A meeting of the Public Morals Committee of the Methodist Church of New Zealand was held yesterday.
The Rev. P. W. Fairclough presided, and a very large number of ministers and laymen were present. The meeting was specially convened to discuss the question of the proposed picnic to be held next Sunday by the Dunedin Bakers and Pastrycooks' Industrial Union. The following resolution protesting against the picnic was unanimously adopted:
''The Committee of Public Morals appointed by the Methodist Conference has learned with amazement and regret that the Dunedin Bakers and Pastrycooks' Industrial Union in this city has arranged to hold its annual picnic on Sunday next. As this is the most wanton and open step that has yet been taken towards the secularising of the Christian Sabbath and the inflicting of the Continental Sunday on this community, the committee desires to make a public remonstrance and to enter its earnest protest.
''The Christian Sabbath has for ages secured a weekly day of rest for our race when there was no other oasis in the desert of toil. Its power to grant this relief arose from its sacred character, the destruction of which will even now deprive multitudes of its shelter. Regarded merely as an act or irreligion and as an encroachment on the institutions of organised Christianity, no community can afford to regard the proposed violation of the sacred day with indifference. The union is taking a course that must cause needless pain to thousands of sincere people in this city, that cannot but divide even the union itself, and that has not even the excuse that no other day was obtainable.''
At a fairly full and representative meeting of the executive of the Council of Churches held yesterday afternoon, with the Rev. R. S. Gray (president) in the chair, it was resolved, on the motion of Mr E. A. Rosevear, seconded by Mr H. H. Driver, that an earnest protest be entered against the action of the Bakers and Pastrycooks' Union in arranging its annual picnic for a Sunday.
The disregard of the Sabbath as a day of rest and the strongly pronounced tendency in so many quarters to make the day one of mere pleasure and week-day toil was noted with the deepest regret.
• Within the last few years (says a Press Association message from Auckland) black ants have spread rapidly in the vicinity of the city. During the warmest hours on Wednesday myriads of these insects were flying about. Fort street was swarming with them, and they were in plenty on the wharves and in Queen street. Men could be seen clawing down the backs of their necks, and women with the fashionable low-cut dresses were badly pestered. Black ants bite viciously, and some of those who received their attention found little lumps raised on their skin.
An Aucklander who was out fishing found himself in the midst of a swarm of ants; his bare neck and legs were the special objects of attack. At the Grammar School the boys had a lively time. A lady walking on the Cemetery bridge carrying a young baby was seen waving her arms about so excitedly that a man hurried along to see what was the matter. He was made fully aware of the cause when he got amongst the ants.
The phenomenon is of annual occurrence, but was more striking on Wednesday on account of its great extent. The swarming of the ants is connected with what is known as the ''marriage flight'' of the insects.
- ODT, 20.3.1914.
