The Daily News. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13. COPE AND MITRE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 158, 13 October 1910, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13. COPE AND MITRE.

Religion can be preached with equal eloquence whether the preacher wears moleskins or cope and mitre. Justice can be meted out whether the judge is attired in dungarees or in wig and gown. The soldier can kill his man wearing his stable pants just as easily as he could in review order; and to the sailor it is not necessary that he should wear the uniform of his calling to be effective in his work. The Bishop of North-west Australia lately appeared in cope and mitre before a 'Sidney congregation. The people were surprised, .because it was not usual. They would have been equally surprised to have attended the High Court and found the judges in golfing knickers and sac coats, or to have gone to a reyiew at which the soldiers were wearing civilian clothes. Although there is no essential rule in the wearing of particular apparel, there is no doubt that associations and disciplinary agreements are affected by clot'hes. That is to say, w# are immediately aware that a man has attained eminence in the Church if he wears a bishop's garb; that the man who wears bullion braid, a cooked hat and a cross-hilted sword is not a, bugler; and that the personage in a full-bottomed wig is not the latest-joined J.P. There have been threats lately from different points to do away with the mere sartorial badges of position, and although the idea appears bluntly democratic, it is nothing of the kind. It is probably jealousy, This Bishop whom we hate quoted as wearing the first cope and mitre in an Australian Anglican Church, is a man who has for eight years been Bishop of Nyassaland. He has now a diocese which contains the largest population of blackfellows in Australia, with a coast-line of 1500 miles and with only 7000 white settlers. In Nyassaland a 'bishop wiho approached the natives in native costume would create no feeling of personal reverence, and the possibility is that his experience gave him the cu« to impress his congregations with sartorial display. The Bishop lately said:

. "Central Africa is becoming too civilised. I like a savage place. It is getting too cloae to South. Africa. Boys wh# had (been accustomed to M a day would go away and get £3 a month, and would come back wearing tan boots, waistcoats, hats and other things. The mission has no desire to make sham white folk of the natives. They desire to Christianise them in their surroundings. Civilisation is not their business—that is, civilisation consisting of trousers. So indignant had some of the missionaries become with the trouser business', that in one school a boy who had come in with trousers on was unthinkingly ordered to 'Take those things off.'"

It seems obvious from the surprise of the Sydney congregation that they would have liked the Bishop to have his mitre off. There seems to be no reason for tke desire to dispense with the garb of defined offices. Earlier in our history, the variety of callings was distinguished by . the wearing of distinctive apparel, and this system' was abandoned merely because the democracy were jealous of the privileges. Much may be said in defence of the sameness of ordinary dress nowadays, for one has but the features or bearing of the individual to guide one in forming an estimate Of his position. It seems necessary, too, that a judge who might be mistaken for a commercial traveller, or an admiral who in a bathing costume would seem but common clay, should be distinguished by artificial aids. The moral effect of clothes is everywhere apparent. However false the estimate may be, it is certain that most people judge most other people by their clothes, and not by their character, ability, or tradesmen's receipts. A man wearing "the cloth" need not be a "good" man, but his cloth suggests all that his church means and stands for. A judge's wigi is not law or justice, equity, fairplay. legal knowledge or even commonsense, but it is an outward sign of justice and fair-play. It is the idea and not the wearer that dominates the thought in relation to garb. Distinctive habits and garbs have died out woefully of late years. It is to-day uncommon to find an actor with long hair who drags his toes along the pavement, wears a big tie and acts off the stage. He might be mistaken for a draper, a stud groom or a gentleman at any minute. The old-time military man off duty used to delight in a braided frock coat and a tight waistcoat. All these vanities have vanished. Where are the wigs and the ruffles and the snuff-boxes and the swords of our genteel ancestors, the oaken staves and the uniform "surtouts" of the commoner fry, the distinctive dress of the tradesman and the garb that distinguished one type of woman from another? On the other hand ,to return to Dr. Trower, the bishop, how can he expect the blacks of Nyassaland to go without trousers if he persists in wearing such garb? He was their teacher and their pattern. British garb is the surest method (after alcohol) of wiping out an aboriginal race. Clothes have helped to kill the Maori, and trousers will aid in wiping out the Kaffirs. In civilisation we are rather weakly dependent on clothes, and it says something for the stamina of the white man that the survives to bear the intolerable burden of a ridiculous • costume. Still, as most people guage us on our clothes and the power of most officials is exhibited in their garb, what is the use of worrying? Very likely Dr. Trower preached quite as good a sermon in his mitre as he would have bare-headed, and, in all probability, he will make a lot of converts in h.s shirt-sleeves.