TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10041, 15 July 1910, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

1 THE CORONATION OATH. It seems to us a matter for regret 1 that there should be a number oi ! people in this'country who would like to Bee perpetrated the weirdly out- - of-date portion of the Coronation Oath of the British Sovereign in i which he or she has to denounce as > blasphemous and idolatrous the re- \ ligious beliefs of millions of Britiah subjects. We had thought that in : this day men would have risen superior to that feeling of intolerance which has so plentifully caused illfeeling and occasioned even loss of life. The spectacle of men "hating each other for the love of God" ought to have disappeared long since, and we had thought that instead of men seeking to hurt each other ■ mentally and physically because of difference in faith, they Would turn their faces to the common enemies of religion and seek to find out how nrany points of argument there realiy are in the faiths they hold. Some of the greatest minds are agreed that the day for severance is drawing to a close, and the men are comingto acknowledge that tolerance and love should take the place of hatred and intolerance. In Britain at the present moment there is a very strong feeling that the Coronation Oath should be altered, and anyone who will give the matter careful thought will realise that the British Monarch ia asked to do somethitjg which must be most repulsive to him, especially when we remember that the Earl Marshal of England, who has to be very ] near the person of the Monarch at i the Coronation ceremony, is himself s

a Roman Catholic, and a member of the oldest family of title in Britain. But apart from that aspect, the demanding from the Sovereign the making of a declaration that is repulsive, offensive and unfair to so many of his loyal subjects argues a wan*, of common-sense and reason.