ALL SAINTS’ CHURCH

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 259, 30 September 1935, Page 2

ALL SAINTS’ CHURCH

DIAMOND JUBILEE. SPECIAL SERVICES HELD. Special services were held at All Saints’ Church yesterday, marking the attainment of 60 years of loyal endeavour by clergy, curates and parishioners in the work of the Church since the foundation stone of the first All Saints’ building was laid. Overhead, on the church tower, there flew the recently dedicated standard of St. George, which will remain in position until next Sunday. Fittingly, the opening of the jubilee celebrations fell on St. Michael and All Angels’ Day, the services commencing with Holy Communion at 8 a.in., the celebrant being the vicar, Canon G. Y. Woodward, who was assisted by Rev. F. 0. Ball. Eighty-five candidates entered full church life at the 11 a.m. Confirmation service, at which the Bishop ot Wellington preached an inspiring sermon on “Courage,” taking his text from Psalm 27, verse 14: “Wait on the Lord, be strong and let thine heart take courage; yea, wait on the Lord.” Those attending the various Sunday schools in the parish were well represented at a special children’s service in the afternoon, which was taken by Rev. H. S. Kenney, of Foxton. Mr Kenney stressed the reason for the holding of the service. The Church, he .said, was as young, alive and 'full of health as tne children themselves. They should thank God for their youth, he added. The jubilee was like a great birthday celebration, and the children should tiave two foremost thoughts on a birthday. One was, “Have I grown?” The church had grown from a small building to one which seated 1200 people. The other thought should be a feeling of thankfulness for the love and care of parents and friends. Mr Kenney dealt with these thoughts in reference to the church. He bade them repeat: “Other men laboured. We have entered into their labours,” and referred to the work that had gone before. He pointed out the duty of being grateful and making the world a better place. LIFE OF JACOB. An analogy between the life of Jacob and the work of All Saints’ Ciiurch was drawn by Veil. Archdeacon Bullock, of St. Peter’s, Wellington, in preaching at the evening service. The preacher showed how there was a likei.iss between the two, which, he said, lormed the best he could find. Tile text was Genesis 28:16.

“You are commemorating to-day sixty years of active Christian work in this church and surely it is meet and right to commemorate that with praise and thanksgiving to Him Who spoke the word wiien this church was built and "Who has watched and still watches over all your activities in His service and for His glory,” said Archdeacon Bullock. “In thinking of the words I was to speak to you I tried to find some message in which would be epitomised all your hopes and fears, your ups and downs during those sixty years, and I could find nothing more appropriate than the story of the spiritual progress of Jacob. It shows his ups and downs, hopes and fears, the times when he knew depression and pessimism and times when the eternal seemed very near to him.” Proceeding, Archdeacon Bullock gave a short outline of how the story had appeared to him at different times of his life He had heard the story 'first at Home as a schoolboy and had received it with that naive, uncritical outlook to a well-told story that was teeming with adventure and thrilling happenings. Later, as he came to manhood, he began to look at the story through different eyes. He was at that age reached by all people when they regarded everything critically, and then it seemed to him that the smoothfaced Jacob was a very pallid and mean man when compared with Esau. Whatever religious differences there might have been between them, Esau was a gentleman, while “Jacob w r as a cad.” As the Bible seemed to favour Jacob, ho disagreed, in later years still, however, he had come to look at the story again. He had had more experience of human life, said the speaker, and a wider and probably more profound insight into it. He found that the Bible did not favour one more than the other. It told a simple, straightforward story of a man’s spiritual progress without leaving out any of the unlovely detail. The story started from most selfisli motives but went on until Jacob returned as a prince of God and had around him the beginnings of an enduring nation. THE HEART OF THE CHURCH.

There were three critical periods in Jacob’s life, and the congregation could see in them the manliness that had been taught in All Saints’ Church for sixty years. Archdeacon Bullock said he was not concerned with the wonderful progress the parish had made witl'i buildings and other such things—what he wanted to do was to get to the heart or kernel of the church. Jacob had begun badly. Esau, who thought very little about anything but hunting and his supper, seemed to be in Jacob’s way; so, aided by liis mother in the belief that the end' justified the means, he took that which belonged to another and in doing so took something that God would have given him had he waited. Then began a long period of punishment. His mother Urged him to go away and he went, never to behold her face again. He spent the greater part of that period of his life in exile and in slavery, being fooled about his wife, and as well, he who had torn a father’s heart knew what it was to have his own heart strained by the action of his son. The whole passage taught the message given for sixty years in All Saints’ Church—of the need for forgiveness and sorrow for sin. There should be gladness for the thought that from the church men had gone back to work knowing that they needed the pardon of God and knowing that they had to deal rightly with themselves.

Secondly, continued Archdeacon Bullock, Jacob had to learn a lesson about love and the loyalty that it demanded. In that one saw the most beautiful love story in the Bible. The scene of the opening was a wide open plain, bounded by hills, and shepherds grouped about a well with their flocks. There approached Rachel while Jacob was gossiping with the shepherds and he watched her coming with her father’s flock. He moved the stone over the well unaided and treated her with knightly grace. Then he put his arms about her, and, weeping, told her who he was. For seven long years he had served a mean and cunning uncle who had deceived him and had him serve seven more years for his beloved Rachel. How often he must have been tempted to find an easjor love, remarked the preacher. Yet Jacob was growing in manly wisdom and spiritual insight, and he learned that no virtue could flourish where there was no loyalty. How_ easy it was to give up friends, said the preacher, how easy to give np ideals, or to give up one’s church when a new cult advertised itself as giving salvation and help without effort and even without virtue.

Lastly, the final great lesson came to Jacob, who had left Canaan as a fugitive, but returned as a prince of God with the beginnings of a nation about him, when his caravans had crossed the ford to enter Canaan and

ho was ready to do so, too. A silent power gripped him and he fought to free himself. They were an equal match and Jacob wrestled through: the night until at last he fell—but fell as a prince, because he realised that without God he could go no further. He had recognised that God was all in all. So also had many learned in the All Saints’ Church, whether through pain, illness, failure in business, or the loss of a friend. It was better to hobble through life with the hand of God in ours than to gain great material reward. He was quite sure, Archdeacon Bullock concluded, that the All Saints’ Church had been the scene of many such lessons being learned. That was what they should praise and thank God for —the labours of vicars, curates, church workers and congregation in All Saints’ for the last 60 years, that they had brought some souls nearer to God.

The service was opened with the processional hymn, VThy Hand, 0 God is Guided.” The lessons were read by Canon G. Y. Woodward and other hymns sung were “Hark, hark, My Soul,” “Nearer My God to Thee” and the last “We Love the Place 0 God,” sung in solemn procession, followed by the Te Deum sung with the choir, standing before the altar, and the Sevenfold Amen. An anthem “Whoso Dwelleth,” from Psalm 91, was sung by the choir and at the close of the service the Benediction was pronounced by Dr. Sprott. At each of the services the music was under the direction of the organist and choirmaster, Mr J. Holmes Runnicies, who had made appropriate arrangements for this important occasion in the life of the church.