ANGLICAN JUBILEE.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 311, 25 September 1908, Page 7

ANGLICAN JUBILEE.

FIFTY YEARS AGO AND NOW. A' combined rehearsal' by the choirs of St. Paul's, St. Peter's, St. Mark's,' and- St. Thomas's Anglican churches of tho music to be sung at tho special jubilee service in. St. Paulas Pro-Cathedral on Tuesday nest, has been very successfully conducted. The musical .service ■ will include Smart's Te Deum, Hopkins's' Magnificat in F, and Nunc Dimittis, and the anthem, Sir John Stainer's "Awake, Awake, Put on. Thy Strength, Oh Zion." Archdeacon Fancourt,-owing to illhealth,' will not to able to preach tho jubilee sermon. . Charles John Abraham, the first Bishop of ■Wellington, was consecrated on September 29,' 1858. Archdeacon Fancourt had not then comb to Now Zealand, but he saw the lato bishop and heard' him speak before he returned to tho colony after' his consecration.' ,

.When the dioceso. was first constituted it consisted of what were known as. the provinces of Wellington and Hawke's Bay. It -was not. till after Bishop Hadfield's consecration that Hawke's Bay 'was added to Waiapu, and tho southern portion of Taranaki to Wellington. Seven years after Bishop Abraham's consecration, when Archdeacon Fancourt arrived, thero were but 16 clergy belonging to'the diocese, of whom five were members, of the Church Missionary Society, and ono a. Maori deacon, and 17 synodsmen representing the parishes of St. Paul and St. Peter, Wellington, the parishes of the Hutt and Wanganui and Napier, and tho districts of' Porirua' Road, Otaki and Manawatu, Castle Point, Wairarapa, and Aliuriri (another name for Hawke's Bay). From this it will bo seen that only a Small portion of tho diocese was settled just along tile seaboard of tho West Coast to Wanganui District, some portions,of tho Wairarapa Plains, and of the rich lands of Hawke's Bay Province held chiefly by runholdcrs. Bishop Abraham did all his travelling along the West Coast to Wanganui, and through the Hutt and Wairarapa, to Napier oil horseback. Besides performing episcopal functions and visiting all the centres in his diocese, ihe was practically the missionary to tho. outlying settlers, and to districts where no clergyman was resident, and also tho relieving officer to tho clergy who served inder him. Now the Wellington dioceso has 55 clergy, with sevoral tacancica at tho present time, clergy sntitled' to sit and voto in Synod, and 54 sjnodsmoii; thero are six parishes and 32 parochial districts and two nativo districts; whila the country contained in the dioceso is tattled through its length and breadth.