic but the •case of St. Outlibert, which he brought before the General Assembly was suggestive of much. They have introduced wliat Mr. Primmer calls graven images into that venerable old building and carry through a service which is, to say the least, very high. Of course there was bound to come a reaction from the bareness of the structures and the severe simplicity of the old-time Presbyterian worship,and most progressive men in the community desire a fuller and more beautiful service tlian is customary, but the tendencies in. evidence at Home are certainly significant. After my last visit to. the Homeland, thirteen years ago, I said I believed .that, the battle of the reformation would have again to be fought out there.. J am now event more of that, opinion than I was then.”