REV. DR. GIBB’S RETURN.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 443, 5 December 1908, Page 3

REV. DR. GIBB’S RETURN.

The Rev. Dr. Gibb, who has just returned to Wellington from a trip aboard, has been giving his impressions to a Post reporter. “ The British people,” said Dr. Gibb, “ enjoy the maximum of individual freedom, but their lives and possessions are better protected than is the case with people anywhere else in the world.” In connection with Church work, the most interesting thing Dr. Gibbs had to say was about the Romeward tendency. “ There is one phase ot Church movement at Home,” he said, “ which is disquieting to a convinced Protestant. What the end of it all will be no mans knows, but it can hardly be questioned that there is a Romeward movement on the part of a very considerable section of the Church of England. The direct activities of the Roman Communion did not impress me so much, though they are very much in evidence in many quarters, as the Romanising processes that are taking place in other communions. It is scarcely creditable that north of the Tweed, in the Established Church of Scotland, there should be any symptoms of this kind of thing, but there are. Jacob Primmer, of whom you may have heard, is doubtless something of a fanatic, but the case of St. Cuthbert’s, which he brought before the General Assembly, was suggestive of much. They have introduced what 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 that communion desire a fuller and more beautiful service than is customary, but the tendencies in evidence at Home are certainly significant. After my last visit to the Home Land thirteen years ago, I said I believed that the battle of the Reformation would have again to be fought out there, aud I am now even more of that opinion than I was then.”