CIVIC SERVICE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 224, 19 June 1944, Page 4

CIVIC SERVICE

Local Body Members Attend St. John’s SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE

A civic service to mark the installation of the mayor fit Wellington and the commencement of a new term of office for members of the city council, hospital board and harbour board was held in St. John’s Church, Willis Street, yesterday.

They were taking office during the most momentous crisis iu the history of tlie country, the Empire and the world, said the Rev.. Gladstone Hughes in his address. Before they had been long in office the problems of the post-war world would be on us. The members of the council and of the boards, like their counterparts iu other centres, would have a most important and difficult part to play. Surely those circumstances indicated that they had the right to expect the sympathy, support and full co-opera-tion of all men of goodwill. “Yours is a dual responsibility,’ he said, addressing themembers. "You are responsible to the citizens of Wellington, but there is no guarantee that the judgment of the citizens on your work will be just. They are imperfect men and women whose judgment is often warped by prejudice and . whose wills are often swayed by passions. There-' fore you need not necessarily fear the judgment of men. But you are also, responsible for observing the conditions which govern the true life of the city. You are responsible to the divine order. You are responsible to God. Aud God is just and His judgment on your work will also be just. “Behind all our activities there is a divine purpose which sifts our work. God’s final word signifies the removal of the thing which may be shaken that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. There is nothing more fitting, therefore, than that members of public bodies which exist to promote the common good should at the commencement of their term of office .publicly declare in an act of worship their responsibility to Almighty God. “In our more serious moments we British people acknowledge that what makes us British is not any uniformity of race and blood, of culture and tradition even. We cling tenaciously to diverse traditions, but we are none the less British for that. What really makes us British is that we all cherish certain ideals and are prepared to stand for them. Come the four corners of the world in arms and we are ready to defend them and, if need be, to die for them. Our young men are doing that at this very moment. “Now, this means that there, are certain values which are more precious than life itself. There are things which can never die, but must live on, though we lose our lives in serving them. We did not bring them into being. We did not invent them. We did not discover them. They discovered us. We did not lay hold on them. They laid hold of us. Truth, justice, freedom. They are not our servants, to be bent to our wills. We aye their servants and must bend our purpose to them. They represent the eternal order in the world of time. They are the expressions of the Word of God, finally authoritative over our lives. “And so you will take up your tasks with these imperishable things to guide, challenge and judge you. You will do all you can to deal with the conditions in the city which are a menace to decent living. One of those problems is the lack of adequate housing. The position is so desperate that thousands of our people are deprived of anything approaching decent home conditions. Dens of vice are making their appearance, and the rising generation is threatened by the Insidious infection of evil. But you will do more than that. You will see to it that nothing shall receive official sanction which hinders or destroys the work of those agencies which are seeking to lay for the rising generation true and worthy spiritual foundations. “If nt the close of your term of office you are able to pray the prayer of the worker, ‘Let the beauty of the Lord be upon us aud establish Thou the work of our hands upon uh, yea. the work of our bands establish Thou it,’ you. will be able to face the citizens and give an account of your stewardship without feat, not because you have merely been the servants of their changing moods, but because according to your lights and the dictates of your conscience, you have been the servants of the Most High.” The Governor-General, Cir Cyril Newall, read the lesson.