WHITELEY MEMORIAL CHURCH.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8091, 23 April 1906, Page 2

WHITELEY MEMORIAL CHURCH.

The anniversary services of the Whitoley Memorial Sunday School were held yesterday, large congregations being the order of the day. The singing of a very large choir of the scholars, assisted by a splendid orchestra of thirteen performers, organised by Mr Turner, was n spocial feature at each service, tho solos and duets being taken by the Hisses' M. Eoberts, Oicnham and Blanchett, all of whom acquitted themselves well. Mr G. a. White conducted the siuging, Miss Canncll presiding at the organ and Hiss Hcldt at the piano Bev. T. G. Brooke preached his inductory services. In the morning he delivered an eloquent address from Isaiah U;b\ the last clause, "And a little child shall jlead them.'' The preacher showed the importance of child life in the world and the church to-day, and in mentioning how the law protects the child, quoted the expression of tho Premier that every child in the colony was worth £3OO to the State. At the evening service he chose as his themo " the constraining love of Christ," quoting the words of St. Paul m his second epistle to the Ephesians, ch. 5, verse 11, "the love of Christ constraincth us." The sermon stamped Bev. Brooke as a remarkably able preacher, and was a powerful address upon tho motive power which kept ministers in the pulpit; that made local preachers give time to the work of the church; made the women work in the temperance cause; that encouraged Sunday school superintendents and teachers to persevere in their blessed work of making the children to grow iuto better men and better women, in the face of all kinds of discouragement. Every man was guided, he said, by some ruling passion. From the time of his conversion to the day on which, like his Master, the Apostle Paul paid the penalty <rith his life, he was guided by the great love that took him on towards his goal. Not a Methodist Church in the Colony would have reached its present position but for the love that constrained the local preachers to do their work. No band of men was unserving of more honor, or doing bettor work than these. The Sunday school superintendent needed some great driving power within to make him or her continue in the noble work, for Sunday school teachers could doubtless enjoy an hour at home or a plcasaut walk on the Sabbath afternoon. The mother and widow who toiled to roar a young family was impelled by love. But a mother's loye had been known tn fail. Christ's love was omnipotent and triumphant, and only powerless when the human heart was resolutely closed against it. The preacher, at each service, made sympathetic reference to the Frisco disaster.