METHODISM

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXIII, Issue 72, 7 March 1933, Page 4

METHODISM

CONFERENCE ECHOES. REPORTS TO HASTINGS CHURCH. At the Methodist Church service on Sunday morning, Mr. H. R. French, and Mr. W. E. Bate, who had attended the recent Methodist Conference in Auckland, spoke in glowing terms of the high spiritual line of the whole proceedings. Mr. French said that he had attended many conferences and this had been the best of them all, but said it was impossible to condense the work and message of “ten great days into ten minutes." He paid a tribute to the very efficient work of the stationery committee, which, he stated, took a long view of the work of the church as a whole throughout New Zealand, and in doing so had seen fit to call the Rev. A. H. Scriven to take up the work laid down by the Rev. W. Sinclair (owing to ill health) as secretary to the Foreign Mission Board, while in his place the Rev. H. B. Gosnell, of New Plymouth, had been appointed to the Hastings circuit.

The conference had recorded its sympathy with and support of the New Zealand Alliance in its fight fight against the liquor traffic and with every other moral reform. It had faced up to the problem of unemployment and all that it entailed, with intense interest and was seeking to assist the people as individuals and as a whole.

Mr. Bate spoke of the organising work being undertaken on behalf of the young people throughout New Zealand, and stated that formerly he had thought them over-organised, but new felt sure that this department of the church’s great work could and would be more effectively done under a young people’s director. Mr. Scriven, in speaking to the young people, bespoke a welcome for •‘Uncle David," “who had,” he said, “throughout New Zealand 7,600 nieces and nephews. These were the members of the Leagues of Young Methodists, familiarly known as the L.Y.M.S. Their motto was “Amor Vineit Omnia”— “love conquers all”—and the speaker dwelt at some length on what love could do to bring peace and happiness to every home, “And when Mr. Gosnell comes,” he concluded, “don’t forget to greet him as ‘Uncle David.’”