PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17613, 16 November 1922, Page 11

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

GENERAL ASSEMBLY MEETING. (phess association telegram.) AUCKLAND, November 15. The jubilee sessions of the Presbyterian General Assembly of New Zealand were oponed to-day. The Eev. D. Dutton, the retiring Moderator, presided.

The Eev. W. J. Cromie, who •was unanimously elected Moderator, addressed the Assembly on "Sixty Tears and After." He briefly surveyed the progress of the Church in New Zealand from the earliest days. After speaking upon the movement in 1861 towards the union of Presbyterianism in New Zealand, which had failed owing to the fear of innovations, the speaker laid special emphasis upon the need of a progressive movement to-day, even at the cost of making many new innovations in Church affairs. The Moderator suggested that the Church was too conservative in the matter of the position of women in offices of tho Church. He laid emphasis on the need for the Church to understand better tho Labour movements of the present, and to assure labouring men who had become indifferent to the Church, of the Church's sympathy with them in all their aspirations for better social conditions. The temperance question, tho movement for a largor Church union with other Churches, and the duty of the Church in its relation to war, were all discussed in a tone which 'was full of hopefulness for the future. Coincident with the sitting of the Assembly, the annual conference of tho Presbyterian Women's Missionary Union is being held.