LORD HALIFAX

Press, Volume LXX, Issue 21088, 13 February 1934, Page 15

LORD HALIFAX

REQUIEM AT ST. MICHAEL'S j A considerable number of churchpeople from all parts of Christchurch assembled at St. Michael's Church yesterday morning for a requiem for the president of the English Church Union, Lord Halifax. A choir of the clergy, led by Archdeacon Taylor, sang the Merbecke setting of the service without accompaniment. The Rev. Kenneth Schollar was celebrant. The Dies Irae was sung as the sequence. The Rev. Charles Perry, vicar of St. Michael's, said they had met to pray for the repose of the soul of the most distinguished layman of the Anglican communion in their generation, a man who had used his high social position and wealth and scholarly attainments entirely for the glory of God. For three things he would be remembered and deserve their gratitude:— First, his advocacy of the catholic character of the Church of England. He had known personally many of the early Tractarians, and his 90 years had almost coincided with the 100 years of the movement they inaugurated. Second, his earnest work for the reunion of Christendom. He had seen that there could be no reunion worthy of the name if the Roman Catholic Church were omitted. Third, Lord Halifax had shown a consistent love and loyalty for the faith and practice of the Catholic Church as an Anglican through a long life without fear and without reproach. They were asked to pray that their departed brother might have peace, refreshment, light, purification, and a joyful resurrection at the last great day. His death had been somewhat dra- ; matic. He had resigned the presidency of the English Church Union as a protest against the lack of friendship between that society and the Anglo-Catholic Congress. His resignation had been the direct cause of the amalgamation of the two societies. His last public act, therefore, had been on behalf of union among Anglo-Catholics, and it had been completely successful. = I