A JUBILEE

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2787, 3 June 1916, Page 4

A JUBILEE

$ < Many changes have taken place in Ghurch and State in New Zealand during the half-century which has passed since the consecration of St. .Paul's Anglican Pro-Cathedral on June 6, 1866, the jubilee of which interesting event is to be celebrated on Tuesday next. • As war and festivity do not readily combine,.-the celebrations will not be of a very elaborate character, but the Bishop and parish authorities rightly thought that the jubilee of St. Paul's should be fittingly, if quietly, observed. The year in which St. Paul's was consecrated stands nearly midway between the present day and the date of the first preaching of the Gospel in New Zealand by Samuel Marsden in 1814. The career of Bishop Hadfield, who tyok part in tho ceremony, bridges the gap between Marsden's last visit in 1838 ancl the present generation. The first St. Paul's Church, which stood in the Parliamentary grounds opposite the Museum, was a centre of religious life in .tho very early days of the colony, and before the Constitution of the Church of tho Province of New Zealand had been signed. In old St.- Paul's Bishop Abraham was consecrated under authority of Letters Patent brought from England. He was the first Bishop of Wellington, and was also the first Anglican,Bishop'consecrated in . New Zealand; .Canon Pcuchas, in. his history ..'0f.... "The English Church in New .Zealand,"• tells -lis ' that this event marks the end' of a distinct epoch. "The decade which began in 1850 amid confusion and disunion had brought year by year some healing, strengthening power, until it closed with a united Church, an increased clergy, and a multiplied episcopate. Bishop Hadfield was consecrated in St. Paul's (the existing building) in 1870. This consecration is specially noteworthy, because it was the first in which a Bishop for a colonial see was consecrated without the lloyal mandate or license. The last trace of State connection thus disappeared. Tho bishops had previously surrendered their Letters Patent, having decided "to rely in future upon the powers inherent in their office for perpetuating the succession of their order within the.colony of New Zealand, and securing the due exterciso of their episcopal functions in conformity with .the Church Constitution." The men who laid the foundations of the Church in New' Zealand did their work-well, and it is well that we should periodically look back and think of tho debt wo owe them. . But perhaps wo are rather too apt. to idealise the days that have gone and the great personagesof the past,. Wo sec only their finished work. Their troubles and disappointments, mistakes and failures, have been largely obliterated by time. Yet , their trials and tribulations have a lesson for us as well as their successes. When we are in a pessimistic mood; when all things seem to be going wrong;' when wo feci that our generation cares for nothing but "tucker and the races"; it gives ono fresh heart to remember that the 'churchmen and statesmen of fifty years ago had their fits of depression. .They, too, were at times ■ inclined to ask, "Who will show us any good?" They often felt that they had been given an impossible task. But we can see tho fruitfuliipss of their endeavours, and perhaps, the value which those who will conic after us will place upon the achievements of our time may exceed the expectations .of the most optimistic of us. The golden ago is not in tli« past or present, but in the future. With slow and faltering steps the world struggles on towards it. The contemplation of tho efforts made by our forefathers to hasten its coming should inspire us to keep moving on.