THANKSGIVING SERVICES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26905, 18 October 1948, Page 6

THANKSGIVING SERVICES

LARGE CONGREGATIONS The two centenary thanksgiving services yesterday attracted exceptionally large congregations, there being many present from Dunedin and other centres. The Very Rev. Dr D. C. Herron was the preacher in the morning and the Rev. Dr H. W. West in the evening. During the morning service Dr Herron gave the name of Johnstone Hall to the old church, after the Rev. William Johnstone, the first settled minister of the church. “Think of the courage of the first settlers,” said Dr Herron, in the course of his sermon. “ They probably knew when they left the Old Land that many of them would never return. Why did they come? In some cases it was stern necessity. Conditions had been hard. Some came to give their children an opportunity to live in a land where the sun shone and the fields were wide and the future full of hope. Of some it was true as of Columbus that the instinct for a new country burned in them. The spirit of adventure was in their blood —the spirit of which Kipling wrote in his poem “The Explorer.” No people on earth have a greater love for the Homeland than the Scots, yet there is scarcely a country under heaven where they are not found. Their life here was difficult. The greatness of the things they did added to their strength.” , , , The Rev. Dr West took as the subject of his sermon, “ Heritage and Destiny,” emphasising that the purpose of the pioneers was to establish the Church, to maintain a strong spiritual tone, and to establish a community in which education played a prominent part. They had succeeded in their purpose, and it was this that was our heritage of 1948. “Our spiritual destiny,” he said, “ would depend on the use ■we made of it.”