DR WADDELL'S MINISTRY

Otago Witness, Issue 3430, 9 December 1919, Page 47

DR WADDELL'S MINISTRY

ITS OFFICIAL CLOSE

Sunday at -St. Andrew's Church marked the official close of the ministry which Dr Rutherford Waddell has exercised there with such power and persuasiveness for a period extending over more than 40 years. In the morning he dispensed the communion to a very large congregation, and in the evening, when he preached again, the attendance was also large. At both services he avoided personal retrospect and sought rather to epitomise in-one appealing message the truth he has held as most essential throughout his ministry. In both sermons therefore he exalted Christ as the one Perfect Man, as the revelation of the Eternal God, as the one hope for the world, and the only changeless One amid the constant flux of the universe. In the morning he spoke from the words "Our gathering together unto Him," and expounded some of the chief factors that drew men to Christ. In the evening his subject was "A tent that shall not be removed,'" and in this address he pointed to the unchanging Christ as the only refuge from the constant change of all things amid which wo live and move. Professor Hewitson conducted the opening exercises in the evening, and in announcing the farewell *o be accorded Dr Waddell next Thursday evening, paid a striking tribute to him. He said that that service marked the close of a unique ministry. There were very few ministers who had been so long in one church. In the words s of the felicitous text that Dr Waddell had chosen at his last anniversary, he had worked with them from morning until the evening, until the stars appeared. But the uniqueness of his ministry was not so much in the length of it as in the character of it. Very few ministries had reached so deep into the lives of men and women, especially young men and women. Very few ministries had had such a wide horizon, had called men to service that had been so noble and so far-reaching. H-'s ministry, too, had been unique in that it had been a ministry of the tongue and also of the pen. No man in the Presbyterian Church, and perhaps none in any _ church in the dominion, had oomhined this twofold ministry in the same degree—great wealth and freshness of ideas and wonderful charm and beauty of expression. And through all that ministry there had been the influence of a personality that had shone with a purer and richer radiance as the years had gone by and he had endured the discipline of the fire

The choir rendered the Aaronic blessing at the close of the service. Dr Waddell visited the Sunday School in the afternoon, where he received many tokens and messages of affection from the Bible Class and all departments of the school before he gave his farewell message to them.