Rev. Isaac Jolly's "Contempt."

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLI, Issue 8190, 16 May 1906, Page 5

Rev. Isaac Jolly's "Contempt."

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —" Reputation is often got without merit, and lost without deserving," and it is quite possible that when the liev. Isaac Joily talks about " lowering himself " in controversy with one so humble as myself, people may, despite the absence of the Bible' from the schools, be reminded, of the parable of the Pharisee and "the sinner. Both Mr Jolly and myself have our duties to the community. (I am sure that we try to perform them to[the best of our respective abilities, although I have sometimes caught myself making mistakes.) But that we cannot always see eye to eye is not, I submit, an infallible indication of moral turpitude on my part; neither does the fact that my reverend friend should harbor in his bosom a contempt and aversion for my personality which he is quite unconcerned to control or conceal, necessarily discount me in the estimation of such lenient friends as it has been my good fortune, though not apparently my desert, to retain. It is a coincidence, of course, that there are people who have the bad taste not to find Mr Jolly at his best when in controversial vein; while others just love him for the way he wields the claymore in the heat of battle " wherever there's a head." But it sometimes seems to me that our friend is miserly of hard knocks as the misers are of gold. He wants a monopoly of them, and when they are dispensed it must be with his own discriminating hand. .Now, sir. I have the inclination, if not, alas, the skill, to be a fighter, and sometimes it may be I hit too hard. Well, 'tis a fault. Some day I may atone. In which case :

Like bright metal on a sullen ground, My reformation glittering o'er my fault Shall show more goodly and attract

more eyes Than that which hath no foil to.set it oft".

In this College-street contest I feel that I am fighting for a principle, and I have the comfortable realisation that " the law is back of me." Perhaps it was wrong—it was wrong ! —to call the School Committee a " clerical coterie,' but was it not equally in bad taste for one pedestalled as Mr Jolly so confidently is, on the good esteem of his fellows, to censure my carefully chosen arguments as " ignorant abuse ?" If the Education Board does its duty as you and I see it, Mr Editor, the action of the College-street School Committee must be ruled to be ultra vires. It will then remain for the proponents of Bible-in-schools to exercise the influence of the " vast majority " which they claim to possess, and have the Statute reversed. In the meantime " let all obey the law."—l am, etc., Piekce C. Feeeth, May loth.. 1906.