RELIGIOUS WORLD.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 254, 25 October 1919, Page 18

RELIGIOUS WORLD.

CHURCH NEWS AND NOTES.

:Mr. F. T. Brown, Methodist home missionary at Te Kuiti, who recently returned from the front, has resigned in order to stand for Parliament.

The Rev. John W. Hill, who was for over 30 years engaged in London Mission Society work at Samoa, has reached England.

The Rev. Russell Lewis, minister of Richmond (Yorks) Congregational Church, preached at the united thanksgiving service in the Parish Church. The rector and also the Revs. H. Tregenany (Wesleyan) and L. Beardsall (Primitive Methodist) also took part in the service.

The late Principal C. H. Garland, ot the Methodist Training Institute, was ever a staunch friend of Newton Congregational Sunday School. In the anniversary letter to old scholars appears the following: "Mr. Garland was one of those God-inspired men who belong to the world at large."

The recent Wesleyan Conference sitting at Newcastle, England, was welcomed to the city by a joint deputation of leaders of the Anglican and Free Churches. It has hitherto been the custom for the deputation to be received separately. This time they agreed to come together as one people.

Mr. John Ellyett, who is now S7 years of age, id still the treasurer for Newton Congregational Church and Sunday School. He has held the latter position uninterruptedly for 47 years, still attends both services, and' reads out the notices. Next Sunday is the 55th anniversary of the Sunday School.

Mr. Adam Laybourne has been compelled to resign his position as a Methodist Home Missionary on account of ill-health, after many "years of devoted service. Mr. Laybourne comes ol a well known Auckland family, and was himself an active business man in the city and district years ago.

The Auckland campaign on behalf of the Methodist Home Mission Fund "is commencing. The special deputation is the Rev. Robert Haddon, the superintendent of tile Taranaki Maori Mission. He is a native chief, and has been a minister of the Methodist Church for nearly 20 years. He is a great orator in the Maori tongue, and has considerable influence With his native friends. Mr. Haddon •will preach and lecture at Pitt Street an£ at some other churches. Last year the Pitt Street people raised neariy :£2OO for the fund, the total for the city and suburbs being about £800.

At a recent meeting of the Methodist Home Mission Executive steps were taken to promote a movement in the direction of a general increase of stipends to ministers and home missionaries throughout the Dominion. Information had been gathered from nearly a hundred circuits showing the increases which had been made since the war began and the present position. It is intended to lay the facts before the Xovember Synods, and to follow this by an appeal to every -circuit quarterly meeting next December. Minimum stipends are suggested for married men and probationers respectively, and circuits which have been giving the minimum or over will be asked to make reasonable increases on stipends formerly paid.

Dr. John Clifford, the veteran Baptist divine, occupied his old pulpit at W'estbourne Park during last August.

Writing in the "Christian W r orld" on "Our Little Tsm," the Rev. G. Stanley Russell stated: "Congregationalism is passing. The man who by conviction and inheritance holds strongly what used to be known as 'Congregational principles,' is becoming rare, and the spirit of the denomination is growing faint. What we want is not Moderators—we are moderate enough—but instigators."

Mr. Basil Matthews, M.A., has resigned the editorial secretaryship of the London Missionary Society in order to create under the British Missionary Society's auspices a Press bureau of missionary information, and also to edit a conthly magazine connected there•with. During the war Mr. Matthews served in the Ministry of Information.

The statement at the Baptist Conference when dealing with the subject ot training students for the ministry, that "Academical distinctions are not everything," did not find favour with the late Rev. Richard Baldwin Brindley, who served the Congregational Church in England for 3S years. He held a firm belief in the necessity for an educated ministry. Mr. Brindley had no sympathy with slackness, looseness of thought, or inaccuracy of expression.

The Rev. J. Rorke, a Presbyterian minister, was invited to speak at the Notting Hill Synagogue on the Jews' "Day of mourning and protest against the pogroms in Poland." He merely went as a visitor, but was asked to address the meeting. This is believed to be the first occasion upon which a Christian minister has been invited to speak in a London synagogue.

Dr. Hereward T. Price, an Oxford graduate, and son of a Congregational minister, was a teacher at the University of Bonn when war was declared by Germany. For domestic reasons he had pome years previously been naturalised as a German subject. He was compelled to join the German army, and went to the Russian front, where he was taken prisoner, and sent to the far East of Siberia.

Contrasting the evangelical point of view of forty years ago with that of the present day, the Rev. J. P. Perkins, preaching at Bradford recently, mentioned that he once objected to children being taught to sing: "There's ci Dreadful Hell."' The speaker said God was the All Mighty forty years ago, but now lie was the All Loving Father to young life. Forty years "ago the terrors of eternal suffering had not lost their power, but to-day there was a reverent hope of an eternal future.

An important new departure has been made by the British Wesleyan Conference in the matter of chairman of the district synods. Up to the present time the chairmen have had to perform the duties of circuit ministers, as superintendents of a circuit, it is now intended to divide the oflices. The chairmen will now have a separate maintenance provided, will have larger districts to administer, and will he entrusted with greater freedom and increased powers In many respects the office will be simiCh _t ° f a BUho P ™an Episcopal