A Nelson Resolution

New Zealand Tablet, 24 September 1908, Page 9

A Nelson Resolution

The .following Press Association message from Nelson was .published last week- in the daily papers throughout New Zealand-: / At the close of a lecture on the Coronation Oath in the Methodist Church last night by the Rev. C. H. . Garland, before a large' .audience, the following resolution "was carried :— " That this meet- i ing raise their protest against the disloyal utterance reportedT^ ;the Press 1 Association to .'have been made: at the Eucharistic Congress on the nth inst. by the Duke of Norfolk, , who described .the Royal declaration in taking the Coronation Oath as'- an insult to the King and the good sense : of the" nation." This meet- \ ;ing are of opinion that such an utterance, made on so important ' an occasion, is a gratuitous insult to a., Protestant ruler and I

people, arid discloses a dangerous hostility to the. Protestant throne." ' - ,- . : . * In the.year of grace 1868 a great meeting was held in St. James's Hall, London, to protest against the threatened disestablishment of the Protestant Church in Ireland. The principal, speaker ...was the witty Anglican Bishop Wilberforce'. * An Orange . enthusiast, who* was among the audience, kept interrupting the l3ishop's speech with shouts of ' Speak up, my Lord, speak up!' "At length Dr. Wilberforce - turned and, • in the dulcet -tone that, with him, meant mischief, remarked: 'I am already speaking up. I always speak up, and I . decline to speak down to the level of the ill-mannered person in the gallery.' The congregation in Nelson have cast aside their dignity and sense of fairness and have been ' speaking down to the level of the ill-mannered - person in the gallery.' - Their resolution belongs by better right "to the twelfth of July than to the seventeenth of September. -In the eighth year of the twentieth century they have, in "effect, called for the revival "of a ' relic of barbarism '. which the British Parliament could not tolerate. They apparently want to have the English Sovereign insulted, on his coronation day by,- having doubts cast upon his royal word and even his royal oath, and by requiring him to multiply phrases and protestations' that he is- no- perjurer., and that he means what -he says. * They evidently wish the King to be again "forced on his coronation day to express belief in sundry articles of faith (or, rather, coarse calumnies) that .are now' confined to Orange lodges and to suchlike hinterlands of thought — namely, that Catholics ' adore ' the Blessed. Virgin and the saints, that the Pope authorises people to lie and lie upon oath; and (among other things) that Catholic worship is ' superstitious and idolatrous.' w Fortunately, the resolution will have as much effect in -the desired direction as had the warning of the Skibbercen Eagle that jt had its eye on the Czar of Russia. As all the world knows— except some good .'folk in Nelson— the old and savage Puritan form of the coronation oath was abolished by Parliament in 1902 ; it has nofbeen taken at the crowning of -British royalty since 1837; and the abolition of the outrageous - form of the accession oath will; no doubt, follow in due time as a matter of course.' The only effect of .the resolution referred to will be_to advertise throughout* New Zealand - ' The rarity Of Christian charity ' - -* among some professing Christians, and the amount of work that still remains for the schoolmaster in certain quarters of the fair city of Nelson.