MEMORIAL SERVICE.

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19726, 17 September 1929, Page 3

MEMORIAL SERVICE.

LATE Ml ROBERT MALCOLM. A special service to the memory of the late Mr Bobert Malcolm was held in St. Paul's Church on Sunday, when the Bey. W. Bowsr Black preaehed from the text: "Though I walk through tha v%lley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil." The popular conception of death, even among Christian people, said the minister,, is pagan in its gloominess. There are superstitious and barbaric ideas that have gathered round it and that tend to rob us of our faith and hope, so that somehow we are finding ourselves further away from that living and vivid faith that could say: "For me. ... to die is gain." Paul said that, not tearfully, but exultantly, and we should pay deeper heed to his words, and to the tender words of his Lord and ours, lest wc miss a great part of our Christian heritage, and lose the hope and victory that are our a by right. It may easily be that death, when it eotnes, will be found to be more beautiful than life. Our Christian faith tells us that death is not a it is just a happening by the way. A story is told of a great ehemist whose life study had been the composition of the atom and the molecule, and who sent this message to his fellow-students on the day before he died: "Tell them this is my Commencement Day." He believed that he was entering upon the larger university of life and that there were endless fields for research, adventure, and romance in the infinite beyond. And he was right. Life and personality persist. The talents acquired and developed here will remain to help one fit into the atmosphere and work and friendship of another life. In spite of the problems, the striving and the suffering—perhaps because of them—Bobert Louis Stevenson's words give the ideal: "Glad did I live and gladly die."