WOMAN ORDAINED.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 3, 5 January 1938, Page 10

WOMAN ORDAINED.

FIRST IN VICTORIA.

LIFE OF A MINISTER.

An entirely new career for -women was opened up in Victoria last month, ffben Miss Isabelle Merry was ordained at the Croydon Congregational Church. With fair wavy hair and smiling: eyes. Miss Isabelle Merry provides a happy picture of a woman pastor, says an Australian paper. She is definitely looking: forward to the routine life of the minister —to preaching, to visiting the people of the district, and to making the Church the centre of the people s life.

Miss Merry has just finished the c-ourse at the Congregational College in the Independent Hall, which, although small, is the oldest theological college in Melbourne. There she trained for the ministry with 10 men, and for the last year has been their senior student. In conjunction with the theological course students have done erts at the university. With these studies and the charge of the church at Ea=t. Preston, where she has recently been working. Miss Merry has found her time fully occupied. Miss Merry's experience augurs well for the happiness of the people at her church. At University High School she was the head prefect, matriculating with honours, and later worked at the State Savings Bank, feeling ell the time, however. that her vocation lay with the ministry. So that she knows the interests of people who have a working job personally, and with her five years course at the theological college to help her with her work from every angle and her desire to do the work, there seems a good future ahe-ad of her. "iounjr herself. Miss Merry the greatest confidence in the people of her own generation, and feel? that the virtues and vices attributed to them fall into their richtful and proportional place in life generally if one lives normally and natursllv.

Tbe da uglier of Mr. and Mrs. C. W. Merry, of Cobursr. Mis* Merry is tbe first woman to be ordained in Victoria, although it ig. ufnel for tbe Congregational Church to «dmit women. Two other women are working in Australia— Miss Joan Hoar?, who is in New South Wales, where #.bp has charge of a churc-h. and Mr?. Winifred Kiek. who rrare up ber active charge of a church when r-he married the principal of the So:ith Australian Conirre g-a-tional College. but is still preaching.