RUTHERFORD WADDELL.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 251, 22 October 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

RUTHERFORD WADDELL.

A MEMORIAL MEMOIR. Force of circumstances makes biography a neglected art in New Zealand, and there are many gaps to be filled among the written records of our distinguished men. It is good to find, therefore, that part of the memorial that St. Andrew's Church, Dunedin, is raising to the gifted and well-loved man who ministered there for forty years, is a biography. When Rutherford Waddell died not long ago, it was recognised in all parts of the Dominion that a great force and a rare spirit had passed from this young country. The value of his services as minister of the Presbyterian. Church, critic, essayist, social reformer and campaigner for sweetness and light, was incalculable. He loved righteousness and hated iniquity; he tempered his learned with humour; he had rare courage and abundant sympathy; and he was steadied by that humility without which brilliant gifts so often turn awry. Some day, perhaps, a fuller biography of this remarkable man will be written. In the meantime, this volume, consisting of a brief memoir and specimens of his addresses and essays, is very welcome. The story of his life is told clearly and with understanding. He was the son of an Ulster manse; was apprenticed to drapery at London; had a struggle to qualify for the ministry; wrestled with religious doubt, and found his haven; emigrated to New Zealand in the 'seventies, and entered a long and intensely busy and useful life in Dunedin. He was a noted preacher and critic, gave himself unsparingly in his church work, edited a church paper, and busied himself with public affairs. He was one of those who started the crusade against sweating in Dunedin, a movement that led up to the passing of our Labour laws in the 'nineties. As a critic, Dr. Waddell was prone, as one of his own town's papers said, to set too much value upon the ethical in literature, but this age could do with such bias. He was an unrepentant Victorian, to whom Tennyson and George Eliot were great teachers, and he lived long enough to see faint signs of a reaction against the anti-Tennyson tide. An old friend said of him that he was as pliant as the willow and as immovable as the oak, and the editor draws attention to "the closeness of his humour to the highest qualities of his soul." It seems impossible to anyone who did not live in Dunedin in his time to realise what lie meant in the city. "When the call came," say Dr. James Gibb, in his foreword, "it was to many of us as if an ancient landmark had been removed." The editor, the Rev. J. Collie, professor at Knox College, is to be congratulated on the excellence of this memoir of a Christian leader, whose whole life was an inspiration. Published in a handy form, and at a reasonable price, by A. H. Reed, Dunedin, this book should have a wide sale. Its lessons should be "in .widest commonaJLty spread."