SEVENTY YEARS.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20484, 10 December 1934, Page 8

SEVENTY YEARS.

Growth of Presbyterianism in Dominion. PRESENT-DAY PROBLEMS. “ For our Church in this city and province this is a day of remembrance, for seventy years have passed since the Presbytery of Christchurch was first constituted.” said the Right Reverend Principal John Dickie, M.A.. D.D. (Moderator of the General Assembly and principal of Knox Theological College), when preaching at St Andrews Presbyterian Church yesterday at a special service held in connection with the seventieth anniversary of the Christchurch Presbytery. Seventy years ago, outside of Otago and Southland, there were only five Presbyterian ministers when the Christchurch Presbytery was constituted under the name of the Presbyterv of Canterbury, said the preacher. To-day there were five Presbyteries with fifty-three fully sanctioned charges and twenty Home Mission stations. The expansion of the Church had more than kept pace with the growth of the population, while activities in other respects showed at least a proportional increase. “ I could easily quote figures about our givings for missions and Church extension and social service work that would make us all feel very self-com-placent. I could speak of the part we have played in the general activities of the community, cultural, philanthropic and religious in a way that would rebut any charge of sectarian narrowness,” said the preacher. “ The Church is as capably and as faithfully served in these days as ever it was. While there is work to be done we have the men and women to do it.”

Every age had its own difficulties, problems, temptations, tasks and visions and every age required all its faith and all its strength to face up to its own work. The preacher said he did not wish them to idealise the past overmuch or to think that any one generation, taken in the mass, was appreciably superior to any other. “ Product of Environment.” “ Is it hot true that we are simply .vhat our circumstances make us, the product of our environment?” he asked ”We have it in us to be the masters of our destinies Above all, we can be more than conquerors through Him that loved us and gave Himself for us. But we are all affected by our circumstances. None of us is in every respect iust what he or she would have been had our outward circumstances been materially different. The men of seventy years ago had their temptations and their weaknesses as well as their strong points. But neither their temptations and their weaknesses nor their strong points were quite the same as ours. Life in all its more superficial aspects is far easier for us than it was for them. Even in these days we have a far greater measure of material comfort than they had at the best of times.

“ One of our problems is how to use our leisure wisely,” said the preacher. “ Theirs was how to find time for all the hard work that had to be got through. There was small temptation for them to fritter away the precious hours over trifles. Probably they were superior to us in grit and determination and the other sterner virtues. But almost certainly we are superior to them in the gentler graces. Another question was whether the Church meant as much in the life of the average Church member now as it did seventy years ago. Life had become much more complicated now and there were many other interests of all kinds, perfectly legitimate, which were unknown seventy years ago. “We cannot live on the past anv more than we can live on the food we ate a year ago,” he said. “We must be continually replenishing our stores, by recourse to the Bread of Life and the fountain of Living \\ aters. Memories and traditions have power to enrich and fructify where life is already present, but onlv there. The risen and exalted Christ is the only life of His Church.”