CURRENT NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume LVII, Issue 114, 15 May 1926, Page 22

CURRENT NOTES.

"Your religion stands or falls by what ' it does for those about you," was a significant remark made by Gipsy Smith. ' The parish of Ararat (diocese of Ballarat), has received from one of its parishioners a gift of f 1000 for the . purpose of an endowment towards the stipend of the vicar. The bi-centenary of John Howard, the prison reformer, was commemorated by a special service at St. Paul's Cathedral. John Howard was a member of the j Congregational Church. If John Wesley were alive to-day he; would put his finger on the loss of the, children as the central peril of Chris- j tianity.—Mr. James Douglas, in the "Sunday Express." The Rev. R. S. M. OTerrall, of the Universities Mission to Central Africa, has been appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury to be Bishop of Madagascar. One of the results of the great Missionary Convention recently held at Westminster has been an anonymous gift of £6000 to the Church Missionary Society.

Mr. H. N". Gladstone, Lord-Lieutenant of Flintshire, has presented Hawarden rectory to the Church of England. A college of theology is to be established in the rectory. As a first token of the response to the call of the Missionery Convention for workers, the rector of an important parish in Crewe (England) has announced his resignation of the benefice in order to take up work overseas. Staff Captain Hal Beckett, of the Salvation Army, stated after eight years' work in China: "Soldiers are to-day the curse of China. The average Chinaman is a good fellow, but it spoils him to put him in uniform." The Bishop of Nelson, writes our London correspondent, continues to fulfil lecturing and preaching engagements in many parts of England, setting forth the claims and needs of the Colonial and Continental Church Society. In view of the interest taken in New Zealand in child welfare, the following statement by the Rev. Glynn Edwards, of Birmingham, is of interest: "Put the child right and you will save most of the problems of the world." Mahatma Gandhi, writing in "Young India," states: "I am against the modern method of proselytising. The indirect contributions, on the other hand, of the Christian missionary effort is great. It has stimulated Hindu and Mussulman research. It has forced us to put our houses in order."

Principal Ernest Barker, of King's College, in a speech recorded in the "Scotsman," speaking on good books, said: Let them try to pick some which had bitten deepest and grooved most. He would cay, let them begin with the Authorised Version of the Bible. Beside it he would set the Book of Common Prayer, in England, and in the North the metrical version of the Psalms.

"If there is one thing more certain than another, 'it is that the fruits of education are reaped only after the age, say, of 15 or Iβ. To take away a boy, except under the most urgent necessity, before he reaches the time when all that has been bestowrd upon. him begins to reach its harvest, is as if the farmer, in hie hurry to get in the grain, should cut it while still green. , " —The Axchbishop of York.

The Rev. J. H. fiitson, M.A., Liverpool (Balliol) President of the Wesleyan Conference, has received from Oxford University the honorary degree of D.D. In introducing Mr. Ritson, the public orator (Mr. A. B. Poynton), remaTked that he was the first Oxford man appointed as President of the Wesleyan Conference since John Wesley himself. Dr. Jtitson was for 26 years Secretary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, and has travelled to all parts of the world.

The Bishop of Durham, preaching at Westminster Chapel, said the advent of democracy in its modern form meant that the ruling class is co-extensive with the nation itself, and it will fashion the actual system of its Government according to its own beliefs, standards and ideals. The Bishop added: "Wβ cannot ignore the formidable fact that the masses of the people have never been Christians in any definite or effective sense.!" Dr. Henson claimed that the civilisation of Christendom could not possibly survive the abandonment of Christianity.

Dr. J. D. Jones, speaking at an induction in Norwich, protested against the modern Free Church tendency to minimise and disparage the position of the minister. Some Churches, he said, treated the minister as* , if he were a kind of business manager, or general organiser, whose business was to run the various activities of the Church. Some wanted to commercialise the mm"try, and measured the minister's success by his ability to make the Church pay. "He ie the minister of Christ, and not your minister," added Dr. Jones. He is there to declare Christ's will, not I exactly to please you, but to speak the message that his Lord gives him to and no little pride" s"«£p^f c fc<* ronic fe" for the province of South Africa caUs attention to the action of Dr. Carey .at Bloemfontein ?""£? e Jl Cent thr eatened native trouble In February there was much wUd talk of native strikes, re P i sa l 8 , and !£ x • t pp T 9 Qut the Naders of the Industrial and Commercial Workers' I Union, knowing that the Church would take a fair and unbiased view of their difficulties, invited the bishop to address the natives in the location. Dr. Carey gave advice «o sound that not only did the natives accept it, but the local European Press received it with the warmest recommendation. It must have been a dramatic moment when, at the conclusion of the bishop's speech, Mr. Maduna rose to say that the speech was made by a father to his children, and they had accepted his advice wholeheartedly.