PRESBYTERIAN JUBILEE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXI, Issue 18838, 13 October 1924, Page 8

PRESBYTERIAN JUBILEE

CANTERBURY CELEBRATION 3.

EARLY CHURCH PIONEERS,

BEFORE THE "PILGRIMS" CAME.

The diamond jubilee of the Canterbury Presbytery will be celebrated by Presbyterians in Christchurch to-day by gatherings in St. Andrew's and St. Paul's Churches, a public luncheon and a conversazione. Special church services were arranged for yesterday in connection with the celebrations. Although the actual foundation of Presbyterianism in Canterbury goes back to the early "forties," it was not until October 13, 1864 —60 years ago to-day— that the four ministers then in the province and the three ruling elders met and formed the Canterbury Presbytery j which included the territory now covered by the Christchurch, Ashburton, Timaru and Westland Presbyteries. The history of this presbytery is very fully dealt with in the current issue of the Outlook by the Rev. John Dickson, M.A.. the author, among other works, of "The History of the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand." Presbyterian pioneers, says Mr. Dickson, in the persons of John and William Deans, of Riccarton, and of John Gebbie, Samuel Maneon and William Todd, were in occupation of part of the Canterbury Plains 81 years ago, and six or seven years before the arrival of the historic "first four ships" that brought the Canterbury Pilgrims. Bat for the unfavourable report of Mr. Tuckett, agent and surveyor for the New Zealand Company, who was appointed to seek a site for the "New Edinburgh settlement," and visited Canterbury in 1844, the site of Dunedin might have been in Canterbury, and Canterbury might have been even more Presbyterian than it is at present. These pioneer Presbyterians, after securing a grant of three acres for church, manse and school, sent to Scotland for a "really clever minister" and "a good extempore preacher." When, in response the Rev. Charles Fraser, M.A., and his wife arrived in 1856, they were received with open arms, and when the following year the new minister opened the new St. Andrew's Church, which cost £900. reading himself in as a Free Church minister of a mission charge in' Canterbury, 304 Presbyterians gathered from far and near and gave him such a collection au had never been previously heard of in Canterbury—i.e., £74 8s 6d. Another writer, in an article published by a Christchurch paper, remarks that there was one priceless incident in the early history of the church which provided a hectic pago of church annals. There was some pother about the ordination of a minister at Lyttelton. Three members of the presbytery discovered at the last minute that the ordination was going on against their wishes. The problem was: what was to be done? The trio drew up a protest, and the job devolved on the Rev. W. Hogg to deliver it. He commissioned a cab at Christchurch and set out at a break-neck pace for Lyttelton. But the pace was not hot enough for him. The poor horse did his best along the Heathcote Valley, but the final - stretch up the Bridle Track was too much. "Mr. Hogg, however," says the writer, "was a man of action. He sprang out of the cab and took off his coat and waistcoat. Then, like a clerical Nurmi, he left the miles of the Bridal Track behind him, taking all the available short cuts. ft was frightfully undignified, of course, but that was a mere detail. He reached the church in an exhausted condition when the ordination service was almost over. He dramatically uttered his solemn protest, and then feebly panted his demand for a glass of water. Yet, in spite of all his trouble, the ordination service went on t 0 the bitter end ; and nothing came of his effort to stop it."