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Rh the expenditure of many thousands, has aroused a good deal of comment. Is there not good reason for limiting the cost of a church, so long as it is sufficient for its purpose, and thus setting free your resources for the better development of the Church's real work in its influence on men's hearts and lives? The general opinion, I think, is with us. A noble building is a public witness to God's glory, perhaps all the more so in a new country where the material interests of life predominate. The silent teaching of cathedrals and churches in the old country has been of great influence; we need it even more here. I am tempted to quote Ruskin's words of those great buildings: "All else which the builders aimed at has passed away; all their living interests and achievements, victory, wealth, authority, happiness, all have departed, though bought by many a bitter sacrifice. But of them and their life and their toil upon the earth one evidence is left to us in these grey heaps of deep wrought stone. They have taken with them to the grave their powers, their honours, and their errors, but they have left us their Adoration."

I have lately had some visitors on their way to the Alpine district of Mt. Cook, for which Timaru is the point of departure. It is becoming a great holiday resort for Australians as well as New Zealanders. Years ago, in 1882, the Rev. W. S. Green, a well-known member of the Alpine Club, came out here, with two Swiss guides, Boss and Kaufman. In those days there were no facilities, such as exist now, to aid the climber, no local guides, no huts, no experience, except that of a few shepherds who had, in course of their work, ascended some height. The icefields in the Southern Alps are on a larger scale even than