DIOCESAN SYNOD.

Auckland Star, Volume XXIV, Issue 251, 23 October 1893, Page 2

DIOCESAN SYNOD.

ANNUAX MEETING-.

ADDRESS BY THE BISHOP

At three o'clock" this- afternoon the members of the Synod assembled in the Cathedral! library, There was also a large attendance of visitors.- The Rev. Dr. Cowie, Bishop of | Auckland presided? and; afteir the formal opening had taken place, delivered 'the'following' address to the Synodsmen :— DEAR*KrETHREfr- OF THfc! Gt .E&GY At*f> LaiTY, The Fourteenth Synod af the Diocese begins its iirSt ~ Sessi6n vhefe'l6-day; the first Synod of the tiiocese having met iri>De"eemtl ej, 1559. > -. , All our electoral districts .have returned the number of members to which they are ai present entitled ; but not as many.£S'; they might be entitled to, if more care were taken b,y our pebble to register their mames in the ChuFchwardens' JJooks/ ' Vfesti^rnen?5 and' other Church officers-should make itlthejr btisjness;t6 iniorra newcomers from England of their rightsarid''•'responsibilities- in thi:s matter,—differing as they do from'those .tp.whith they ha^'e been accusjidmed in the motßeFcoutttty ■*'■'■■■.'■■ < ..■ . . •■ > T«i f Primacy/—Whilst the Synod was in Session in October last we received the announcement of the intended resipa^Oh 11 of'the' rPrimacy of the Church by the venerable I Bish% of Wellington; the Most Reverend Octavius Hadfield ; I who "resigned these offices on the 9th day of the present month.- All -who are acquainted with the- ea,fly history of Our Church, especially of the Maori portion of it, know how greal^ve^been'Mg/servicesun the Gospel cause; during his r55 years'of residence' and' ministrations in New Zealand, including ,32 years of missionary work among the Native raceV chiefly in the Southern districts of this island. No one of our*Bishops'or clergy has better- earned the right to retire from his official position than Haas Bishop Hadfield. I know that'lam expressing the mind of the Synod, when I say that we sympathise with the Bishop in his resignation of work to which he has devoted more than two-thirds of his life; we praV'that-his health may be benefited by rest and retirement, and we: trust that he will long be able to give the Church the benefit of his varied experience, his learning, and his judgment: Until the General Synod shall elect another Primate, the'responsibilities of the office will remain with myself, as iisffibf Bishop of the Province by consecration. I ask your pralers,'and those of all Christian people throughout the Dffiese, triat-in discharging the duties of the Primacy I I • maff ' both perceive and know what things I ought to do, and also niay have-grace and power faithfully to fulfil the same.' T?he S&e 6p Wellington is now vacant; and the Synod I -of the Diocese have delegated the- nomination of their new BJsHM to' the • Archbishop of York and the Bishop of l&urham, who are authorised to select a clergyman for the y office." Tiifc Btsrtop Of Waiapu informed the Synod of the ; Dio'fcesb in September that he purposed to resign that See in thesegintiirig pf 1894, but I have not yetreceived official notice of his intended resignation. In response to an appeal from Persia; the Bishop, like an old war-horse at the sound of the trumpet, is riot unnaturally desirous of returning, to the work of m evangelist, now that his health is restored; and his " ■ ■ offer of service has been accepted by the Church Missionary Society, to hold forth the Word of Life among the-. Ma^ommedahs of that country. The Synod of Waiap.u will- not find5 it easy to obtain for that See anoth.er Bishpp equal to the Right Reverend Dr. Stuart in the faculty for hard work, and in sympathetic and judicious, :♦' |eaTing with his fellow-men. f/HE See of Melanesia is still without a Bishop ; bnt the v Mission- is1 fortunate in having at its head one of the most trusted of the coadjutors of Bishops Patteson and J. R. SelwW; the Rev. John Palmer, who, after his thirty y^ars of whole-hearted service to the Mission is quite identified therewith. Constitution Deed. —After the close of our larjt Annual Session, in November, 1892, I received from the Primate a certifiM copy-of the Proceedings of the General Synod of thatyfe, in which the following words were written by him : 'Irfmyobinioh the alterations printed in the Constitution will nof be in fotee unless sanctioned by the next General Synod.' members; of the Synod are aware* in our Church Constitution there are some provisions declared to be ' fundamental,' and others ' not fundamental.' Until 1892, clause 6 of the fundamental provisions read as follows:— •The above Provisions, shall be deemed fundamental; and it shall5 not be within the power of the General Synod, or of an\r Diocesan Synod, to alter, revoke, add to, or diminish any of the same.' In 1892 the General Synod ' proposed ' to add to this clause the words * save in the manner hereinafter provided.' Assuming that no General Synod can bind its successors in matters of legislation, and that the Doctrine and DishivUfte of the Catholic Church are the only unalterable parts .of our Constitution, the Synod had power to add the words I have quoted ; but those words ought not to have been incorporated with the original words of Clause 6 until they had 'been made known to the several Diocesan Synods, an| finally agreed to' in the meeting of the General Synod neft ensuing.'* In Clause 30 c)f the Constitution, as printed in •the G. S. Report of 1892, we also find the ' proposed' alterations incorporated with the clause as printed in the Report of 1889. The alterations are as follows:—The words ' save arid except the Provisions which have been hereafter declared to be fundamental' are to be omitted; • and a second proviso is to be added, as follows, namely, 'in the case of any alteration of any of the fundamental PlO--vistOWS' no strch alteration shall take effect unless, when finally adopted, it shall have been agreed to by a majority of not less than two-thirds of each of the three Orders. I herfeby make known to the, Synod the alterations ih the Constitution that were ' proposed ' in the General Synod of 189*2. General Synod Legislation.— Board of Missions.— A Bill for constituting a Board of Missions was introduced into the same Synod, but was not passed. It will be found on page 146 of the proceedings of the Synod. Women Voters : A Billf was introduced into the General Synod at its last Session to alter Clause 10 of Canon V, Title B, so as to enable women as well as men 'to attend and vote at Parish Meetings ';. but the consideration thereof was 'deferred to the next Session of the General Synod for further consideration in the meantime by the Diocesan Synods.' : 'QV "It would be well for the Synod to consider this proposed change diking iheftfesent Session, if the time at our disposal admits of our doing so. Instruction in Holy Scripture in Board Schools.— I think there is reason to hope that there will soon be a consensus 6i a majority of the Christian population of New Zealand in favour of some teaching of Holy Scripture m our Board Schools. I have often stated in the Synod my conviction that it would be better to have a book of selections from the Old and New Testaments-such as the great majority of parents would approve of, to be read as a lessonbook in school hours, than that many of the children should grow up without any Bible teaching at all. Bf AucKLANi).-^As is to be expected, I have each year to-Jnform the .Synod of losses that; we have sustained by death among the clergy and other officers of the Chutch, since th,e preceding Session. ~ Tne'Rev Henry Handley Brown, M.A., entered into rest in September last, at the age of 79 years. Though he had been a clergyman of the Diocese since 1859, h^ was not known personally to many of otir people outside the Archdeiconrv of Taranaki, in which he resided and worked during fhfSbf his New Zealand life. Mr. Brown took double holburs at the University of Oxford, and was a diligent student of the Scriptures in, their original Jangulges 0 he end 1 &s days. At Omata; and in other districts m the •G S Report, 1889; Constitution, Clause &>, proviso i. ' t See page 148 of G. S. Report for 1892.

SiDuth of the Archdeaconry, he was deservedly esteemed and beloved, for his scrupulous fulfilment of pastoral responsibilities, including house to house visitation, during the long period Of his ministry. When over three score y§ars and ten he still continued: his long and fatiguing rides, until his strength almost entirely failed him. In self-denial, in study, in zealj «n sympathy with the suffering, and in bodily exertion, our departed brother was a very model of what we desire that all our clergy should be. The Rev. Hare Retviti Hukatere, who had long been an invalid, was relieved from the burden of the flesh in the fnonth of May, at the age of 64 years. He was received Isite in life into the Ministry of the Church* but had for many years been a faithful and efficient Lay Reader among his own people in the North. He was for some years previously an assessor in the Resident Magistrate's Court, and in that capacity also gained the respect of all who had to do with fruftj as an upright man, and ohe whose judgment was to be relied upon. Mr. Richard Sissons, M.R.C.S., of Kamo, who had held a Lay Reader's licence since 1871, and had discharged the duties of the office with much acceptance to the congregation, departed this life in peace, after some months of illness, in the beginning of August. The combination of a knowledge of the healing art with love of the Physician of souls gave him an influence which he was careful to use for the glory of God. He will be greatly missed by those to whom he ministered in body and soul. Mr John Fairburn of Otahuhu, who had held a Lay Reader's licence since 1875, ended his course in April, after many fnonths of illness borne with Christian patience He was a son of a former clergyman of the Church Missionary Society. Among the offices held by him was that of Superintendent of the parish Sunday School; in which he was specially efficient, by reason of his painstaking preparation for his Sunday work, and his exemplary regularity and punctuality of attendance at school. His memory will long be held in affectionate respect by those who were children under his superintendence. New Lay Readers. —Since the last Session licences have been issued to the following Lay Readers:—Mr. E. H. Barber, for S. John's, Tamaki; Mr. G. F. C. Hosking, for Grahamstown (Whangarei); Mr. G. F. Linnell, for Hakaru; Mr. S. Seddon, for S. Andrew's, Cambridge; Mr. F. J. Snell for Maungakaramea, where he has for a number of years ministered to the people of the District with much acceptance, in the absence of a clergyman. Home Mission. —Many of our Lay Readers are carrying on their good work in districts rarely visited by a clergyman. This is specially the case in the districts to the North of Auckland; in some of which there have been formerly resident ministers for longer or shorter periods. But even if we now had clergy for all the country districts in which, at one time or another, they have been stationed, there would still remain extensive districts that could at present be ministered to only through our Home Mission. You all know how zealously and efficiently our Diocesan Missionary, the Rev. John Haselden, carries on the work of the Mission, with the much appreciated assistance of our venerable brother, the Rev. Theophilus T. P. N. Hewlett; but the services of at least one additional clergyman are urgently needed, to enable us to respond, in some measure, to all the appeals that are made to us for the ministrations of clergy, especially to those which come from the gumdigging population, and other scattered and nomadic toilers in the North. With the increasing prosperity of the colony, we may fairly expect that the extension of our Home Mission work shall not be prevented for lack of the necessary funds. S. John's College. —The foundation Scholars of S. John's College who presented themselves for examination in July and August of this year, by the examiners appointed by the Board of Theological Studies, acquitted themselves well; and one of them was ordained by me in September for the Bishop of Wellington. The old College buildings at Tamaki are leased to the Rev. P. S.Smallfield who^jn conjunction with Mr. Graham Bruce, 8.A., is doing some of the work for which the College was founded, namely, instructing our youth in moral habits, and educating them in the principles of the Christian Religion according to the doctrine and discipline of the Church. Parents may with confidence entrust their children to Mr. Smallfield and Mr. Bruce for Christian teaching, as well as for what is commonly meant by a good secular education. Sunday Schools. —At the last annual examination for the Bishop's Prizes, the School of All Saints parish maintained its pre-eminence. The Catechism.—The care with which the Rev. W. Calder instructs the youth of the parish in the Catechism cannot fail to be of lasting benefit to them. Our clergy, at their admission to the order df Priests, promise to ' banish and drive away all erroneous and strange doctrines contrary to God's word;' and one most effectual means of fulfilling that promise is diligently to store the memories of our children, from their earliest years, with the fundamental truths of Christianity. A more faithful or concise summary of those truths than is provided in the Catechism, it would be difficult to imagine ; according to the opinion of some of the most learned of our Divinity scholars and of our experienced teachers. To know the Catechism by heart, word for word, is a great attainment for our boys and girls —a K-r^a h da; but no one will, of course, suppose that I am now advocating a mere feat of memory. All Sunday School teachers may well lay to heart the words of Professor Max Miiller on this subject, which is one of vital importance in our religious teaching of children, whether at home or in school. He says :—' It is the fault of those who guide the religious education of young men and women, and who simply require from them belief in certain faiths and dogmas, without ever explaining what belief means, that so many, when they begin to think about the different kinds of human knowledge, discover that they possess no religion at all.' Hospital and Gaol Chaplaincy. —l have great pleasure in Stating that, by help of the Selwyn Memorial Fund (now amounting to more than an arrangement has beeu made with the Incumbent of the parish of the Holy Sepulchre, for the regular visiting of the Hospital and the Gaol. The Standing Committee have agreed to pay the sum of £go a year, for two years, from the interest of this Fund, towards the stipend of an assistant minister of the -parish in which the Hospital and the Gaol are situated, on condition that the Incumbent shall be held responsible for the duties of the Chaplaincy of those institutions. Provincial Institutions. —At the Provincial Hospital, the Gaol, and the Costley Home for the Aged, Sunday services have' been regularly held — chiefly by faithful laymen, namely, at the Hospital, by Messrs. Bridgewater, Charter, and Tunks, and Maj or Lusk ; at the Home, by Messrs. Cochrane, E. Cox, H. B. Morton, and R. Pickmere; and at the Gaol, by Messrs. Bridgewater, Hammond, Ewington, Kensington, and Williams. The Lunatic Asylum has been regularly visited by the Rev. F. Larkins. The S. Stephen's Orphan Home at present affords motherly, care and Christian education to 74 children, namely 44 boys and 30 girls ; all of whom are reported by the Matron to be in good health and well behaved. The school was examined in April by the Rev. J. Bates, who reported it to be in a thoroughly healthy condition; and that ' the organisation, order, and general discipline, are excellent; and the instruction given is sound and intelligent.' The Women's Home. —The Managing Committee of the Home were enabled to pay off the mortgage on the property by w hich they had been embarrassed—before the end of last year; through the generous response received to their appeal for help in this matter, from members of the Synod and other friends. The Home., at present gives shelter and Christian encouragement to ten inmates. The cost of maintaining the institution for the year ending June 30 last, was about /450. Of this sum nearly /116 was obtained by the work of the inmates. People need to be reminded that the Women's Home is not oile 'of those iiisjitm)bj\s ttiat can add to their funds b> mediis that are available for some others of our charitable

undertakings. For obvious reasons, as little publicity as •possible has to be given to the operations Of the Borne. Its efficiency depends mainly on the qualifications 6f the Superintendent and the Matron for their responsibilities. The thanks not only of the Synod, but of the whole ©ffflf* mtinity, are due to the Managing Committee for the time and thought they have given to the carrying on of this most Christian work. Children's Home. —It is with great pleasure that.l inform the Synod of the establishment of a Children's Home by a fe\v of bur people ; for the reception of infants too young to be taken into the Homes for orphans. Whatever may be thought of the parents of some of our destitute children, the children themselves cannot be neglected by us without denying our Christianity. In past years many infants, orphans or more pitiable than orphans, have been boarded out in Auckland with persons in every way unfitted for so responsible a charge ; and the evil consequent oft the system has been such as cannot be thought of without dismay. The Children's Home, under the superintendence and 'management of specially qualified women, will greatly diminish this evil. lam at present the trustee of the property. The Pension Fund capital on June 30 amounted to ;£i3>397 9s- 3d» having increased by 15s. 2d. during the year. , The Maories. —A full report of the work that is being carried on among the Maori population of the Diocese has been prepared; for the Synod by the Yen. Archdeacon Clarke, of the Church Missionary Society ; who is and long has been the chief councillor of our Native clergymen and other Church officers. The Synod will, I have no doubt, be much interested in the statement and statistics furnished by the Archdeacon. We have at present 14 Maori clergy. Of these, two Deacons, namely, the Revs. Taimona Hapimana, and Nikora Tautau, have been appointed to special work in the Southern Waikato district; where the majority of the Natives apostatised from the Faith during the ever to be lamented Waikato war. The maintenance of these two Missionaries is provided by the generous sympathy of the Society Jor Promoting Christian Knowledge; from which this Diocese has received repeated help from the time of Bishop Selwyh's arrival in the country. The number of unpaid Maori Lay Readers in the Diocese is 146. The contributions of our Maori congregations in the Northern Archdeaconry to Church purposes in 1892 amounted to At S. Stephens School there are at present 44 Maori youths, all in good health, and well behaved. Mr. Davies; the master of the School, is to be congratulated on the highly satisfactory report made by the Government Inspector after his last visit. The Melanesian Mission has been, and is, passing through an anxious time ; having been for two years without a Bishop, and for still longer without an income adequate to the necessary expenses ; besides the inability, for lack of funds and men, to extend the work in hopeful directions. The Mission had the benefit in 189*2 of a visit from the Bishop of Tasmania; who accompanied the Missionaries on one of their annual voyages among the Islands, and rendered very valuable assistance to them in many ways. Since then the Rev. Prebendary Codrington, who was a member of the Mission staff for more than twenty years, and is the greatest living authority on the people and languages of Melanesia, has spent six months at S Barnabas' College, Norfolk Island, to the great advantage of the Mission, It is very gratifying to friends of the Mission to have the testimony of Dr. Codrington to the continued efficiency of the work of the Mission, in which this Synod has always had great and well deserved confidence. I lay on the table Bishop Selwyn's letter in acknowledgment of the Resolution of Sympathy with him passed by the Synod in November last. The concluding words of that Resolution were as follows : c As a token of practical sympathy with him that they believe the Bishop will best appreciate, (the members of the Synod) pledge themselves to do what in them lies to increase the pecuniary support accorded to the Melanesian Mission by the Church in this Diocese.' It is in reference to these words that Bishop Selwyn. says : ' I especially value the last sentence, in which the Synod promises to do what it can to keep alive the work of the Melanesian Mission. The Mission, which had its origin in Auckland, has always received the most generous help from the people of Auckland, and, what is more, a sympathy and kindness extended to all its members.' It may well be a subject of rejoicing to us all that Bishop Selwyn has sufficiently recovered from his serious illness to be able to accept the Mastership of Selwyn College, Gambridge, the national memorial of his noble father. In that responsible office, if I am not mistaken, he will in time accomplish for the Church of Christ, and in particular for Missions to the heathen, an even greater work than he has done in Melanesia ; by imbuing young men of high education—and athletes like himself —with some of his own unselfish, and missionary spirit, and sending to the Islands of the South West Pacific, and other heathen lands, evangelists endowed with those mental and spiritual gifts that are needed for winning souls to the love of God. In a letter recently received by me from the Bishop, he says : ' Can not you get some rich New Zealander to found a Scholarship with us (i.e., at Selwyn College) for sons of New Zealand clergy. It would help them, and be a link.' The training of Candidates for Holy Orders is one of the mOst important matters that can occupy the attention of our Synods. Happily, at our Provincial College of 8. John young men have good educational opportunities. With the tuition of the Warden, they ought not to find it difficult to pass the examinations held annually under the direction of the Board of Theological Studies ; and with his tuition, and that of the Professors of our University College, our students may, as a rule, be expected to graduate at the University of New Zealand. It is.not in the matter of teaching that our theological students are at a disadvantage, as compared with undergraduates of Selwyn College, or any other College at an English University In my own undergraduate days at Cambridge, students had not nearly as much help in their studies, either for the Arts Degree, or for the University Theological examination, as our S. John's College students receive. It is, however, the absence of College life, with its great benefits —intellectual and social, that is the great want in a University or Theological course in the cities of New Zealand; and Ido not see how this defect is, in our circumstances, to be remedied. It is often said that there should be one central College for our theological students, and not a separate College for each Diocese; so that our candidates for holy orders might have the advantage of daily intercourse with their fellows in a larger community, where great benefit would be derived mutually by the interchange of opinion, and the cherishing of the spirit of toleration and large heartedness, which is not commonly the characteristic tone of small and self-contained societies. To attain this object was, I have no doubt, a main purpose of Bishop Selwyn in making S. John's College a Provincial, and not a Diocesan institution. Moreover, the College was not intended for the education of theological students exclusively. It has been due to the special circumstances of our people, that the great majority of the foundation Scholars hitherto have been candidates for holy orders. But the New Zealand Dioceses would not, or could not, be content with a Provincial College. The expense of the voyage to and from Auckland from the Southern cities prevented many parents from sending their sons to S. John's College; and in some Dioceses it was thought better to retain the students at home under the eye of their own Bishops. The absence of students of the Law, Medicine, arid for the Civil Service a,nd Commerce generally; from our College is, doubtless, a great drawback to its efficiency as a training school for our;* Clergy. Such is the stats of the case, and we must make the best we can of it. Spartam naclus es : hanc exorna. It is not, however, the Clergy only who suffer loss by this isolation of our theological students. It is a very seripiis reflection that our laymen are being educated apart from the influence of the systematic teaching of Christianity, as it can still be received at the old Universities of Qreaj 6'titaln and Ireland. It ilalrnost a truism tb say that t he leading, staieshieh of the Mother Country who have

graduated at Oxford and Cambridge are generally instances of the- happy result of combining the Queen of Sciences, Theology, with> those of Mathematics and Classics, or wirti Law, History, or those sciences that are called ' Natural' Mr. Gladstone is' said tc have beerc considered the most learned theologian in Europe, by the late giant theological scholar Dr. Dollinger; and the same veteran statesman is reported to have declared, on a recent occasion, that Christianity is the only remedy for many of the crying* social maladies o£ the present time. The' Higher Criticism. —In any case, the prevailing Ignorance of the modern discoveries of Biblical scholars, especially among the greawafld conservative section of Christendom, in all lands, is fraught with danger. Earnest men become acquainted unexpectedly with some well established fact that is hot in harmony with tfbeir hereditary religious belief, and" their faith in: the teaching of the. Bible is thereupon shaken; or they find that a teacher, who has. been deemed an authority' on theological subjects, has dis-1 playecf ignorance on matters outside his special department of science, and they consequently lose confidence in his. ordinary' teaching. When the discovery of Copernicus was announced —that the sun, and not the earth, was the centre of our system, and that the earth was not stationary but for ever in rapid, motion, many Christian people felt that the very foundation, of their belief in the Bible was giving way. Such persons did not recognise, as we do now, that the Bible was not a treatise in Natural Science, but a collection of writings of various dates and authorship, setting forth moral and spiritual truths in the vernacular language of their day. Clement of Rome, one of the earliest Christian writers, believed the well known story of the Phoenix; but he is not, on account of that instance* of credulity, in which he had the authority* of many leading naturalists of his time, to be considered untrustworthy on subjects in when he had special opportunities of knowing the truth. He merely assumed as true a marvellous story, not belonging to his own department of study, that was generally accepted by his contemporaries. The distinguished inventor of the radiometer, in our own generation, believed that a notorious table-turner could ' alter the weight of bodies' without affecting their constituent parts; but we would not on that account depreciate his teaching in departments o science in which he is a specialist. Genesis.— Many good Christians at the present day, think that in the first chapter of the book Genesis we have a scientific record of the creation of the world ; and they are at liberty to retain that opinion until they see reason to abandon it. To get rid of the difficulties in connection with the ' six days ' cf creation, they interpret those ' days ' as vast agss of time ; but such a system of interpretation does not commend itself to all men of modern learning on the subject. It has long been known by Hebrew scholars that the book Genesis is a compilation; and that its contents are not all the composition of one writer. Whence came, and how, the two separate accounts that we have of the Creation in the first two chapters of Genesis, scholars do not venture to say. Nearly every nation of antiquity with whose literature we are acquainted had its own account of the origin of the world. One of these, namely, that of the Assyrian nation, a. branch of the same Semitic race to which the Israelites belonged, is remarkably like the account we have in the first chapter of Genesis, It cannot, however, have been derived therefrom ; and the contrast between these two accounts is, in some respects, even more remarkable than their likeness in others. In the Assyrian account we find a belief in many gods, themselves coming into existence, together with the material world, out of chaos ; whereas in Genesis we read of the One God who was in the beginning, and by Whom the universe was called into being. In such contrasts as this,.between two narratives in other respects so much alike, we see the working of that indefinable Inspiration, by which there have been revealed to mankind truths that human reason could not have discovered. And, if it is said that the Monotheism of the Hebrews has been evolved, in the course of centuries, from the Polytheism of earlier peoples, our answer is that such evolution is in harmony with God's ordinary processes throughout the universe; but that the knowledge of God Himself can no more be evolved from man's internal consciousness than the sense of right and duty can be evolved from lifeless matter. Inspiration. —Much harm has been done in all ages of the Church by the enforcement of unauthorised theories of Inspiration. Men of devout mind have felt, and still often feel, that they are bound, by what is known as the mechanical theory, f to put a literal interpretation on the statements of Genesis ; and they are distressed to hear the narrative of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, and that of Noah's Ark spoken of as Allegories. Such lovers of the Old Testament overlook the fact that Allegory was ,the ordinary garb of moral teaching in Palestine in primitive times. The Fall of Man, consequent on deliberate disobedience to the known will of God, is the revealed truth recorded in the third chapter of Genesis ; and the certain punishment of the disobedient, and the safe keeping of God's servants, is the teaching of the Flood, in the sixth and two following chapters of that book. I have thought it well to say these few words concerning the teaching of the book Genesis ; but not for the instruction of members of the Synod or others on this subject. I would, however, remind you, and those who may read what has now been said, that we cannot safely assume the acquaintance of all good Christian people with facts concerning the Bible, that are familiar to those who have made the writings of the Qld Testament a subject of scientific study, Hohart Church Congress.— Members of the Synod are probably aware that the Bishops of New Zealand, with clergymen and laymen from the several Dioceses, have been invited to meet the Australian Bishops with some of their people, at Hobart, in January next, to hold a conference on matters of common importance to the Churches of these colonies. We may hope that much good will result from the Congress ; and I trust that vestries of parishes whose clergy have°been asked to attend the Congress, will make arrangements to enable them to do so. It is my wish and intention to attend the Congress, mainly for the purpose of advocating the claims of the Melanesian Mission on the people of Australia ; but I shall be prevented from leaving New Zealand in January, if the consecration of either of our new Bishops —for Wellington or Waiapu—is to be held in that month. Archdeaconry of Taranaki. — I purpose to visit our Southern Archdeaconry in the coming December or January; but I shall not be able to make definite engagements at New Plymouth until I know at what times the consecration of the new Bishops are to lake place. It gives me special pleasure to see in his seat to-day the Venerable Archdeacon Gpvett, the senior parochial clergyman and Archdeacon of the Docese. Trustees of Church Properties.— -The Auditors appointed by the Synod report that the books of the Trustees have been carefully kept; and that the voluminous detail work of the office is kept well up to date. Our Trustees are to be congratulated on the result of the care they have bestowed on the administration of the Church estates ; especially when we think of the many serious losses that have been sustained, by some of our fellow citizens, in connection with the great commercial undertakings of the colony. , The Report of the Standing Committee is now laid on the table, containing a summary of its proceedings during the past year, and a list of the business to be brought before the Synod. I take this opportunity to return my cordial thanks to the members of the Committee, for their efficient assistance in matters that I have had occasion to refer to them for advice. May the approval of our God be with us in our deliberations, during the Session now begun, and may He enable r.s now and ever to serve Him with a quiet mind. \ Amen. * Pliny does not commit himself to any definite opinion oa the subject— luxud scio anfuhulose. t According to this theory, human organs are influenced •>) the JJoly Spirit, as a flute is played on by a r.iusiciaii. Accom* ing to the dtrtvtmkai theory, living powers are acted upon yj the. JLj«ly..Spirit,.,.in puch mahyer sis rot to interfere wiu ihe natural laws of those 'fioweris. J Collect for ,?j=t .Suudav niter Triuitj.