CHURCH OF ST PETER, HEAD OF" THE BAY, LYTTELTON.

Wellington Independent, Volume XXVI, Issue 3197, 12 May 1871, Page 3

CHURCH OF ST PETER, HEAD OF THE BAY, LYTTELTON.

[From N.Z. Church News.] The service in connection with the opening of the above church took place on Thursday. It must have been both gratifying and encouraging to those who have worked so hard and subscribed so liberally to the building fund to see the interest taken by those residing in the district in the proceedings of the day. The church was very well decorated ; a large floral cross was placed over the allar, tbe Font was filled with flowers and ferns, and laurel leaves adorned the pedestal ; upon the walls, were various^ecclesiastical emblems. The service began at half-past one, the prayers being said by the Rev F. Knowles, of Lyttelton. After the ante-Communion service, a short but telling sermon was preached by the Rev B. W. Harvey, (lately appointed to St Pauls' church, Wellington), curate of the district. The rev preacher took for his text the words of our Saviour,

" Blessed are the eyes that see the tdings that ye see ;" and in opening his subject said : — " This is a day to Gall for special thankfulness from all our little community,. It is a day to which 1 some of you have been looking forward for years. Your work has met with many delays, many disappointments, but now at last you have been permitted to raise a church in which you and your children may assemble to worship God. It is an event well worthy to be celebrated with heartfelt rejoicing, and in your rejoicing the feeling uppermost in your minds ought to be, as I trust and believe it is, the feeling of gratitude to the Giver of all good things for the possession of this House of Prayer. But there may be some who do not understand why we should lay any great stiess upon the duty of being thankful for the opening of this church ; but it is a good thing, they will say, to have a church in this place, but it is a thing we can always get if we choose to pay for it. We have chosen to pay for it, and we have got our moneys worth, no doubt, but still nothing to call for special thankfulness ; and if we are to look no further than mere externals, perhaps they are right ; but I wantyou to think today ef the spiritual realities to which these external things correspond. To think of the history which every such church as ours carries, as it were, written upon its walls, the history of the mighty struggles the world has had to undergo before such a church became a possibility, then I think you will agree with me that we have cause for exceeding gratitude to our God that we are permitted to worship Him in this house. You will see in these walls not a mere equivalent for so much hardly- I earned, hardly-gathered money, but a possession beyond all price, a blessing to which, without irreverence, may be applied the words of our Saviour in our text, " Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see."

Another passage in the sermon was as follows: — " In the horror of their recoil from the superstitions of the middle ages, men, as they always do, rushed into the opposite extreme, and denounced some things, innocent, even sacred, in themselves, because they had been abused. Among these the symbol of the cross, which, from the very earliest times, had naturally been the badge of the Christian faith, became an object of jealousy and suspicion to many timid, well-meaning persons, whilst ihe danger from which they had escaped was fresh in men's minds, this feeling was natural and excusable. But, thank God, a superstitious horror of the cross is no longer needed to prevent a superstitious reverence of it ; men of all parlies and shades of opinion now make ute of it — as indeed a sacred symbol, one that ought to be dear to the heart of every Christian man. Thank God we are able to set up that sacred sign over our churches without leading any one to suspect us of wishing to bring them back into the slavery from which we have been delivered. I look upon the free, reverential use of that sign in Protestant churches as a mark of the most complete deliverance from the corruptions which had well nigh destroyed the faith of our forefathers."