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Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 19, Issue 1425, 11 September 1872, Page 2

Two cleiical scandals have lately agitated the religious world in Chriatpburch. A correspondent says :—" Society here has been enlivened by a controversy (otherwise scandal, which more than once merged into libel) carried on through the medium of the press, between two of the. Church of England ministers and a few of their different admirers and supporters. Qne parson accused the other of "jilting" a certain lady in this town, for which assertion he received a sound horsewhipping at the hands of one of the young lady's friends or relations." The other case was also in the Church of England, and has given rise to great correspondence in the papers. The Rev. Ebenezer Bailey has, during the term of his ministry in Canterbury, extending over a year and a half, secured the love and esteem of his people. Jlecently, however, the Dean of Christchurch began to circulate reports derogatory to his character,—to the effect that he had formerly been a Baptist minister, educated by MrSpurgeon, and had concealed the fact, and that though professing to be a widower, he had a wife living, who had been obliged lo leave him on account ot ill-treatment. These charges were not at first made openly, but appear to have been piivately circulated among the clergy and congregation, and two documents were produced in their support, one signed by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon and the other by the alleged father in-law of Mr Bailey. in AJr Spurgeon's letter he states that he knew Mr Ebenezer Bailey too well, and that if he denies having been trained at his college, he must be "a most prodigious factor in falsehood." Mr Bailey, in defence, denies the statements in toto; gives the history of his education, and the partir culars of his wife's death. Dean Jacobs —who is distinguished as a bitter enemy of the temperance cause, and whose charity appears lo be conspicuous by its absence—persists in the charge, and refuses to admit the possibility of what obviously appears to be the only solution, —that there is more than one Ebenezer Bailey, and that the case is one of mistaken identity. Mr Bailey has resigned the cure of St. John the Baptist's Church, and is about to leave Christchurch. A farewell tea-meeting was held on the 21st August, the Mayor being in the chair, and a purse of £lls was presented to Mr Bailey by the congregation. A resolution was also passed by the meeting, expressing " their sense of the great loss to them and the parish in his departure, and their strong disapprobation of the unmanly and unchristian proceedings which had driven from them a faithful pastor and a true friend." JVfr Bailey expressed his gratification. $t these tokens of the respect and afjeption of his people, and asserted that his bitterest enemies in Christchurch were the clergy, fhe effect of these dissensions in the Church has been most deplorable, and a spirit of bitterness an 4 acrimony has pervaded the correspondence on both sides.

The Evening Post, September 7, says:—We learn on good authority that Mr Fox will shoitly retire altogether from political life. A meeting of members of the new Oppposition was held yesterday, when Mi Fox, judiciously making a, virtue of necessity, resigned the leadership of his party, who henceforth qwn allegiance to Mr Yp-gel as, their political chief. This step, only preparatory to, JTox's complete retirement from the. political areuti.