The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 1883.

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4418, 2 March 1883, Page 2

The Evening Star. PUBLISHED DAILY AT FOUR P.M. Resurrexi. FRIDAY, MARCH 2, 1883.

Those most potent, grave, and reverend gigniors who have been silting in solemn conclave in Auckland, in connection with the Presbyterian Church, have taken it I into their inspired noddles to legislate on that dreadful creature 'The Deceased Wife's Sister.' Some of them have, with metaphorical tears streaming down their reverend noses, bemoaned the state of the Church law, which makes the relatives of. a man's wife, actually blood rela- ; tions of the stock from which he bas I sprung. The words of the confession are: i " The man may not marry any of his I wife's kindred nearer in blood than he I may of his own,. nor the woman of her j husband's kindred nearer in blood than ! of her own." . Yet they have ignored this article of faith by leaving the solemnisai tion of such marriage to the discre- , tien of their ministers. Tbir step ! is either a liberal concession to the reve | rend gentlemen, granted by themselves— 1 a profession of unbounded confidence in the Presbyterian Ministry, expressed by itself, or tbe assumption of a power to regulate matters. without its province, which it is undesirable that those who seek to grasp it should possess. Some of these ministers have gone so far as to say that marriages thus solemnizscLare invalid, and they have thrownout insinuations as to the purity of the persons concerned in them, with a presumption and' autocracy worthy of the dark religious ages. Tt is not necessary or desirable that the many and much used arguments in favor of the absurd old world ideas being relinquished; should be used here; our object is to endeavor to show that the subject is one which does not call for the iuterfereuce of any body of clergymen. There is no scriptural law forbidding auuh unioDß ; there are no consanguineous laws violated by them ; and if two people decide to' enter into the holy compact, unless either of those principles are violated,, it would appear somewhat unnecessary that any clerical intervention should ensue.„, The minds of those reverends are no more capable of dealing with such a question than is that of any other mortal. The question is one not requiring interference on the part of those learned divines, and 'the less they meddle with it the less likely are they to call down any opprobrium} on their devoted beads on

account of their manner nf dealing with it. Their resolution was, in the main, a sensible one, but, the manner in which it w»s arrived _at, the discussion it produced, and the general opinion which grew from the idea: that it should not have been approached as it was; all tend to the belief that the Presbytery or any other religious body had better let the matter alone.