ST. SEPULCHRES CHURCH, AUCKLAND.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume V, Issue 52, 27 December 1890, Page 6

ST. SEPULCHRES CHURCH, AUCKLAND.

Of all the incumlients of the various Episcopalian churches in Auckland, the best know n is probably the Ven. Benjamin Thornton Dudley, incundrent of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Kylrer Pass. His father, the Ven. Benjamin Woolley Dudley, Canon of Christchurch Cathedral, ami Archdeacon of Rangiora, was one of the earliest settlers in the Canterbury province, having arrived there forty years ago. He will be recollected by old residents of Auckland

as being in charge of the district of St. John’s College and Panmure in the year 1859. His son, the Archdeacon, and subject of our notice, received his education in New Zealand, and after having been ordained, officiated for awhile in the Melanesian Mission as Chaplain to Bishop Selwyn. The climate of the islands not agreeing with his health, however, he returned to Auckland,

and assumed the post of Curate-in-Charge at St Mary’s, Parnell. Twenty-five yearssince, when the gradual growth of the town up Symonds-street necessitated the establishment of a new cure in the suburbs extending in the direction of Mount Eden, the present schoolroom of St. Sepulchre’s was built there, and served for the purposes of religious ministration until some nine years ago, when the church of St. Sepulchre’s in the Kyber Pass was erected.

During the whole of this period the Venerable Archdeacon Dudley has remained unalterably fixed in the incumbency of that parish, and consequently enjoys the distinction of being the clergyman of the Episcopalian Church

in New Zealand who has held his charge the longest. The kindness and indefatigability of Archdeacon Dudley is a matter of common remark among all who come within the sphere of his acquaintanceship, and the double bonds of habit and esteem serve to endear him to those of his parishioners who are the recipients of his ministrations. He was appointed to the Archidiaconate in the year 1883. In a region like that of New Zealand, where the joyous season of Christmastide comes, so to speak, unseasonably in contrast with the aspect it exhibits in the British Isles, and the Howers are those of mid-summer, ample opportunity for ecclesiastical decoration presents itself. All over the colony on the day preceding Christmas every church of the Episcopalian and Catholic communion is beset by numbers of devoted ladies, who, with certain fascinatingclergy, use their best efforts to render the sacred edifice a dream of floial beauty. Nowhere can these delightful effects be more successfully produced than in the neighbourhood of Auckland, where the profusion of doweis is remarkable. We present on page 7 a view of the interior of St. Sepulchre's Church, where the decorative process is being carried on in the orthodox and very agreeable method.