THE LATE REV. R. S. GRAY

Otago Witness, Issue 3590, 2 January 1923, Page 52

THE LATE REV. R. S. GRAY

MEMORIAL SERVICE IN DUNEDIN. In spite of the exodus from the city for the holidays, there was an excellent attendance at the memorial service held on Sunday evenin'; in the Hanover Street Baptist Church in memory of the late Rev. R. S. Gray. The Rev. R. H. Knowles Kempton conducted the service. The Mayor (Mr J. 8. Douglas) and several councillors represented the citizens. Brief addresses were given by the Mayor, Mr E. H. Drew, and Mr Herbert S. Adums (president of the United Temperance Council). Mr A. C. Stewart then presented the church with an enlarged photograph of Mr Gray, and spoke of his intimate friendship with him for some 20 years, during which he had formed the highest- opinion of his manliness, naturalness, and cheerfulness. His home life was ideal, and none con'd tell the loss, which his sudden removal had inflicted upon his wife and family. In accepting the beautiful portrait on behalf of the church, the.secretary. Mr H. H. Driver, said that Mr Gray and Mr Stewart had been ‘"men of the knotted heart.” and that Mr Stewart could not liave done better than perpetuate the memory of his friend by such a speaking likeness. All >vho had enjoyed Mr Gray’s ministry during the six years he had held the pastorate (1913-1919) would remember his remarkable pulpit and platform gifts, his ardent devotion to Jesus Ohrist, to \\ hom he had in early life dedicated his rare abilities, his unswerving fidelity to the gospel of redeeming love, his zeal for the advancement of the denomination to which he belonged, combined with noble catholicity and broad-mindedness, his plea for social, civil, and national righteousness, his tender sympathy with the suffering and the sorrowing, and his enthusiastic advocacy of the missionary enterprise. Special prayer was then made, that the bereaved family might be Divinely comforted The Rev. R. H. K nowles Kempton preached an appropriate memorial sermon from Isaiah xxxii, 2, “A man shall be as an biding place from the wind and a covert from th» tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a wearv land.” Jesus Christ alone perfectly fulfilled the prophecy, but every good man who arrested the sand-drifts of evil and error partially fulfilled it. A very impressive service was closed Dv the triumphant hymn. ‘‘For All Thy Saints Who from Their Labours Rest,” and the benediction.