CHURCH NEWS AND NOTES

Southland Times, Issue 19123, 15 December 1923, Page 8

CHURCH NEWS AND NOTES

FROM PULPIT AND PEW. The anniversary services in connection with St. Peter’s Methodist Sunday School were held last Sunday. The sendees were conducted by the Rev. J. H. Haslam. The Sunday School choir, under the guidance of Mr Haslam, rendered appropriate anniversary music very sweetly. Solos were ■sung by Miss V. Piper and Miss A. McAra Miss Garrett and Messrs Tinson and Hary assisted with their violins. The services were well attended. In the afternoon the Sunday School prizes were presented by the Rev. Mr Haslam. The “Y” branch of the W.C.T.U. held its monthly meeting on Monday, December 3, Miss Lopdell presiding. It was reported that Lome Farm is to be visited on December 18, and a Christmas treat given to the boys. A jumble sale had been held in the Sylvan Bank Hall and proved to be successful, as did also the plain and fancy dress social held in Stobo Hall on December 16 Donations totalling about £3O are to be sent to the various funds, including Maori Fund, Bluff Sailors’ Rest, New Zealand Fund, Organising and Missionary Fund. The annual meeting took place at the close of the inonthly one, and reports showed that much good work had been done during the year. The following officers were elected for 1924:—President, Miss R. Finlayson; vice-presidents, Misses Lopdell, Blaikie, and Pearce; corresponding secretary, Miss R. Swale; rec. sec., Miss Seed; treasurer, Miss W. Cunningham; assistant treasurers, Misses Cameron and Sherriffs; Press reporters, Misses Ker and Pasley; convenor social committee, Miss Blackmore; pianists, Misses Blaikie and Carter; look-out committee, Misses A. Swale, Johnston, R. Connor, Messrs Ladbrook, Connor, Hynd; superintendent, Mrs Young. Captain N. F. Sanson, advance agent for a party of Indian Salvationists who will shortly visit Invercargill, will participate in the local Salvation Army services tomorrow, and will be assisting here during the next few weeks, especially in the musical portions of the services, being possessed of a fine baritone voice

On Sunday morning last a very large number of Hedgehope and surrounding district residents assembled at the Presbyterian Church, Hedgehope, to take part in an unveiling ceremony. The tablet, with the names of those who fell in the Great War and those’ who took part inscribed thereon, is erected at 4he porch-way of the new church. Prior to the unveiling, a service, marked with much solemnity, was held in the church. It was largely attended, and the Rev. Mr Hill, in an appropriate address, referred to the splendid heroism and sacrifice of the New Zealand soldiers in the Great War. The tablet was unveiled by Mrs Pearse, who lost two sons at the front. Addresses were given by Hon. G. J. Anderson, Mr P. de la Perrelle, M.P., Colonel Hargest, Captain McCarroll, Messrs Graham (Secretary of the Returned Soldiers’ Association), McConnell (Mayor of Mataura), and J. R. Hamilton. After the sounding of the Last Post, a lament was -played by Pipers M. Watson 'and H. Gilmore.

The Southland Methodist Women’s Missionary Auxiliary held their final meeting for the year in St. Peier’s Methodist schoolroom. A most interesting address was given by Rev. Haslam on “The Value of Life bv Heathen Nations.” Mrs Knuckey reported that £4 had been sent from the auxiliary a.a Christmas gift to the South Island Metho dist Orphanage. A motion of sympath’. was passed with Mrs Mercer, and also Mir Cheyne, in their recent sad bereavements. The president thanked the members for their loyalty and whole-hearted co-operatioi during the past year, and expressed the hope that all would return after the recess full ol fresh enthusiasm and new ideas. There was a fair attendance of members and a bright and pleasant afternoon was spent discussing missionary business and planning new schemes for next year’s work. The St. Faith Anglican Church Guild at Orepuki held a very successful sale of work in the Cassell’s Hall last Saturday afternoon and evening. There was a large gathering of .sympathetic friends who bought freely from the generous display of goods. The following were the helper's at the various stalls:—Plain and fancy stall No. 1, Mesdames Crowther, jum, and Froggatt; plain and fancy stall No. 2, Mesdames Clapp and Hay les, assisted by Mrs Carruthers and Miss McKinnon; produce stall Mesdames J. T. Simpson, Purdue, and w’. Menpes, assistants, Misses Purdue and P. Martin; sweets stall, Mrs Sorenson and Miss Betteridge, assisted by Miss Coote and C. Whelan ; Sunday School stall, Mesdames Crowther and G. Hogg, a»G.s'-?d by Misses Buckingham. Crowther, and Turnbull. Ter rooms, Mrs Buckingham, assisted by M< i dames Ferguson and Suddaby, Miss Llartii

and Mr Buckingham. Moop-la, Mr T. Simpson; skittles, Mr Grantham; flower girls, Misses A. Brooks, B. Buckingham, M. Crowther, and R. Suddaby. The subject for the evening address at First Church to-morrow night is “Jesus of Nazareth Passeth By.” The Rev. J. Lawson Robinson will be the preacher. In St. Paul’s. Presbyterian Church tomorrow evening there will be a special choral service in view of the approaching Christmas season. The choir, under Mr H. P. Weston, will render the anthem “And the Glory of the Lord,” and Handels, “Hallelujah Chorus” will be given at the close of the service. Solos will be given by Miss Lilburn and Mr Frank Taylor. The subject for the evening will be “The Incarnation.” Rev. H. G. Gilbert will be the preacher. The Right Rev. Frank Theodore Woods, M.A., D.D., Bishop of Peterborough, has been appointed to the Bishopric of Winchester, left vacant by the resignation of the Right Rev. Edward Stuart-Talbot, M.A., D.D. Dr Woods was vicar of Bradford from 1913 to 1916, when he became Bishop of Peterborough. Six feet high, he is one of the tallest of the bishops, and he was once a keen cricketen A son of a clergyman, he is a great-grandson of Elizabeth Fry, the prison, reformer. He is in his fiftieth year. Dr Wace, Dean of Canterbury, who is 86 years of age, recently sustained a compound fracture of the left hip. He had the misfortune to slip from the platform steps at the Diocesan Conference, Canterbury. Dr William Temple, Bishop of Manchester, in the course of an address to a meeting of men at Blackpool, said: All the problems about the distribution of material goods will come right as soon as you have a society which cares more about the things of the spirit than about the things of the flesh. The things of the spirit are not some narrow class of pursuits which we can only follow' up in a church building, or when we are in black clothes. They are everything which is beautiful, and everything which can wholesomely occupy the mind, and, above all, love, joy, and peace. There are always some people who think that the Christian religion consists of going without peaches and cream in this world in the hope that you can have more peaches and cream in another world. It is not anything of the sort.” One of the greatest personal forces on the Christian side in China to-day, states the Christian World, is Dr Cheong Ching Yi. He ranks as a Congregationalist, having been at one time minister of the L.M.S. Church at Pekin. Dr Cheong speaks English fluently, and in 1910 represented China at the World Missionary Conference in Edinburgh. From the outset the Chinese Christians have had no place for the denominational divisions of the Western Church. They call their body “The Church of Christ in China.” Recently, Dr Cheong preached for the L.M.S. at the City Temple, London.

At the Melbourne Anglican Synod it was resolved: “That in view of the intellectual needs of the present age and of the uncertain hold which many possess of the fundamentals of Christianity, this Synod respectfully requests his Grace, the Archbishop, to initiate action by the Anglican Episcopate throughout Australia, which shall secure the delivery in the winter of 1924 of popular lectures in all the capital cities on Christian Evidences, the Fundamentals of the Faith, the Higher Criticism, and the Right Relationship of Religion to Science.” The Central Methodist Sunday School is holding its anniversary services to-morrow. There will be special singing by the children. The Rev. H. G. Gilbert will take the morning address; in the afternoon the Sunday School prizes will be distributed, and the children will sing special hymns and give a number of appropriate recitations. The Rev. Harold Sharp will take the evening service as usual. In the column of the credence table of the High Altar in New York Cathedral are built fragments from the ruins of the High Altar at Bury St. Edmonds, England. When the memorial stones were consecrated it was an enduring witness before all the people of the men who in an earlier day secured the rights and liberties set forth in the Great Charter uien of a great nation, the hero-ancestors of the great Englishspeaking nations of to-day. • The Rev. Harry Emmerson Fosdiek, preaching recently in the First Presbyterian Church, New York, on “Honesty in the Pulpit,” said the fact that the minister is a public speaker was a dangerous thing, as the whole possibility of glowing and effective oratory depended upon Ihe sympathetic response of the audience, for the pressure was constantly on the minister to give the people what they wanted. Mr Fosdiek also pointed out that the minister was dependent financially on the goodwill of his congregation, and it was hard to face the possibility of proclaiming a disturbing truth. The preacher appealed to the church to make it easier for the minister to think freely, bravely, and truly about the deep concerns of spiritual life.