Page:History of Knox Church Dunedin.djvu/140

106 will be supplied. Friends, let me beg you to remember that our Sabbath Schools are the nurseries of the Church, and as such have a claim on your prayers and sympathy.

"The Minister's Bible Class is as old as the church. From its opening it has been largely attended. In my heart it has lain next the pulpit. I have given its members in my own way whatever of Biblical knowledge and Christian experience I have gathered. When I take a look over the congregation old members of the class meet my eye in almost every seat—some as office-bearers, and many as Christian workers. I cannot tell you what joy I felt when Dr Hislop told me that he and Mr G. M. Thomson had arranged to conduct the class during my furlough—he taking as his subject the heroic faith and love of the first Christians, and Mr Thomson the course of lessons which I had fixed on for the session. Young men and women of the church, allow me to urge you to enlarge your knowledge of Divine things by attending the morning class now in the hands of Dr Hislop and Mr Thomson, or the afternoon class so ably conducted by Mr Chisholm.

"Our founders, before the congregation was organised, assured the Presbytery that the new congregation would be, from the outset, self-supporting and aid-giving. The promise has been faithfully kept. The Sustentation Fund has for many years been under the direction of Mr Mackerras, who is fully persuaded of its value as our greatest and best church extension agency. Let me crave you to show our deacons and collectors charged with its ingathering that your contributions, great or small, are made not grudgingly 'or of necessity, but willingly.'

"The Church of Otago was missionary from its commencement. You all know that our congregation made missions, home and foreign, a plank in its constitution. When population poured in upon us in the early days of the diggings, we employed in succession the valuable services of Mr Gilbert, the Rev. Mr Anderson, and at a later period those of Mr Wright and Mrs Welsh. Nor did our expenditure in any respect diminish our contributions to either philanthropy or foreign missions. As our missionary operations embrace at present the Maori, 'the heathen Chinee' within our bounds, and the New Hebrides, regularity in our contributions becomes necessary. But as our Missionary Association has Mr Edmund Smith, the son of a missionary,