A WELL-LOVED CHURCHMAN

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 137, 6 December 1935, Page 8

A WELL-LOVED CHURCHMAN

The gathering in the Concert Chamber of the Town Hall yesterday afternoon to bid farewell to the Rt. Rev. Dr. Sprott and Mrs. Sprott on the eve of their retirement from the Anglican Diocese of Wellington was a sufficient testimony to the esteem and affection in which the retiring Bishop and his wife are held after their long service to the cause of Christianity in New Zealand. Dr. Sprott has ruled the diocese for nearly twenty-five years, and, as Canon James said in his address, he has been a tower of strength during that terrific period when the world has been turned upside down. His powers of intellect, scholarship, wisdom, and judgment have won him the highest respect and his kindness of heart the deepest'affection. He has been an embodiment of the Christian virtue of humility and to this and other qualities has added a sense of humour, with a keen wit, that has brightened the path of duty. Throughout his long service to the Church, in which he spent forty-four years in Wellington, Dr. Sprott has had an ideal helpmate in Mrs. Sprott, who has never spared herself in any good work and who shares with the Bishop the affectionate regard of the community. This feeling was eloquently expressed by Canon James when he said: "There are few to whom it has been given as to the Bishop and Mrs. Sprott to unite in such service for the Church of God; there are few to whom it has. been given to win such universal reverence and love." Equal appreciation was voiced by members of the laity. The community will join in wishing Dr. Sprott and Mrs. Sprott all happiness in their well-earned rest from their labours.