Paparoa 100.Pdf
1 FOREWORD Dear Friends, In honour and memory of those who have ‘gone before’ and of those with whom we still have ‘fellowship’, this booklet has been produced as part of our Centennial Celebrations, and we trust that it will be a valuable record of the past century’s operations. Necessarily much has been omitted, but we trust that what is written here will be accepted in the spirit in which it has been presented, as we should all be deeply grateful for the BLESSINGS inherited. We should think of the opportunities we have and the liberty we enjoy compared with the early days — then the Church and the Home were the centres of Social activities and all were content — today the sphere of activity has moved outside the Church and Home, with resultant discontent and loss. Man thought that if he had more clothes, more leisure, more education, more material things, then he could do without GOD, but has discovered that if God and the eternal virtues are left out each NEVER SATISFIES. As the hymn puts ‘It — ‘WE TRIED THE BROKEN CISTERNS, LORD, BUT, AH, THE WATERS FAILED.’ To us of today the dress of yester-year may look strange, but inside that dress were folk who were a power for good in the community. Yes, they made mistakes, so do we: they had their limitations, so have we: they stood for something and knew what they stood for, do we? They had a clear goal before them and so sang with all their hearts — “A CHARGE TO KEEP I HAVE, A GOD TO GLORIFY, A NEVER DYING SOUL TO SAVE, AND FIT IT FOR THE SKY.” This was the basis for all their living and it matters not how we may have progressed materially, we can never get beyond that.
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