MARSDEN CENTENARY

Southland Times, Issue 17014, 12 April 1912, Page 5

MARSDEN CENTENARY

TO BE IMPOSINGLY CELEB BATED. (For United Press Association). ■ - ■ • AUCKLAND, April 11. In the month of.February, 19to, New Zealand will have an opportunity of celebrating what Bishop Crosslcy referred to at the Church of England Men’s Society Conference as the most remarkable anniversary that the dominion has experienced, namely, the centenary of tlie introduction of the cross of Jesus Christ with its message, it hope and its healing. In celebration of this great event, his Lordship said, the bishop and diocese of Auckland had been requested to arrange for the lidding of the first great and united Church Congress for New Zealand. “The name of Marsden,” continued the president, "is to be enrolled on the list of heroes in the battle line of God, and we would be unworthy inheritors of the sacrifice, of the, daring, of' himself and his comrade missionaries' it we did not, make a great move to witness to the world that at the one hundredth anniversary of the landing of Marsdon we were desirous of commemorating the event by some great and common action.”—(Applause.) The speaker said he had little doubt that they would be-able to obtain visits by bishops not only from Australia. but from Canada, United States, Church of England, Church of Ireland and Episcopal Church of Scotland, and probably from Soutli Africa. He desired to ask the Church of England Men's Society thus early to join in making the Marsden Centenary an occasion not of a flourish of trumpets, but of a ponetcntial resolve to be up and doing as was Marsden when lie preached the gospel by ihe Bay of Islands. — (Applause.)