CHURCH JUBILEE

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 299, 14 September 1936, Page 10

CHURCH JUBILEE

Kent Terrace Celebrations CROWDED CONGREGATIONS Special services were held yesterday in the Kent Terrace Presbyterian Church, Wellington, in the course of the fiftieth anniversary celebrations. There were crowded congregations at both morning and evening services and the communions were attended by record numbers.

In the afternoon 150 Sunday school teachers and Bible class ■ leaders, past and present, sat down to a jubilee tea, Mr. C. 8. Falconer presiding. Reminiscences of the early days of the church were related by Mr. W. Appleton and others, and a jubilee cake with 50 candles, the gift of Mrs. J. Carswell, one of the church leaders, was cut by Mrs. W. Gilmour.

The guest preacher was the Rev. Jame§ Baird, of Timaru, a former minister of the congregation. Speaking at the evening service? he took as his text Genesis xxxi, 48, 49, “This heap is a Witness between thee and me.” “This is memory’s hour for us in a twofold sense,” Mr. Baird said. “The observances of the Lord’s memorial are the golden hours of otfr history as a congregation and nothing could be more fitting than to look back over way we have come. We should not have much difficulty, after 50 years of congregational fellowship, in finding infinite material for erecting a permanent memorial which should be to the glory of God and the honour of mankind. Let us then gather the stones for this memorial. The first two stones relate to the signs of the true church. The ministry-'of the late Dr. Kennedy Elliott, of blessed memory, gave to this church a distinctive tone among the churches. The next stone is the communion of saints. Here tender memories come to us, dear forms rise before our eyes to-day and dear faces look at us out of the past. The church above and the church beneath are one and in that love eternal the veil Is taken off our hearts and w r e are united with the saints in heaven as 'well as on earth.

“The third stone is the Word of God. The Word constitutes the church and the church is the creation of the Word of Almighty God. So to-day in thankful memory and humility we pay homage to God for memory’s divinely religious services and for prayer’s prophetic finger that points the way’to heaven and to peace.”