INDUCTION SERVICE

Evening Post, Volume CVII, Issue 100, 2 May 1929, Page 15

INDUCTION SERVICE

CAMBRIDGE TERRACE CHURCH

A Juvgc congregation assembled at the Cambridge Terrace Congregational Church last evening, when the Rev. Harry Johnson was inducted to the pastorate of that church. The chair was taken by the Rev. Lionel B. Fletcher. The whole service was most impressive and reverential. After the church secretary had made a statement of incidents leading to the call being made, Mr. Johnson replied, taking his hearers back to the days of his early life, when he experienced the influence of his mother who was a mystic. When in later years lie went to Central Africa for the London Missionary Society, he had lelt the guiding hand of God, and on. coming to this Dominion, there had also been present that same sense of reliance upon the unseen. Now that he was taking up work in this new sphere he-had no doubt. o£ the Divine call to service The Rev. D. Gardner Miller (Christchurch) delivered the charge to the minister, and in so doing referred to a picture drawn in Pilgrim's Progress by that inn mortal dreamer, John Bunyah, where he describes what Christian . saw - inthe house of the Interpreter.' That was his own conception of what a Minister should be—he should be serious, he should have the upward look, and the best of all books in his hand—the supreme book, the cm' tjpon llis lip.s should be the spirit of .Truth; above his head a crown of glory, for ho talks of life eternal. And. lie should also plead with men—not scold. "The chief place of the minister," said Mr. Miller, "is his pulpit." The Rev. Lionel B. Fletcher, in giving the charge to the congregation, based his remarks upon the etory of the man by the pool of Bethesda—a poor impotent wretch, who was healed by contact with Jesus after 38 years of hopeless waiting. Mr. Fletcher used the stovj as a parable of our own day. The church was surrounded by impotent, hopeless folk; and if the Church failed to help and to heal, then there was for them no other hope. There was something wrong when Christian people were smugly complacent and self-satisfied. For such there was nothingbut condemnation to lio expected when they reached the Beautiful Gate. The Church must be the place where the sinner could meet the Christ, and ba healed. .

The Rev. Harry Johnson closed the proceedings with the Benediction.