The Two Lord Roseberys.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 14, 3 April 1902, Page 2

The Two Lord Roseberys.

Brief reference was made in our leading columns a week or two ago to the remarkable right-about-face made by Lord Rosebery on the Home Rule question and to his discreditable suggestion to the Liberal party that they also should become traitors to the promises and pledges made by the party in years gone by. In order to realise how completely Lord Rosebery has turned his political coat and gone back on his most cherished principles, it is only necessary to glance back at some of his former utterances in the days when he was truly Liberal. In June of 1886, for example, he delivered an election speech at Glasgow dealing almost exclusively with the Irish question,and in it he riddles through and through the very arguments which he now advances as his grounds for refusing Ireland Home Rule. The policy which he now advocates—viz., a combination of coercion and local government—he then derided as the ' brimstone-and-treacle' system. He reminded his audience of the passage in Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby in which Mrs. Squeers makes acknowledgment of the principles on which she administered brimstone and treacle to the young gentlemen of Dotheboys Hall—the cheap boarding-school over which she and Mr. Squeers presided. Mr. Squeers had weakly defended the treatment on the ground that it purified their blood. But Mrs. Squeers would not condescend to take refuge in any such excuse. ' Purify fiddlesticks,' she said ; ' they have the brimstone and treacle partly because, if they hid not something or other in the way of medicine they would alwajs be ailing, and giving a world of trouble, and because it spoils their appetites, and comes cheaper than breakfast and dinner.' ' Gentlemen ' added Lord Rosebery, ' Lord Hartington's plan (of coercion and local government), I am sorry to say, resolves itself into the old system of brimstone and treacle.' In the same way he lashes with ridicule the ( Ulster' bogey, and humorously describes the ULter Presbyterian opponents of Home Rule as holding the Shorter Catechism in one hand and a revolver in the other, and saying, c By heavens, if you leave us alone with these miscreants, we will fire off the revolver in the name of the Shorter Catechism.' Finally, in reply to the argument that it would not be safe to trust the Irish with Home Rule, Lord Rosebery had the following: 'Though I hardly like to allude to it, there is always behind us the enormous Imperial power of the Empire to maintain the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament, and which, when it is necessary, no minister would ever shrink from exercising, I draw a very broad distinction between exercising the material power of the British Parliament to repress the just discontent of the Irish people, and, on the other hand, exercising the Imperial power to maintain the ju^t supremacy of the authority of the British Crown.' That shows that Lord Rosebery had looked fairly in the face the alleged difficulty of trusting the Irish with Home Rule and fully answered it in his own mind ; yet now he turns completely round on that very point and belies his own words. Very' different from Lord Rosebery's turnings and twistings is the honest manly rino- in the utterance of another eminent Scotch Liberal, Mr. Bryce, M.P., who in addressing his constituents recently in Aberdeen thus gave expression to the true Liberal sentiment: 'We are not done with the Irish question, and we shall not get rid of it by trying to forget or ignore it. It dogs us like a shadow. Sooner or later we must solve it if we are to remove one of the nearest dangers that threatens the Empire. People say that the Home Rule schemes of 1886 and 1893 are gone. So they are. But the main principles by which we sought to make Ireland a loyal and contented member of the United Kingdom remain, and I trust no Liberal will repudiate them. There is indeed, no alliance between the Irish party and English Liberals, bat we must guard and preserve that surviving fruit of Mr. Gladstone's policy, a sense in the minds of English Liberals that they are bound to strive £0 secure justice to the Irish people, tor the old hostility of the two peoples was finally ended when one of the great British parties offered to Ireland a message of friendliness and peace.'

thing else m interest and importance in Protestant Church services that large numbers of the people have practically lost the real idea of ' worship,' and their attendance on and whole attitude^towards the Sunday services are regulated by their l > k e ordishke of the individual preacher concerned. Whereas Catholics go to church to assist at a distinct and definite act of worship, and rarely trouble their heads as to who is to be the preacher. Protestants are constantly flitting from church to church to hear this speaker or that, and the ' good' they get is measured by their appreciation or otherwise of the sermons tney hear There are signs, however, especially in Presbytenan circles, of a decided reaction against this essentially talse idea of worship, and for some years past there has been evidence of a steady under-current of feeling in favor of a return to the use of a liturgy or forms, which shall bring home to the minds of the people the fact that true worship is something very different from merely listening to a sermon. The proposal for a liturgy has now been made plainly and in set terms in a series of articles on ' Presbyterian Worship ' appearing , n the New York Evangelist from the pen of Dr. Allen Macy Dulles. We quote a few interesting passages from a portion of one of the articles, which is reproduced in the last number of the Presbyterian Outlook. Dr. Dulles writes :— We are a preaching Church.' So be it! Let that continue to be our glory. But need we preach less if we worship more ? And is there no danger of a voice saying : < Thou hast made thy appeaj unto preaching, and to preaching thou shalt go.' And if genius lag, if inspiration falter, if the ability to enchant and enchain audiences fail, if the pulpit lights create pulpit shadows, if the great preachers cause the lesser to be despised, what then ? Then the great cause of Presbyterian ism grows weak, prelacy thrives, and the work of the Reformation in securing deliverance for the Church from Papal domination is imperilled. And is there no danger of the decline of preaching { lhe candidates for our ministry, it is said, have fallen in number from 1600 to 900. And some think the decline is in quality as well as in quantity. How can it be otherwise when the Church sees fit to limit the use of mind within extremely narrow lines ot orthodoxy ? But whatever the cause of ministerial decline, shall not the Church seek the aid of forms such as the Presbyterian Church has itself used in the past, in order to invite and encourage worship ? Shall we be content to invite poople to church merely to hear a preacher ? • Have you heard Dr. Blank V 'Let us go to Dr. A's church to-day,' or shall we induce our people to say : 'O, come let us worship God,' expecting the response, • I was glad when they said unto me let us go up to the House of the Lord.' The idea of the sons ot the Covenanters returning to a worship of forms is at first rather startling, but the above passage is both thoughtful and suggestive, and may be taken at least to some extent as a sign of the times. Our Preybyterian friends are still very far short of the true idea of sacrificial worship, but, if appearances are to be trusted, they are moving in the right direction.