KAIAPOI—WHAT NEXT?

Globe, Volume VI, Issue 611, 3 June 1876, Page 2

KAIAPOI—WHAT NEXT?

To the Editor of the Globe. Sir, —In my last I sketched a few of the grounds of nonconformity in the so-called Church of England in the colonies, but the question opens into a very extensive vista of politico-theological ideas. First, the Bishop (nominal) declared, when a certain question arose the other day, that the Synod and the Bishop were the ultimate authority in Church matters. How was this so constituted ? The colonial Anglican Church has never been constituted yet, I believe, and if Lord Bussell's Ecclesiastical Titles Bill were in f force, the Primate would be liable to punishment for assuming the title of Bishop. I suppose the lawyers have taken care to make the property titles good; but even there the title, or description of the corporation might throw out an illegality in the holding. It is certain that one of the most insane tricks ever played in this queer world was the design of Lord Lyttelton, and the bronze man in Cathedral square, in the foundation of Canterbury; as Lyttelton admitted, “not even a labourer was to be employed unless a member of the Chuich of England;” “but,” says Lyttelton, “we never carried it out.” He might or ought to have said “ We were insane, but the English people were not.” It is no wonder that such a man committed suicide. That he had only succeeded in founding a Church which did not conform to the Supremacy Act (the great fundamental principle of the Reformation in England)—that he had merely created a heretic Church, which denies this fundamental principle; perhaps this fact upset what little sense he had still left. I hope the bronze statue in the square will not be removed; it will serve to instruct our children in the madness and stupidity of its original, Mr Godley, who tried to undo the work that England alone, with her eldest son the States, has so far carried towards > erfection in the last three hundred years. With the Cathedral of a nonconformist Church before it, it is one of the best lessons of human folly ever written on the pages of history.

’Apropos of history—Carlyle says there is no history, and says some young man yet to be born, or perhaps already born, may be the “ historian,” but there he stops, Carlyle never seeks the causes why history has not yet been written. He should state the causes and give the canons requisite for its proper making, then the matter would stand a chance of being done. I offer the following canons ; 1. Classification, 2. Analysis, 3. Synthesis. 1. Classification. A, of subject; u, of its relations. A, of subject into four kinds : a. Physical history. b. Intellectual history. c. Social history. d. Spiritual history; i.e. history of man’s will. B, of relations of the subject: a. History of England proper. b. History of the Papacy, in parallel columns. c. History of France, Spain, and Germany. d. Open column for Turks, Russians, &c. Thus there would be a four-fold history, in six parallel columns. 2. Analysis—Each transaction to be analysed. A. By a standard fourfold as under : Physical, a. The whole of the sciences. Mental, b. Comparison, as in point 2,8. Social, c. The social table of the Decalogue (i e the last six) and the Lord’s Prayer. Spiritual, d. The freedom of the human will, and the first table. b. By comparison threefold ; —- a, With the then past; b, the then present; c, the future. 3. Synthesis, with Prophecy. Voltaire, and his fellow sceptics, stand now ( i.e. since the Frvnch Revolution and the exodus of the Anglo-Saxon race) confounded by Daniel. Just take the last of the four kingdoms, after Babylonia, Persia, Macedonia, and Italia have passed j the last [i.e. the Roman Empire, killed, but cured again), was to be revived in the Papacy, and to split into ten kingdoms ; a stone cut out of the mountain, without hands, was to roll on the ten kingdoms, and fill the whole earth, many were to run to and fro in the earth, and knowledge was to be increased. This day the prophecy is fulfilled—the scroll of prophecy is unrolled, in steamers, railways, immigration, and the bloody war that is to be presently waged by those nine million of trained murderers, and which will certainly upset the ten kingdoms. The great dumb nation is filling the whole earth without intending it. Empress of India, Malaya, Australia, Polynesia, New Zealand, South Africa, half owner of the Suez Canal, and innumerable islands and small places, from Labuan and Hong Kong over to St. Helena, the Falklands, and the Aucklands. To the student of history, of whatever race he may be, it is the grandest of all known spectacles—a sight for astonished worlds. The tramp ond roar of the British social growth, in never-ending legions, north to the Pole, south to the Falklands, east and west in never-ending confusion, instantly hushed into prosperity, order, and new nations. The freedom of the human will obtained at last; the stone out of the mountain, cut out of the mountain—How? Without hands. Governed by rois faineans. with their Mairesdu Palais, the Premiers ; truly cut out without hands, tied together with a wire, under the seas, over the hills, through the dales, the very bowels of the earth. The battle cry of old Blncher—Forwards 1 Hurrah ! What next ? Yours, See., S. G. O.