THE LATE DR CAMERON.

Otago Witness, Issue 3860, 6 March 1928, Page 36

THE LATE DR CAMERON.

UNVEILING A MEMORIAL

“It is sadly easy to forget the dead, qven when they have been our friends and benefactors.”

These words were spoken by Professor Hewitson on Tuesday night at the unveiling of the memorial window to the late Dr Cameron in the Auderson’s Bay Presbyterian Church. Dr Cameron was for 34 years minister of that congregation, his first and only charge, ana the service on Tuesday was attended by a great ma/iy who held him in grateful memory. The present minister, the Rev. G. Jupn, presided, and the Rev. W. Trotter, Dr Cameron’s successor as chairman of the Social Service Association, delivered a long prayer after tl.e unveiling of the window by Mr Henry Duckworth, one of the late doctor's closest and oldest friends. The window is a grateful recognition by those to whom he ministered of the value of his life and work. It will also serve (in the words of Prd¥essor Hewitson) as a reminder to them, and to those who will follow after, of what Dr Cameron was, and said, and did. Professor Hewitson took as his text the seventh verse of the thirteenth chapter of Hebrews: “Remember them that had the rule over you (your leaders), which spake unto you the word of God; and considering the issue of their life, imitate their faith.” The passage appeared, he said, to be particularly appropriate to the present occasion. It was an exhortation to remember and to imitate departed leaders, and the subjects suggested for remembrance and imitation were among the outstanding features of Dr Cameron’s work and character: leadership, preaching, and faith. It was sadly easv to forget the dead, even when they had been friends and benefactors. “ Forgotten,” the psalmist said, “ forgotten, like a dead man, out of mind.” A neglected grave was not an uncommon sight in our cemeteries. Time fought against memory. It swept all but the greatest names into oblivion. They fly, forgotten, as a dream Dies at the opening day. Duty, urgent, clamorous duty, fought against memory. It filled our days and nights; it engrossed our energy and thought; it left us no leisure for remembrance and reflection. Worst of all, ingratitude fought against memory; it neglected memory and left it to die. Ingratitude was one of the basest and cruellest of mortal sins, and it was one of the most common. Of 10 lepers cleansed, only one returned to give thanks, and he was an alien.

“To keep our memories vivid and our gratitude alive,” Professor Hewitson went on, “we hang portraits and pictures on the walls of our homes and of our public institutions, we erect monuments in our streets and squares, we place windows in our churches, we observe days as fasts and festivals of remembrance. In our national life we set apart as days of remembrance such days as Anzac Day and Armistice Day. In our church life we have Christmas Day, Good Friday, and Easter Day as days of commemoration of the birth, death, and resurrection of our Lord. Even with the aid of such monuments and of such days it is difficult not to forget. “As a congregation you are seeking to remember a former minister by placing this window in your church, but you will probably find that if his memory and that of other leaders is to be kept alive it will be necessary not merely to have memorial windows, but from time to time to have a day of commemoration on which you will think and speak of their life and example.” The aspects of work and life to be remembered, Professor Hewitson said, were leadership, preaching, and faith, and those qualities were combined to a remarkable degree in Dr Cameron.

“On this day,” he concluded, “ when you have come with affection and gratitude to remember your late minister, I, as one of his most intimate friends, bid you remember his leadership with itg fine combination of the ideal and the practical, his preaching of the Word with his love of its deeper and more spiritual trutlis, and his living trust in God which sustained him in his work and in his sorrows, gave him peace and joy. His faith and hope made him not ashamed. When he died suddenly in the streets of Christchurch the projects to which he had ipven his strength were progressing, and from his personal life the clouds had cleared and the sun was shining.”