CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 3559, 13 May 1901, Page 3

CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH.

The anniversary services of the Congregational Church were held yesterday by bhe Rev. G> Burgess, and the celebration will be continued by a tea and concert to-morrow evening. At the evening service the preacher took for his text, Eccles., 8-8, " There is no discharge in this war." He referred to the recent return of New Zealanders from the war in South Africa, and the commendable spirit which had impelled them to offer their services, and vlso to the murder of Mr Chalmers and his companions by New Guinea cannibals. The missionary; in New Guinea had to risk his life, as the members of the Contingent had done, and they continued to do so year after year. The lessons of the war were used to illustrate the duty of entering upon a- war from which there is no discharge, the war against evil, personal, nunicipal, national, which, though there is no risk to life, requires a courage, a patience, and a determination as great as military warfare. Some interesting particulars were given of Mr Chalmers, one of the veteran workers of the London Missionary Society, who had done valiant work for about 33 years in the Southern Seas, carrying the savages npt only religion, but every influence that reclaims and civilises. The Governor oil British New Guinea had bome strong testimony to the value of missionary work in that island. The power of the missionary, as ■\ restraining, reclaiming, teaching, &nd ivilising power, he said, had been immeasurably greater than all the power his vdministrative Government could exercise over a long period of years; and that he owed most of the success of his administration to the work of Dr Laws, Mr Chalmers, and Mr Tomkins and their associates. There were only eleven European missionaries at work, with 119 native pastors, many of whom had been themselves cannibals or were the sons of cannibals. The devotion, courage, and endurance manifested in a life such as Mr Chalmers had lived could not be excelled and probably could not be equalled by any military achievement in the world. He hoped that the young men who had returned from South Africa would devote the fine qualities they had displayed there to the warfare against the enemies that endanger the highest well being of their own land, this war for humanity being one from whicß there is no discharge.