NEW MINISTER

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 29, 4 February 1937, Page 10

NEW MINISTER

KARORI PRESBYTERIANS

ORDINATION SERVICE

The Wellington Presbytery. met at the Karori Presbyterian Church last evening for the ordination of the Rev. Alexander Salmond, M.A., and his induction to the charge. There was a large congregation.

The Eev. D. M. Hercus presided and was assisted by Mr. T. C. Brash, lay moderator of the presbytery, who read the lesson, the Rev. J. S. Murray, who had moderated during the vacancy, and others.

The sermon was preached by the Rev. W. H. P. McKenzie, who quoted a speaker in Britain who had said that the early Christians were v promised three things. First, they would be gloriously alive; second, they would be supremely happy; third, they would get into trouble. This seemed a very interesting summary of what ought to be the lot of Christians in every age. Our present-day church life had to be tested and checked up in terms of these three things. Not, of course, that there was anything necessarily good about being in trouble—there were some people who had no one but themselves to blame for being in trouble, they deserved to be—but there was still a stern necessity laid upon the Church to be willing to be persecuted for Christ's sake. The day was perhaps riot far distant when there would be an open. rupture between Church and world as there had been at different times in the past.

The ordination questions were put to the candidate, and he was ordained with prayer, the ministers present gathering to lay their hands on his head. Declaration of his ordination was then made and he was inducted to the pastoral charge of the congregation. A solemn charge to the ordinand and the congregation was delivered by the Rev. A. E. Hunt.

The Rev. A. Salmond recently returned to New Zealand after three years',. study and travel in England and on the Continent. He is 29 years of age, the youngest son of Mr. and Mrs, John Salmond, Queenstown. His early' education was' received at the Queenstown Public School and the Otago Boys' High School, where- he won a junior national scholarship. In 1925 he entered the Dunedin Teachers' Training College and University of Otago, graduating in arts. He received a temporary appointment to the staff of the Training College. In 1929 he was appointed to the staff of the Otago Boys' High School. He continued his university-, studies, taking a diploma in education and graduating M.A. with first-class honours in education. In 1931 he was elected to the Ross Fellowship, Knox College, Dunedin, and for two years was assistant master and tutor there.

Mr. Salmond travelled to England three years ago to carry out advanced work in education, studying'at the Imperial Institute of Education, London, under Sir T. Percy Nunn. After some months he changed the direction of his study and went to Westminster College, Cambridge University. For three years he worked under such wellknown theologians as Dr. John Oman, Dr. C. H. Dodd, and Dr. C. Anderson Scott. He took the B.A. degree of Cambridge University, with secondclass honours in the theological tripos. He saw a good deal of the varied life of the British Isles and of theological work and student life in the German universities of Bonn, Heidelberg, Marburg, and Gottingen, returning to New Zealand at the end of last year.