A VERSATILE PARSON

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 20, 24 January 1924, Page 9

A VERSATILE PARSON

There are few more versatile ministers in the Church in Australia than the Rev. G. M'Lar,en Scott,- the newly-elect-ed Moderator of the Presbytery of Sydney. It is the sort of life that Joseph Conrad would have made a good tale out of. At the public school which he attended in Sydney, the mirror of the sea, as it)were, was constantly before him. At the age of 14 he went off to sea, and spent, four years before the mast. He landed in America. when a youth of 18, and the next four . years saw him in the United States. It was across in Canada that he first heard the call of Christian service. He threw in his lot with the Salvation Army, and was gazetted captain at the age of 19. Placed in charge of a corps in Ontario, he had the distinction of being the youngest officer in the Salvation Army in Canada to hold the rank of captain. Then, keen on returning to Australia, he severed his association with the army, and was in San Francisco, on his way back to Sydney, when he again heard the call of adventure. He tried his fortune on the Alaskan goldfields. Reaching Sydney in 1910, his mind turned towards the ministry of the church of his fathers. He swept, brilliantly through the University and the Theological Hall, and is to-day Moderator of the big presbytery in which, a year or two ago, he was an obscure home missionary. Any success he has attained in the ministry Mr. Scott, who is still a young man, attributes to' his intense belief that a parson should be a man's man, and be ready to enter into the activities of his parish^ He believes that his .experiences before the mast, out in Alasika, and in the wide world, of hard knocks and rough work were not the least valuable part of his preparation for the Christian ministry. He is secretary of the Parents' and Citizens' Association in his parish, and" is idolised for his tolerance, his manliness, and his genial nature.