DUNEDIN PRESBYTERY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22830, 14 March 1936, Page 9

DUNEDIN PRESBYTERY

LICENSING OF STUDENTS The licensing of two students who have completed their course occupied the attention of the Dunedin Presbytery on Thursday evening. The ceremony was held in the Caversham Presbyterian Church, and the moderator (the Rev. D. N. M'Kenzie) presided. The two students who had completed their studies at Knox College, and whose trials for license had been sustained by the presbytery, were Messrs W. H. Johnson and A L. Carduo. The moderator conducted the service and put the prescribed questions to the candidates, and then by prayer set them apart as preachers of the Gospel. In his charge to the probationers the moderator urged them to be workmen that need not be ashamed. They had n high calling—the highest in the world. Preaching was the most important task of a minister, and all the rest of his tasks should be made subservient to this. It was necessary to maintain a sense of balance and not to preach oneself to a standstill. The body was a temple of the Holy Ghost, and its needs had to be conserved. He was not going to stress the importance of study to them, who had so recently completed an academic course, but what he would say was that the world of books had to' be co-ordinated with the real world of men and women in their everyday lives. New experiences would enlarge their capacities, and the sorrow, trouble, want, and need in the lives of ordinary people would make great demands on them so they must come out of the world of books, and meet men and women in the simplicity of their daily lives. Their great task was to feed the sheep. They would have to refrain from striving to be popular, but their great principle must be loyalty to the truth at all costs. He congratulated them on the successful conclusion of their courses.