JOHN CALVIN

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 35, 10 August 1936, Page 11

JOHN CALVIN

COMMEMORATION SERVICE

Commemoration services for John Calvin (1509-1564), the Swiss divine and reformer, were held in Presbyterian churches in Wellington yesterday.

There was a large congregation at the Kent Terrace Presbyterian Church at the morning service The Rev. W. Gilmour, in his address, said that in the year John Calvin was born Henry VIII came to the Throne and Calvin was only eight years old when Luther nailed his "thesis" tothe door of the castle at Wittenberg. Columbus had discovered America and the printing press, discovered by Gutenberg, of Germany, had been introduced into England by William Caxton. Calvin wrote "The Institutes of the Christian Religion" in his twentyseventh year, and that book had become the most influential in European history. His scholarship was seen in his quotations from classical and Christian authors. In Geneva he laid foundations of much of what was to follow, for in the year 1536 the Reformation was officially accepted. Calvin was a great teacher and preacher His teaching expressed the .views of Presbyterianism. In Scotland. Calvin's teaching -dominated John Knox and the Scottish Church. The Confession of Faith, drafted by Knox, was accepted by the Scottish Parliament. Its main positions were chiefly Calvanistic.

The two great lessons of Calvin's teaching, continued Mr. Gilmour, were, first, "God's Sovereignty," and, second. "Man's Responsibility." One historian had summed up the teaching of Calvin in the following statement, which was'very apt: "The teaching of Calvin has blended with a warm spiritual fervour, and has brought life and power to the churches that have accepted it, while to nations it has brought the priceless boon of civil and religious liberty." The world needed leaders of the type of Calvin today, said Mr Gilmour. in closing his address. There were no strong Christian leaders at the present time, either in the Church or State. Men were needed who would express to our materialistic age the majesty and sovereignty of God. The times in which we lived was appropriate in which to preach the Great Evangel to a world that had gone away from God. It may be that we were on the eve of another Reformation, at the beginning of another spiritual Renaissance. If we had men like Calvin that new and better day would soon be ushered in.