RELIGIOUS READING

Waipukurau Press, Volume XVIII, Issue 66, 11 March 1933, Page 7

RELIGIOUS READING

FOR THE SABBATH DAY A NOTABLE CHURCHMAN The Most Rev. John Charles Wright, D.D., Primate of Australia, whose death occurred recently at Hamner, New Zealand, was born at Bolton, Lancashire, in .1861. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School and Merton College, Oxford. Ho graduated B.A. in 1884, taking his M.A. degree in 1887. He was ordained deacon in 1885 and priest in the following year. In 1909 Dr. Wright was appointed Archdeacon of Manchester, and a few months later accepted an invitation to become Archbishop of Sydney and Metropolitan of New South Wales. He was consecrated in St. Paul’s Cathedral ori August 24, 1909, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Davidson, and 11 bishops. Tn 1910 ho was elected Primate of Australia. A staunch evangelical. Archbishop Wright upheld throughout, his episcopate the Low Church tradition for which tho Diocese of Sydney had been long noted. He took a keen interest in the work of the Order St. John of Jerusalem, of which he was appointed a sub-prelate in .1930. He was the author of one published work, “Thoughts on ‘Modern Church Life and Work. ’ ’

Archbishop Wright was married to Miss Dorothy Fiennes, daughter of Colonel the Hon. Tvo de Vesci Fiennes, and granddaughter of the 14th Lord Save and Sole, and there is a family of one son and three daughters. The Archbishop paid holiday visits to New Zealand on a number of occasions. Ho arrived at Wellington on February 7 with the intention of remaining , in tho Dominion for about six weeks. A REMARKABLE WILL Anyone who makes a practice of looking on the bright side, of things is apt to he suspected of posing (says the London Morning Post). But there is no hint of affectation in the remarkable will of Air-Commodore Richard M .Pink, which we published. ‘‘l should Tike to place on record,” ho wrote, "that I have been one of God's luckiest creatures. ... I have had a wonderfully happy time, and I thank God for the boon of life.’’ This spontaneous and sincere expression of gratitude for the ‘‘gift of life” from one who shouldered all the usual hardens of the war generation, and a few extra ones, is rather a reproof to those churlish, disgruntled spirits of which our post-war world has a surfeit. We want, so much, that we often forget to be thankful for the blessings we possess. Wore we to cease comparing our lot with that of persons apparently more favoured by good fortune than ourselves, we should be much more likely to discover the secret of contentment. No one disputes that life today is an anxious, trying and often thoroughly disagreeable business. But the curmudgeons only make it worse. Those who keep up their hearts and refuse to he robbed of their good spirits may well prove to be the real heroes and heroines when the world’s affairs are mended. NOTES OF INTEREST The most generous yearly contributor among the churches in London to the (London) Hospital Sunday Fund is St. Columbia’s Presbyterian Church. The collection taken on a Sunday a few weeks ago amounted to £476 9/2. The Hampstead Synagogue came next, with £279 12/6.

A war memorial to the thousands of animals —horses, mules, camels, dogs, carrier pigeons and other creatures that perished on tho various fronts during the Great Wai' —was recently unveiled in London by the Countess of Warwick. The society that put up the memorial had already built an animal dispensary for giving free treatment to the animals of the poor, and, within a few months 6000 animals were treated.