ROMANTIC LIFE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21926, 9 October 1934, Page 11

ROMANTIC LIFE

LABOURER, TO MINISTER LONG SERVICE IN CHURCH REV. B. HUTSON'S JUBILEE The oldest ordained minister of the Presbyterian Church to have received his theological training in New Zealand, the Rev. B. Hi itson, oi' Rentier's Avenue, Morningside, will reach the jubilee of his ordination to the ministry next Tuesday. Mr. Hutson was ordained and inducted to the charge of IV Awanmtn on October 10, 1881. Born at Faliner, Sussex, on Deceniher 3, 1854, Mr. Hutson recalls that lie started to work at six years of. age, and left day school at the age of 10. He gained some further education at night school, however, and at the age of 16, without telling his people. he joined the crew of a collier and went to sea. Two years later lie left London in the full-rigged ship Christina McAusland, for New Zealand. The vessel, which carried 500 immigrants, reached Port, Chalmers after a voyage of S>s days in December, 1872. Conditions were far from easy in those days for the young immigrant, and for some two years he carried his swag up and down the country, making his living at harvesting and ploughing and other farm work. At Otepopo he joined the membership of the Church in 1874. Study Under Difficulties The following year he went to Dunedin, and while doing labouring work on the construction of sewers began to study for the ministry of the Presbyterian Church. He had arrived in Dunedin with but £lO and not knowing a single friend. Such rapid progress did he make with his studies that he matriculated in 1877. As illustrating the widely different conditions that prevailed then, Mr. Hutson recalls with some amusement that about this time he used to work as a labourer until 10 a.n>., when he would be relieved while he went homo to exchange his moleskins for a tweed suit, so that he might fittingly conduct a class that he had in book-keeping and accountancy. He would return to the moleskins and pick and shovel after lunch. Mr. Hutson entered the Presbyterian Theological Hall, then in its earliest beginnings, in 1881, and in 1883 he left Dunedin on account of ill-health and started home mission work at Helensville. It was there that he completed his theological course. An outstanding incident for him of the year 1883 was the challenge debate in which he took part with Mr. G. A. Brown, in the old Theatre Royal, Auckland, on the subject of conditional immortality. The debate, in which Mr. Brown advocated and Mr. Hutson opposed the doctrine of conditional irnmortalitv, lasted for six nights and attracted large attendances and a great deal of public attention at the time. Mr. Hutson was licensed to preach in St. Andrew's Church, Auckland, on June 6. 1884. and was ordained at Te Awamutu in the following October A Prohibition Leader He accepted a call to Whangarei in 1889, and while there he shared with Dr. .Tames MacGregor, of Edinburgh and Oamaru, the distinction of winning the £IOO Frazer Prize for an essay on Socialism. The prize was offered as a result of a Sydney bequest, and was competed for throughout Australia and New Zealand. Mr. Hutson's next charge was at Rarensbourne, on the Otago harbour, and from there he went to Reef ton and in 1895 to Stratford. The struggle for prohibition was being keenly contested at that time, and he threw himself into it with vigour, becoming a leader of the prohibition forces in Taranaki. His health suffered from the strain, and after spending five years in the quiet country "Vharge of Fordell, he accepted a call in 1909 to Brooklyn. Wellington, which proved to be his last settled charge. ; Tt was there, in 1910. that he suffered | the bereavement of his wife to whom he j had been married in Auckland in 1883. i During his stay of 13 years in Brooklyn j he was responsible for the building of I the Hutson Sunday School Hall, which remains as his memorial. Since his retirement in 1922 Mr. Hutson supplied for some time at Hokitika, and ahio carried on work in the district that was then known as Edendale. Two pamphlets published by him. one on the subject of baptism and the other on the Second Coming, have had a considerable circulation. His only son is Dr. H. Hutson," of Blackball.