PROFESSOR HEWITSON'S DEATH

Evening Star, Issue 21282, 10 December 1932, Page 17

PROFESSOR HEWITSON'S DEATH

WIDESPREAD RESPECT SHOWN That the death of Professor Hewitson is sincerely mourned by the comj munity was evidenced by the largo and representative assemblage at Knox Church this morning. The Dunedin Presbytery mustered in full available ' force, and the congregation included j members of many churches other than Presbyterian. Some, to pay their reI spocts, came from afar, amongst these | being Mr W. H. Rose, specially delegated by the Christchurch Presbytery. The service in the church lasted a little over half an hour. The Rev. G. Dunne, Moderator of the Dunedin Presbytery, presided, and read some of the sentences from the burial service; then the hymn ' 0 God of Bethel ’ was sung. The Rev. Dr Dickie gave the Scripture readings —Christ’s exhortation to watch, our Lord’s declaration to Martha concerning the resurrection, and the assurance of the epistle as to the light affliction which is for a moment. The Rev, E. J. Tipler, convener of the Theological Hall Committee, led in prayer, praising God for the gifts of mind and soul conferred on the departed, beseeching comfort to the sorrowing relatives, and asking that those who profited by the example and teaching of him who was at rest might be enabled to continuously profit thereby. DR GIBB’S TRIBUTE. The address was delivered by Dr James Gibb, who said:— “ A great man has fallen this day in Israel. William Hewitson has passed hence. All that was mortal of him has succumbed to the attack of the last enemy. We shall not again look on his goodly form nor listen to his kindly voice. But blessed be the name of the Lord, the human-hearted man we knew and loved is not dead. Now and forever ho lives unto God; yea, is it not true that he lives unto us also? He, being dead, will yet speak and will continue to speak to those who shared his friendship or participated in his manifold ministrations. There is no time in the brief address to sketch his career, or even to enumerate the various services he rendered to the church and to the community, but this may at least be said:—ln three of the offices held by him he played a distinguished part. As minister of Knox Church, as the head for twenty years of the Assembly’s Foreign Missions Committee, and as first master of Knox College he displayed ' conspicuous ability. As an expositor of the Scriptures he ranked high. In the field of foreign missions he proved hihiself a man of vision and wise foresight. In Knox College he

made his mark by his faithful and effective handling of hot-headed youth and by the judicious care with which he added to and enriched the equipment of the institution of which he was head. ThS memory of his achievement as churchman and citizen will long linger in our memories. “ But here in the House of God and in the presence of the solemn reminders that death shadows us and ours, we, most of, all, give thanks to God that our departed friend was a man who lived ever in the light of the eternal realities, with a full-orbed faith in Jesus Christ; one, too, whose charge-, ter in all things, adorned the doctrine of God, his Saviour. It is a pardonable excess when speaking of the dead to find no fault in them, though it becomes us always to remember in the whole sad story of the human race that there has been only one flawless, perfect man. It is, however, my assured conviction, nay, it is my certain knowledge, that our friend’s life was rooted deep in God. His master motive was the glory of God, and the good of his fellow-men. I knew him well. He arrived in Dunedin nine years after my coming to First Church and, for nine years more we worked, as it were, side by side, and after that for almost thirty years we met nad corresponded frequently. The longer I knew William Hewitson the more I loved and admired him, and none the less because of the spice of humour with which he seasoned both his writing and his speech. . He was a man of a big and tender heart, intensely emotional, though he often strove to > hide this, leading some to think of him as, perhaps, too collected and unimpassioned. He was the reverse of this, as the heart true and steadfast a friend as the heart could desire. We bid him farewell, farewell for a season, a brief season for some of us, and we pray God, meanwhile, that some portion of his great spirit may rest upon us. “ There is no heart here to-day who is not thinking of her whose loss dwarfs into significance that of all other friends of the departed—the dear wife, herself greatly ailing, who through the long years was his steadfast helpmate and abiding inspiration. _ A week ago I had my last conversation with him. It centred, chiefly, in my own recent great grief and loss, and in his anxiety about his wife. He told me he found

comfort in the knowledge that the love of his youth-time had grown greater and deeper with the passing years. There is nothing more likely to cleanse the bereaved heart from the bitterness of death than such an assurance. To God and to the word of His Grace, do wo commend the widow and the two neices who are mourning for one who was as loving and helpful to them as any father could have been. May the everlasting arm he underneath them and the breast of God very near. “It is the fashion of the day rather to despise the longings of Christians of earlier times for heaven and the sentimental hymns they used to express the anticipated joys and the hope of reunion with the blessed dead. Perhaps our fathers were over-prone to this kind of meditation and feeling. We, I am satisfied, have unhappily swung to the opposite extreme. For my part, as the years pass, I find myself less and less in sympathy with the mood which practically restricts the Christian experience to the thought of the world which now is, and when someone very dear rises up to go passing within the veil, must not the stricken heart cry out for the touch of the vanished hand, for reunion in the presence of Christ in that world where the shadow feared by man never falls and we shall be together once again and for ever with the Lord? May the comfort of this assurance come home to the heart of those with whom we mourn to-day, and to every stricken soul. Join with me in the prayer as I quote the word of the Great Poet: God, bring us to Jerusalem, Tlie strong who stand, The weak who fall, The first and last, The great and small, Home one by one. Home ono and all. Amen. As the bier was being carried out Mr C. Hoy Spnckinan (the church organists. played ‘Comfort Ye,’ from ‘ The Messiah.’ The pall-hearers were all intimate friends, and included old students of Knox College, who rcniT'.-cntod different periods of Professor Hewii'-on’s mastership. They were Mr T. 0. Boss,

Mr A. M. Cameron, the Eev. J. Stanley Murray (of Queenstown), Mr A. Salmoud, Dr J. D. Salmond, Dr M alter Boroman, Professor C. E. Kerens, and Professor T. D. Adams. Tho service at the graveside in the Northern Cemetery—in a plot wherein Professor Hewistson’s father is buried —was conducted by the Revs. D. C. Herron, H. H. Barton, and A. C. M. Standage (minister of the Maori Hill Church, of which tho professor was a member). A very large crowd of citizens of all ranks assembled to pay respect as the procession moved off.