PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

Taranaki Daily News, 16 November 1922, Page 5

PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.

THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY. NEW MODERATOR’S ADDRESS. By Telegraph.—Press Association. Auckland, Last Night. The jubilee sessions of the Presbyterian General Assembly opened to-day. The Rev. D. Dutton, the retiring Moderator. presided. • The Rev. W. J. Comrie was unanimously elected Moderator, and addressed the Assembly on “Sixty Years and After/* in which he briefly surveyed the progress of the church in New Zealand from its earliest days. After speaking upon the. movement in 1861 toward the union issue in New Zealand, which failed owing to fear of innovations, the speaker laid special emphasis upon the need of a progressive movement to-day, oven at the cost of making many new innovations in church affairs. The address reviewed the forms of worship best for present needs. The Moderator suggested that the church is too conservative ir the matter of the position of women in offices of the church. The address laid emphasis upon the need for the church to understand better the labor movements of the present, and to assure laboring men, who had become, indifferent to the church, of the church’s sympathy with them in all their aspirations for better social conditions. The temperance question and the movement for a larger church union with other churches. and the duty of the church in its relation to war, were all discussed in a tone which was full of hopefulness for the future. Coincident with the sitting of the Assembly. the annual conference of the Presbyterian. Women’s Missionary Union is meeting.