Page:Reminiscences of Earliest Canterbury 1915.pdf/206

 with the Natives, he declined my mother’s invitation to stay. However, noticing a little sister of mine making her first attempts to walk, he asked my mother if the child had been baptised, and on my mother replying in the negative, he offered to perform the rite. To this my mother, while thanking him, made some demur, she being a Presbyterian, and not quite clear on the doctrinal points which differentiated her creed from that of the Anglican. His Lordship indicated the danger the child incurred spiritually should she die unbaptised. In the absence of her husband to guide her in this dilemma, she was sorely perplexed, yet she stood to her guns, and closed the incident by telling his Lordship that she couldn’t believe that a just God would punish an innocent child for the lapse of a religious ceremony, the onus of which should fall on the parents, or which would, in the case, for example, of still-born children, or children dying immediately after birth, rest upon no one at all. His Lordship either would not, or could not, enter into these nice distinctions, and so he took his leave. My mother was much perturbed until my father returned in the evening and dispersed her fears. He was not too kindly