CHURCH NEWS AND NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 28, 1 February 1913, Page 14

CHURCH NEWS AND NOTES.

The annual retreat of the Marist Fathers in Wellington diocese starts next Monday.

The Rev. A. C. Culliford, of Wallan, Victoria, has accepted a call to Balfour Presbyterian Church. The induction has been fixed for February 19th.

The Rev. Father McManus, of IngleWood, has been appointed to succeed the la;.' Father Costello as Administrator of St. Patrick's Parish. Palmenston North.

I'nder the will of the late Mrs Jessie Blair, of Lee Creek Farm, near Outram, the Presbyterian church of New Zealand receives £250 for the orphanage at Grants Braes, £200 for St. Margaret's College, and £300 for Knox Church (Dunedin) Endowment Fund.

The visit of the Rev. Dr. W. teorley to Auckland as a deputation from the Methodist Church of Anstralia to the N.Z. Conference, to be held in Wellington, revi-*es memories of the days when he received his first charge in this district, at Manukarn. Dr. Morley rose to a high position in the Methodist Church of New Zealand before he was called to l_-___ca_-_,

Dr. Aked's new Congregational Church in San Francisco will cost £30,000. Dr. Copies-ton, Metropolitan of India, resigned that office for i-eas-cms of illheal_h. He was expected to leave for England at the end of January. The Rev. Benjamin Bell, BJD., who lias been nominated for the Moderator of the Presbyterian Synod to meet next May in Liverpool, is highly respected by all denominations in Manchester, where he took a prominent part in religious and philanthropic work. Under the heading "Pictures and Profits." "The Christian" remarks: — "The specious plea that Sunday picture shows are not designed to benefit tbe producers, but only charitable objects, is unmasked by the figures of the London County Council returns for the past lo months, viz., £27.192 for the charities, and £93,513 for trade interests involved." Di Russell in a University sermon at Oxford recently, put in a powerful plea for tho simple life for bishops. He said: "The Church would be far happier and more useful if it agreed to pay a living wage to the average incumbent, and enabled him to retire on a modest pension, than if it held tightly to a few well-paid posts for exceptional men. The money given to a rich deanery could in many cases support another working bishop. The Church must no longer attach a sentimental value to sinecures." The late Dr. Robert Collyer was one of tbe best-known Unitarian Ministers in the United States. He was born !-9 years ago in Yorkshire, and as a child worked 12 hours a day in a mill. Later on he was a blacksmith, and after nine years became a Methodist preacher. Sixty-two years a_o he went to America, and for 50 years has been -an acknowledged leader of the Unitarian body. Five .years ago he visited England, and had the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters conferred upon him by Leeds University, and in his speech he referred to the old factory bell that used to wake him at a a.m.. which he then considered to be the most infernal piece of (mechanism that ever broke the silence of the heavens. When he heard the factory was to be pulled down he wrote asking for a piec-e of that bell, and they sent him the bell itself, which now hangs in Cornell University.

At a time when tbe Turkish Empire is in sore straits it is perhaps especially fitting that a writer in the " Christian World" states that Christianity owes a debt of gratitude to the Sublime Porte for the preservation of the great Church of Holy Wisdom or Sancta Sophia, also for the good work in its archaeological researches, amassed in the Imperial Museum. It is here (says a writer in the "Christian World") that are massed together the Siloam inscription and the inscribed slab from the Temple at Jerusalem —perhaps the only object in Fiiurope upon which one may say with any certitude that the eye of the Redeemer once rested. Here are statuettes of the Good Shepherd of Constantine's day, and the oldest sculptured fragment in the East depicting the bantism of the Lord. Here are the incomparable sarcophagi from Sidon, sculptures from Pergamos and Thyatira, and the oldest documents of "the Euphrates civilisation. Here are the bulk of the unearthed relics of Old Testament Palestine, and the cylinder which Queen Victoria presented to the museum, narrating Sennacherib's siege of Jerusalem, when Hezekiah was shut up like a bird in a cage.

In the course of a lecture delivered at Westminster Hall, Rene Bazin, author of "The Nun," gave some interesting particulars regarding the revival of the Roman Catholic religion in France during late years. He pointed out that before the separation of the Church and State, the Church in France was supported by an endowment of 35,000,000 francs, all of which was confiscated. Since then new churches have been built from voluntary contributions, and all ove_ France free schools are being maintained, at which the children receive sound religous instruction. The lecturer added that besides the great religious movement amongst intellectual classes, workmen were also turning once more to the Church. He also paid a warm tribute to the religious freedom of England. We note that the American Baptist Publication Society is issuing a new Bible (says the "Detroit Free Press"). According to the Rev. Dr. Fikes, the translators of this new version have

"aimed, so far as it was consistent with strict interpretation of thought, to eliminate obsolete Elizabethan words and to replace them with words in .modern use." We confess to no litiie- curiosity to see a copy of this breughtdown-to-date edition. We can scarcely imagine the Bible in modern phraseology. For instance, what verse of what chapter would " 1 should worry," fit in? We arc 'also

somewhat eager to learn whether Joseph's coat remains " a coat of many colours," .or whether in the modern phraseology it appears: "Joseph wore some glad rags, believe mc."