GRADUATION SERVICES

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27339, 3 May 1954, Page 10

GRADUATION SERVICES

BIG CONGREGATION IN CATHEDRAL A big congregation attended the undenominational Canterbury University College graduation service in the Christchurch Cathedral yesterday afternoon. The preacher was the Rev. L. Farquhar Gunn, minister of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church. The lessons were read by Mr W. J. Cartwright chairman of the college council, and by Mr N. B. Beach, president of the Students’ Association. The invocation and prayers after the opening hymn were recited by the Rev. L. J. Boulton Smith, pastor of the Oxford Terrace Baptist Church, and the intercessions later in the service ■wefre conducted by the Rev. D. D. Thorpe, the Student Christian Movement chaplain in the university. The blessing was pronounced by the Bishop of -Christchurch (the Rt. Rev. A. K. Warren). The Student Christian Movement chqir of 12 women and 10 men led the singing of hymns during the service and also sang the anthem, “O Lord, Increase my Faith,** by Orlando Gibbons. “Seek and Ye Shall Find” Mr Gunn based his sermon mainly on "the text, “Seek and ye shall find," which he explained was really equivalent to “Keep on seeking until you find.” He found profoundly true some wo|ds used in an address at his own graduation: “The test of your university training begins when examination cease. You have to validate in action what, you have absorbed in thinking.” Although the university had became departmentalised and students were concerned primarily with securing me necessary credentials for their chosen professional life, their years at university had provided them with the opportunity of a great adventure in knowledge. “But because of its foundation here in New Zealand, the realm of knowledge in which you have been adventuring has been that of secular knowledge. Nevertheless, you have been trained to think critically, trained to inquire, trained to conduct research, and my plea this afternoon is that you with you always this spirit of inquiry, research, and critical examination," Mr Gunn continued. “I wonder how many of you are aware of the thrilling adventure that awiits you in plumbing the spiritual depth, in seeing the wider and deeper implications of your ‘secular studies m the light ol the Christian faith,” he said.

Christianity was rooted in history, but it was tremendously important to realise that Jesus was not merely an historical person who moved across tne stage of history, doing and saying many wonderful things, and leaving behind Him a splendid example and then passing into the great silence. “He is alive and goeth before you.” “By all means go back into history to make sure of the foundations of the Christian faith, but remember that it is in the living present that ydu will meet with Christ, Who continually beckons us on to further adventure in Siiritual understanding,” said Mr unn.

“There are those who scorn theology as dry as dust or who airily dismiss the great doctrines of the Christian faith as irrelevant without ever trying to grasp them, but you cannot hope to understand the Christian faith until the central doctrines of the Inearnaticn. the Resurrection and Atonement, the Trinity, and so on are more than mere names to you,” Mr Gunn said. ROMAN CATHOLIC CATHEDRAL SOLEMN VOTIVE MASS OFFERED Solemn Votive Mass of the Hoiy Ghost was offered at the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament yesterday morning by the Very Rev.' Father T. Liddy. The Roman Catholic graduands and members of the Newman Society at Canterbury University College assisted at this Mass, which was the annual Mass for the opening of the academic year As well as for graduands.

Fundament il questions, such as the true nature of man, were widely ignored, said the Rev. Father L. Donnelly, S.J., chaplain to the Newman Society, preaching on the text, “What is man?” “In our century we have become aware that there is something profoundly amiss in human society,” said Father Donnelly. “Yet, in all the various remedies proposed for the improvement of the social order, the first and only question asked is: ‘Will it make man happier?’ This question should indeed be asked, but it is the third question not the first. The first question should be ‘What is man?’ and then ‘Does this scheme suit his nature?’ When you have answered these the answer to the third will be plain. “But it is in the field of education

that this failure to acknowledge man s true nature has its most ludicrous as well as its most tragic results,” Father Donnell continued. The modern liberal State which wished to engage in education involved itself in a grotesque contradiction. On the one hand it clairr ed to educate, but on the other it confessed that it did not know what education was.

A minimum definition of education, accepted by practically everybody, would be that education was to fit men for living, but the State as such did not know what man was. In a liberal democracy the State must be neutral among the various opinions of its citizens in religion and philosophy. , Man might be mere matter, or spirit or both —the State, as such, did not know which, nor did it know the purpose of living. It could not decide between the various opinions of its citizens, yet it.insisted on putting its hand to education, a situation which was grotesque snd fantastic.