CHURCH NEWS AND NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLII, Issue 137, 10 June 1911, Page 14

CHURCH NEWS AND NOTES.

The Rev. A. H. Colville, diocesan missionary i n Auckland, has returned from Taramiki. In the "Taram.ki News" the football writer mentions that Mr Colville was a prominent member of the Oxford Ln.vers.ty fifteen in the early nineties, and a well-known South of England representative.

Auckland has always been notable for the number of superannuated Methodist mincers livu.g in its suburbs . Just nQW WW S T n S. ]•'. Prior, and 1 m'"',' S ' J. Thomas Mathe' M lght ' al Devonport; J. J I "' Mo ™t Eden; 11. H. Dewsbury. Onehunga; and w . A £ Rev ' 1 H a £ d,t, ° nt 0 lh " 5C ' and to the TO li.-n'. bl T oudi ' Wm ' Gitt °s. and Billed? fl r )> o,>n st ated that in the almost texts suiUble to connection ft "'T >a lirV ' In thi * °* tho Anekl aV* mentioned that board onwhic " St ° ck E*->'»nge is a «ble rentr !«' P ?u tcJ te, 'S™™ and framowo k so,I m v h ° ~li,,Cs' 0n the ...Aipter 53, B v~° J" written, Isaiah our reportV' hatll 'believed

As a preliminary to building a more up-to-date Sunday school building for Beros-ford-street Church, tho manse is being offered for sale for the purpose of raising funds.

St. Paul's Anglican Church nt Feilding some time ago decided to do away with the system of holding sales of work to raise money fur church purposes. It is interesting to note in this connection that contributions to the general and special funds since that decision have shown a tendency to steadily increase. No less than £r>oo has been donated to the building fund since sales of work ceased, and at tin- annual collections for the reduction of the debt two Sundays ago the total was £70. The Jtev. W. Gray-Dixon, formerly pastor of St. David's Presbyterian Church, Auckland, opened a new church nt Sydenham, Christchurch, on May 28th. In the course, of his sermon, the preacher mentioned that there were 4000 more Presbyterian Christians in Korea alone, than in the whole of New Zealand.

The "New Zealand Methodist Times," in reaffirming the position "that no priest, or clergyman, or minister, possesses a grace, or function, or power (other than that which is man-given) which does not belong to the church as a whole," says, in relation to the administration of tbe Sacrament by ministers, that "lest this good custom should corrupt a church, it is well, at least occasionally, to call laymen to oflieiatc."

The Chapman-Alexander mission in Swan.-ca, Wales, was attended by 200,000 persons, of whom 3000 signed the "covenant card.''

The Rev. J. 11. Hitson, M.A., secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, says that the Pocket Testament League is doing much in promoting Bible reading, tin the s.s. Lusitania, by which he had just returned from America to England, there were over 100 stewards who were members of the league, and who read their New Testaments every day. The movement is particularly' strong in the United 'Slates and in the. Far East. .

Dr Amzi Clarence Dixon, the American preacher who has accepted the "call" from the Metropolitan Tabernacle, in London, was born in North Carolina fifty-seven years ago. Since ]S7ti he has ministered for longer or shorter intervals in his native State, in Baltimore, Brooklyn, and Boston, and has been pastor of |the Moody Church in Chicago since 1900. A brother of Mr Thomas Dixon, a well-known Now York novelist and playwright, the successor of Spurgeon is tbe author ot several volumes, among them "Lights and Shadows of American Life," and "Evangelism, Old nnd New." The Metropolitan Tabernacle, by tbe way, which Mr Dixon now takes over, is one of the many Nonconformist churches that preserve the memory of the wooden "tabernacle," or preachingshed, built for Whitefield's flock in Finsbury. It was erected exactly fifty years ago. to accommodate the congregation of the great Spurgeon, to whom a lamentable accident, involving death or injury to forty persons, had just occurred at the old Surrey Music Hall. The huge hexastyle Corinthian portico, peculiar arrangement of pews, platform in place of pulpit, and other novelties attracted wide attention, nnd made 'SSpurgeon's Temple" as well worth seeing as the famous pastor was well worth hearing. Destroyed by fire a few years ago, the Metropolitan Tabernacle has been re I built ou similar lines, but of slightly reduced dimensions.

In connection with the celebration of the Tercentenary of the issue of the Authorised Version of the Bible, a unique meeting was held in the Christchurch Cathedral on May 14. The Bishop of the diocese took part in the proceedings, and the speakers were the Rev. W. J. ('loss, B.A. (Congregationalist). T. Tait, M.A. (Presbyterian), and C. H. Laws, B.A. (Methodist). Each of the speakers occupied the pulpit in the delivery of his address, and it is believed that the incident is unparalleled in the history of the English Church in any part of the British Empire.

Ou the eve of his departure from England, on a visit to America, Sir Robert Perks, Bart., spoke some stirring words to an interviewer. "You ask mc for my advice to young Methodism," said Sir Robert, replying to a final question. "My answer is, maintain and strengthen the eonnexional spirit of our Church. Try to federate the forces of Methodism throughout the world into one mighty alliance for the glory of God and the welfare of men. Work in season and out of season for the reunion of British Methodism. Persevere."

When addressing the National Free Church Council at Portsmouth on "The Christian Revelation from a Scientific Point of View," Sir Oliver Lodge contended "that the bare possibility of the miraculous had been hastily and illegitimately denied. The existence of a region of miracle may be established by experience, its non-existence could not be established; for non-experience of it might simply mean that owing to deficiencies of our organs, it was beyond us."

The Rev. Dr. Workman, M.A., in a special address to the London Methodist ministers, made some very suggestive references on the relation between what are known as "the creeds" of Methodist thought and life. In the creeds, Apostles' and Niceuc, they had no mere metaphysical or even 'theological judgments, but the reasoned expression of the deepest experience of the early Church as regards the central fundamental position of the faith—an experience written, it was true, in terms of Greek philosophy, but the convictions which were witnessed to the world by unparalleled sufferings, by the surrender of life itself. Methodism was a Church that appealed to experience, and with which, therefore, the experience of the larger church must ever weigh. They must not because of the impatient reluctance of a superficial age, fail to grasp its meaning, nor, because certain features were, perhaps rightly, open to discussion, undervalue this fundamental doctrine of the experience of other days. Methodism must in the days to crime, more than in the past. if it was to live, be a teaching Church: they must abandon their looseness of thought, their ide-is of "only believe"they must strive for great fundamental principles, the chief of which were expressed i n the Apostles' Creed—the fact of Christ; and in the Nieene Creed—the , Person of Christ!

The grc.it Wesleyan Hall that is bein« ore-tedon the site of the old aquarium in \\estminster ,s expected, when completed to be one of the most remarkable monuments in England. The buildiii,, does not consist of four straight elevations but of a series of receding planes. Order and rhythm prevail everywhere, and yet there is a freedom of invention which renders the efiect "picturesque" i„ the best sense ol the word. It is for this reason, and for the careful consideration given to the scale of the building, that the Methodist nail, in spite of being based on Renaissance and Baroque forms, does not look out of place in a neighbourhood dominated by Westminster Abbey the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Hospital, and other Gothic buildings.