CHURCH NEWS AND NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXV, Issue 199, 20 August 1904, Page 10

CHURCH NEWS AND NOTES.

The anonymous donor of £ 10,000 to the Birmingham Bishopric Fund was the Rev. Canon Freer, who died while preaching in Sudbury Parish Church in June. This announcement was made by Dr. Gore, the Bishop of Worcester, at lhe laying of the fouiiuation-stone of ihe new parish church at Rowley, Staffordshire. Canon Freer had received his ■arly training with the late Archbishop Benson in Birmingham, and in his old age he had been desirous of extending his spiritual work in the city. Bridge was strongly denounced by Dean Lefroy at Norwich Cathedral last nonth. He said he desired to raise his voice against the social and financial >eril associated with the game. It was all too popular in London circles. He was told that men and women would commence playing immediately after dinner, and in their excitement ladies, if ter losing all their money, would part with their diamonds unless some rich nan cleared off their liabilities. He declared all this to be a great social and uoral danger. His Grace the Archbishop of York completed his 78th year early in June. .le was appointed to the Archbishopric ,n 1891. The "Court Circular's" reference to Jeneral Booth as "the Rev. William IJooth" recalls attention to the legal status of "Rev." Thiriy years ago that 'luestion was very much to the fore, a Church of England clergyman having refused to allow a Wesleyan minister to be described as "Rev." on Jiis daughter's tombstone in the parish churchyard. The Court of Arches was with the clergymen, but the Privy Council, on appeal, decided against him, holding that "llev." ia a purely couiplimentary title, and no monopoly of the Church of England. History agrees with law on this point. In mediaeval times any specially honourable pe r son, male or female, was commonly addressed or described a.s "reverend," and the cleric, like the layman, was only "reverend" if particular respect were intended to him as an individual. The Puritan and Presbyterian divines claimed "reverend" for themselves, as a class at least, as early as the Anglicans, who are first so called in the Act of Uniformity of 1602. Mr Charles M. Alexander, of the Torrey-Alexander Mission, which visited the southern portions of New Zealand last year, was married at Birmingham la-st month to Mi3s Helen Cadbury, one of England's wealthiest heiresses, daughter of the founder of the wellknown cocoa firm. Mr Alexander, who belongs to Maryville, Tennessee, first met his bride in the course of his mission tour, and some five weeks later, on the conclusion of the mission, the en gagement was announced. The marriage took place in the Friends' Hall, the bride's family being members of the Society of Friends, and the ceremony followed the simple order which they observe. Later the newly-married pair left for America. Church and stnge forc-jrathered in close concord at the house of the Bishop '. of Rochester last month, the occasion being a meeting of the Actors' Church , Union. In an address, Sir Charles Wyndham said that the Union was a genuine attempt on the part of th" clergy to build a bridge across the . chasm which had so lons divided the . stage from the Church. The antipathy ; of the past was as unnatural as the [ separation between mother and child. because the Church gave birth to the drama. The Rev. Walter Bentley. sec- ■ retary of the Actors' Church Alliance of i America, declared that without the i Church they would become barbarians and without the stage lunatics. The Wesleyan Methodist Conference • which met at Sheffield last month wa*. the twelfth to assemble in that city. John Wesley visited it several times, and preached there when in his 78th year. On that occasion his mission seems to have been to open a new . chapel, for he entered in his journal: "But the house was not ready, so I , preached in the square." • The "Mission of Help" for South , \frica is taking a number of the most 1 ! vigorous of the clergy out of the coun- ; | try (says an English paper of July 11). hand to-day the Bishop of Stepney sails I| on the same errand—the object of which .i is to build up the Church in South i : Africa, and., more particularly, in the - Orange River and Transvaal Colonies. ! Dr. I.anjr is so young a man—he will not • h" forty until October—and has such 'Hh and strength, that it seems reai .'hie to expect that his two oeenr--1 -jres, and the interesting expert ■•■ "•» he will have in the new colonic. will bring him back in the autumn re l're»hed nnd renewed for the eternal i *t.rmrale in the Ti—st End.