ST. STEPHEN'S CHURCH.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume XIV, Issue 2959, 28 April 1893, Page 3

ST. STEPHEN'S CHURCH.

The Guardiax special ccltaining tie news of tWdeath of the Premier was handed to the Incumbent during the course of the service on Thursday evening, and the painful intelligence communicated to the congregation. The Rev. T. A. Hamilton announced that he had intended to.preach from the words used by Solomon at the dedication of the Temple—' 1 Of thine own have ,we given fchee" (1 Chron. 29—14), but he would take also the succeeding verses—" For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers, our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding." Solomon's temple, with all its magnificence, was but a perishable thing after all, and generations of worshippers would pass through its courts like shadows. Earthly greatness must have an ending, but a true life never died. The man who made use of his talents for the glory ot God and the good of his fellow men gained an imperishable fame. As " poets are born and not made " bo all men had-certain gifts entrusted to them by God, but were useless and unproductive unless cultivated. By undoubted merit and the proper exercise of God given powers Mr Ballanpe had risen to the high eminence of Premier of the colony, and men of all shades of political opinion respected his honest convictions and felt drawn to him by his many personal good qualities. His loss to the nation would be deeply felt. The preacher felt grieved that a personal attack should have been made, and aspersion thrown upon the Premier's honor and reputation in the time of sickness by a lecturer whose Christian instincts should have guided him to that silence which tact alone would have suggested. In conclusion Mr Hamilton asked the prayers of the congregation on behalf of the inner circle of friends, whose grief was sacred ; that God might send the balm of comfort, and peaceful resignation into their hearts, and that of the gift which God had called them to resign and all others bestowed and cultivated we might together bo able to say hereafter, "of thine own have we given Thee."