QUIET GODLINESS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 5714, 23 July 1879, Page 3

QUIET GODLINESS.

At Hobarton, on the 6th July, the Rev. George Clarice, one of the oldest Protestant ministers of that city, preached with particular reference to the recent religious disturbance there, saying :—“ What are we to say of the wave of passionate and maddening excitement that has just passed over our community ? Nothing could be said so long as the legal right of free speech was in danger of being overborne by the violence of angry men. When the ship is in the breakers it is no time to ask how she was brought into that position. The only question then is how to get her out; and we have every reason to be thankful for the promptitude and decision with which the Government met the emergency. Now that that danger is past, I ask you to look at it in a religious way. Suppese the right of public meeting had never been threatened, what do you think of those lectures as an incitement to Christian living ? No one will pretend that there was anything in them to conciliate the Roman Catholic to a patient hearing, or that they were calculated in the slightest degree to convert him from his errors. The things said were said in a way to rasp the feeling much more than to convince the judgment. The excitement they raised was the excitement of angry passion on both sides, to an extent that makes it to me the saddest thing X have seen in this community for forty years. What good could ever come out of such a course I cannot imagine. To suppose that that sort of thing can promote the cause of religion is, I think, a very sad mistake. It has sown seeds of bitterness that bode nothing hut evil to our future peace ; and, while I rejoice with all good citizens that the majesty of civil law has been vindicated, I do not rejeioe in the occasion which provoked the riot and rendered the vindication necessary. I deeply lament it. It is not a method of controversy that should commend itself to our feelings ; and, if the attempt to revive or recommend religion by artificial excitement is futile, it is still more so to think of doing it by inflaming the mutual resentments of Protestant and Catholic. I think that the whole principle of stimulating religion by such excitements is a growing disease that should be checked and not fostered, and that it would be better for ua all if, instead of rushing hither and thither to satisfy our sensational craving for emotion, we were more careful to study to be quiet and to do our own business.”