ORDINATION OF MR MAWSON, M.A.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 12638, 16 April 1903, Page 3

ORDINATION OF MR MAWSON, M.A.

AN IMPRESSIVE CEREMONY,

It was a happy idea that led the Presbyterian General Assembly to instruct tho Synod of Otago to carry out the ordination of Mr W. Maivson, M.A., who was last night set apart to the sorvice of tho Church as a missionary to the Chinese in the villages of Canton. Under ordinary circumstances tho ordination would have been administered by the Presbytery of Dunedin, but the substitution of tho synod gave it a wider significance, while it lent an interest to tho proceedings of that body akin to that which used to characterise its deliberations before it was shorn of its prestige as tho supremo court of tho Otago Church. The fathers and brethren who have been attending the two days' session of the synod wore well in evidence, and tho public were present in considerable numbers. The procedure- > was well calculated to display tho simplioity and deep imnressiveness of Presbyterian forms of worship. After praise, prayer, and the reading of the Scriptures, tho Moderator (the Rev. A. Cameron) delivered a sermon on the qualities of true prayerr It was a simple, earnest exposition of tho theme, and as the discourse' neared its conclusion it was felt that the right keynote was being struck. After the sermon Mr Cameron directed the young missionary to stand up to answer tho questions prescribed by the law of the Church for candidates for ordination. These having been answered, Mr Mawson knelt down and the Moderator, descending from the pulpit, engaged in prayer, all present standing the while. At a certain point in the prayer tho words of consecration and ordination were spoken, and the Moderator and some others as representing the synod laid their bands on Mr Mawson's head. At the conclusion of the prayer tho right hand of fellowship in the ministry was given to the missionary and his admission to tho holy ministry duly declared. Dr Watt, who had been appointed to address the missionary, then proceeded to speak to him a few wellehoson words, enjoining him to attend carefully to the-life of his own soul, and to give himself with all diligenco to the great work to which he was called. The address was characterised not- only by earnestness but by a fine breadth of view—when Dr Walt, for example, advised the missionary not to speak or think contemptuously of the religion of the Chinese, but to recognise it as a beam, dim, uncertain, yet a beam from the Father of Lights. At tho close of Dr Watt's address, the Rov. Mr Don (missionary to the Chinese in Otago) delivered a brief and enthusiastic address, in which be dwelt on tho greatness of the missionary enterprise to which the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand was being divinely summoned. It was made abundantly manifest that the missionary spirit is growing in the Presbyterian communion, who have always held an honourable place anion? the Christian churches of tho world for their devotion to this work. Mr Don mentioned that one congregation was considering whether it might not become responsible for the payment of the whole salary of one of the missionaries they had already sent to China, and referred to various other almost equally encouraging facts. The service was brought to a close by an address from the Rev. Mr Hewitson (convener of the Missions Committee of the General Assembly). The note he struck was again enthusiastic, though he said that churches must, in missionary as in all other enterprises, display a spirit of wisdom as well as courage. The outlook was most hopeful. The missionaries they had sent to the heathen in China and India and the islands of tho Pacific had done noble service. New Zealanders, it was said, had fought well on the battlefields of South Africa; they wero fighting well in God's battle with the ignorance and sin of the heathen world. Numbers of men and women, as fit, probably, for tho work as any that had been sent out, were waiting to bo sent into the field. But it was most certam that if the Church enrolled them in its missionary band there must be an opening of tho heart and of tho pockets too of the people. _ An effort would be mado presently to stir the Church up to a greater sense of its responsibility. The doxology was then sung, and an interesting and impressive service brought to a close.