PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVIII, Issue 3660, 2 July 1927, Page 2

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

MISSIONARY ADDRESSES. On Thursday evening, two very interesting addresses were delivered by the Revs. Laughton and Stevenson, on Mission work organised and maintained by the Presbyterian Church of Ne\v Zealand.

Mr. Stevenson spoke of the Home Mission work done under the Superintendent, Rev. G. Budd. He said the Home Mission work could be decided into three forms, first, the organisation of public worship and churches in the scattered and back block places of our land, bringing to the people cut off by lack of communication and isolation, the gospel of our Lord and Christian social intercouse, thus laying the foundation of future churches, as towns sprang up and population increased. The second form was that of the growing suburban areas of our large cities, where people who Jived outside the range of the city church, and whose need must be met, and among whom churches must be organised and Sunday schools started', so that again, as in the first form of the work, self supporting charges will ultimately be the result. The third form was that of charge or church, which through, perhaps, a shift of population or other causes, became reduced in status, and in order to carry on came under th eHome Mission Committee’s charge, temporally or otherwise. Mr. Stevenson said that as a new business could' not be developed without enthusiasm and capital, new work for our Lord could not be organised without prayer and money. He was not asking for their money that night, but for their prayers and interest in the Home, Maori, and Foreign Mission work of the church, for “where their heart was, there would be their treasure.” - The Rev. J. G. Laughton spoke of i-.is work, the -work of the Maori Missionaries in general, and of the Presbyterian Mission workers in particular. He said there was a time when the Maori race was practically evangelised by the Anglican and Methodist Missionaries, hut unfortunately what the missionary had done was undone by the unfairness of the white races in trading and land dealing, which resulted in the wars between the two races. While some tribes remained in the Christian church, many others turned to systems of religion which contained all the worst features of Tohuiigaism. ‘ This is to be seen particularly in the Rrfhgatu section formed by Te Ivooti,. which has no belief iu a Saviour, or the love of God revealed through Jesus Christ, their conception of God being' the same as their heathen ansestors, and their practices, being likewise. Rua was in a large measure regarded and worshipped as a god by many of the people of the Tulioe country, where the sphere of Presbyterian work mostly lies. It is tc bring the light, love and understanding of the Gospel to these people, who sit now in a spiritual darkness equal to that of any heathen in the Islands of the South Seas or Africa, that the men and women of the Maori Mission staff were giving themselves, their time and their talents. They must have our prayers and sympathies if they were to succeed.

The singing of the hymn “Jesus Shall Reign where’er the Sun, does his successive journeys run,” and the Benediction, pronounced by Mr. Stevenson, brought the meeting to an end. _