CHURCH IN OTAGO

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26719, 13 March 1948, Page 8

CHURCH IN OTAGO

CENTENNIAL CELEBRATIONS WELCOME TO OVERSEAS DELEGATES “We have a responsibility to-day, not only to the present, but to the future of this city and province, and I hope that during the remaining weeks of the celebrations at all our functions we will remember not only to join in thanksgiving for the past but to dedicate ourselves to the days to come,” said the Mayor, Mr Cameron, at. the public welcome in the Council Chambers yesterday to the official visitors from overseas to the Presbyterian synod celebrations.

The visiting representatives were the Very Rev. Dr John Baillie (Church of Scotland), the Very Rev. W. Purves Boyes (Presbyterian Church of England), the Rt. Rev. A. Campbell Grieve (Presbyterian Church of Australia), and Mr E. M. Jarvis (Presbyterian Church of South Africa). There was a large and representative attendance of citizens who completely filled the Council Chambers.

The Mayor said the city honoured the distinguished visitors representing the church which had organised the settlement of those who came to the province in March, 1948, and who had laid the foundation of the city truly and nobly. In addition to their gifts of industry and commerce, Mr Cameron said, he liked to remember that the early settlers had brought the Bible. As soon as they landed here, they instituted churches, and to-day the city had many fine monuments to the courage and vision of those pioneer church settlers. Dunedin owed a very great , debt of gratitude to the church for the magnificent work it had done here in the last 100 years. Service to Education

Not only had the early settlers brought the Bible but they had also brought education, Mr Cameron continued. They had a schoolmaster on the ship, and they had laid the foundation of Dunedin as the leading educational city of New Zealand, as it still was to-day. They had provided a university, colleges and schools, and many other institutions of which the city was justifiably proud, and he paid a tribute to the Presbyterian Church for the very worthy part it had played in educational affairs in the city. “All our planning and organisation for years past has been leading up to the month of March, because it was just on 100 years ago that those vessels arrived here,” Mr Cameron said, “and so on March 23, in the spirit of thanksgiving and dedication the city and province will join in thanking God for the past and we will rededicate ourselves to the tasks of the future.” Dr J. D. Salmond, extending a welcome to the overseas visitors on behalf. of the Synod’s Centennial Committee, said that the centennial celebrations were not merely a provincial concern, but of significance to the whole of New Zealand because the • early settlers of Otago had made an impression on the whole of the country s national life. It was well that they should remind themselves and me whole of New Zealand of that fact. “The virtue of moral, integrity and the reputation of the old Dunedin firms have helped to establish a high ethical standard throughout the length and breadth of the land,” Dr Salmond said. He also referred to the remarkable achievement of the early settlers in establishing within 23 years of the ’ settlement of the province an education scheme which began at the primary school and extended to the university. The first hall of divinity had been founded in Dunedin, and their system of child welfare was also be§un bere so that overseas visitors would realise that in coming to this Edinburgh of the South they had come no mean city, and it had been founded by people who were concerned with the religious life: of the community. The Rev. W. A. Stevely, moderatordesignate of the Synod of Otago and Southland, was associated in the welcome.

In his reply, Dr Baillie said that a meeting of the General Administration Committee of the Church of Scotland on December 16, 1947, had appointed Sir John Falconer to be associated with him m conveying to the Synod of Otago and Southland its congratulations on the celebration of' the centenary of Otago in 1948, and the speaker said that he now took the opportunity of extending its congratulations to the city of Dunedin in the celebration of this occasion. “This I do with the greatest of pleasure and dehght and a feeling of great honour that it should fall to my lot to do so,” Dr Baillie added. A Familiar Name The name of Dunedin, he said, had been familiar to him from his early youth because he was brought up in the Gaelic dialect, and to him it had been the name for Edinburgh. At a later stage, he remarked, there' had come to live next door to his mother's house a man from .Dunedin, a magnificent specimen of humanity, and the speaker had somehow thought of Dunedin as some sort of El Dorado because this Mr Dawson, when other men were giving him a penny, gave him half a crown!

Dr Baillie said he had had a magnificent welcome and so had his wife and fellow travellers. He added that in Scotland they always felt strongly the importance of close contact between civic and ecclesiastical affairs, and he hoped that in Dunedin, as it was at the foundation of the settlement, civic life would go forward foursquare in the belief in the gospel. . Rt. Rev. A. Campbell Grieve, the Very. Rev. W. Purves Boyes, and Mr Jarvis, all extended congratulations to the city and province on behalf of their respective organisations on the attainment of the centenary and their appreciation of the kindly welcome that they had received. The Rev. A. M. Elliffe, moderator of the Dunedin Presbytery, expressed the thanks of all to the Mayor for arranging the function.