DR. WADDELL'S MINISTRY.

Press, Volume LV, Issue 16703, 11 December 1919, Page 7

DR. WADDELL'S MINISTRY.

A STRIKING TKIBUTEi

Sunday .it St. Andrew's Church, Duatu'in, marked tho official closc of the ministry which Dr. Rutherford Waddell lias exercised there with buch power aiid persuasiveness for a period extending over injre than forty years. In tli-i hi.wiling ho dispensed tho coinliitmion to a very larye congregation, and iu tho wi.en he preadicd tlic attendance was also laryo. At Loth services he avoided personal retrospect, and sought rather to epitomise in one appealing message the truth ho has hold as most csseutial throughout his ministry. Professor Hewitsoii conducted the opening exercites iu the evening, and paid a striking tribute to Dr. Waddell. He said that that service marked tho close of a unique ministry. There Mere very few ministers who had been so long in one church. In tho words of the felicitous text that l)r. Waddell had chosen at his last anniversary, lie had worked with tl em from morning until the evening, until the stars appeared. But tho uniqueness of his ministry was not so mucn in the length of it as in tho character of it. Very few ministries had readied so deep into the lives of men and women, especially voung men and women. Very few ministries had had such a wide horizon, had called men to servico that had been so noble and so far-reaching. His ministry, too, hud bwn unique in that it had bepn a ministry of the tongue r.rd also of the pen. No. man in the Presbyterian Church, and perhaps none in any church in the Dominion, had rioinbined this twofold ministry in the same degree—great wealth " and fr« shness of ideas and wonderful chann ami beauty of expression. And thro;igji all that ministry there had been the influence of a personality that had shone with a purer and richer radiance as the years had gone bv anil he had endured tho discipline of the fire.