CONGREGATIONAL UNION OF VICTORIA.

Auckland Star, Volume XVII, Issue 247, 20 October 1886, Page 6

CONGREGATIONAL UNION OF VICTORIA.

Melbourne, October 13,

The first bueinessmceting of theCongrega tional Union for the annual session was held thieafternoon. The Chairman forthecoming year, the Rev. F. Browne, delivered his inaugural address in the evening to a large audiencein the Collins-atreetCongrogational Churoh. His theme was "The present day mission of the Christian Church : its relations, scope and hindrances." The Church, he said, had a high and worthy function to discharge in conserving domestic relationships and the purity of family life. He maintained that thg pulpits of the land should enunciate and commend more than they do the virtues of truthfulness and honesty, and should plead for the slow, yet just and secure, gains of industry and legitimate trade, as against the feverish lust of wealth, which was pandered to by the smai tness and trickery of gambling speculators. It waa also no inconsiderable part of the mission of the Church to educate public opinion to a right Standard of political duty. Keligious sensationalism was earnestly deprecated, and with respect to the atheistic secularism of the colony, the speaker said he was justified in the reflection that the worßt of men, the dishoDest, the impure, the intemperate, the genus lairikin, were in sympathy with it, and were the most blatant followers of its champion.