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Church Notices.
The Church is open daily for Private Prayer from 7 a.m. till after Evensong.
The Seats in the Parish Church are all free and unappropriated.
HOLY BAPTISM is administered at Evensong on Saturdays, "and on the 2nd Sunday in the month at 3-45 p.m." At other times by special arrangement.
CHURCHINGS are taken at the beginning of any Week-day Services. The Prayer Book says a free-will offering ("accustomed offerings") should be made. Notices of Baptisms and Funerals should be given to the Sexton at least twenty-four hours before.
MARRIAGES. — Notices of Publication of Banns of Marriage should be given to the Sexton (not the Vicar). Fee, 2s. 3d. Twenty-four hours notice required for Banns and Marriages.
Canon 100. — "No children under the age of one and twenty years complete shall contract themselves or marry, without the consent of their parents or of their guardians and governors, if their parents be deceased."
CATECHIZING. Every Sunday at 2-0.
HOURS FOR SEEING CLERGY. — After any Service in the Vestry.
CASES OF SICKNESS should be reported at once to the Clergy.
SUNDAY SCHOOLS commence at 9-45 a.m. and 2 p.m.
INTERCESSIONS FOR MISSIONS at Evensong on Fridays.
The Vicar "At Home" every Friday, 8 to 9-30.
Baptisms.
"Baptized unto Jesus Christ."
May 20. Stanley, son of Lewis and Gertrude Davis Lunn.
June 3. Edward, son of Alfred James and Rebecca Naylor.
June 3. Louie, daughter of Alfred James and Rebecca Naylor.
June 3. Annie, daughter of Alfred James and Rebecca Naylor.
June 10. Harold, son of Lees and Ada Hulley.
June 17. Edith Alberta, daughter of William and Sarah Shaw Jones.
June 17. Jack Boulton, son of Arthur and Jane Muskett.
June 17. William Irvine, son of John and Annie Mills.
Marriages.
"Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder."
June 26. Hirst wood Sykes and Elizabeth Beardsell.
June 26. Ernest Lunn and May Beaumont.
Burials.
"Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord."
June 2. Harold Wood aged 11 years.
June 6. Esther Ann Eastwood aged 72 years.
June 10. Fred Bradford aged 36 years.
June 14. Harold Turner aged 14 months.
June 21. Ann Armitage aged 78 years.
June 24. Sophia Lawton aged 52 years
ALTAR FLOWERS.
The Altar Flowers on Whit-Sunday were given by Miss Whitehead (Oldham), in loving memory of her brother, and on Trinity II., June 25th, in loving memory of Reuben and Greenwood Schofield. These beautiful gifts have the thanks of the congregation.
ANNUAL OFFERING TO THE DIOCESAN FUND.
We hope that no one who reads this notice will ignore the claims of the Diocesan Fund. Most people are familiar now with our plan of sending out freewill offering envelopes with the Magazine once (or twice, if necessary) a year, in order to get in the £15, which this parish has agreed to raise.
When we reflect that this same Diocesan Fund makes a grant of £40 a year to the Additional Curates’ Fund, it is only right and fair that as we have freely received, so we should freely give.
With this copy of the Magazine therefore every reader will receive a freewill offering envelope, and it is hoped that inability to offer anything but a very small contribution will not deter anyone from sending in their bit. There is no need to attach any name to the envelope, unless the contributor desires to do so. No names will be published, but the amount received by this means will be made known in the August magazine. The envelopes should be brought to the Church and put in the collection at any of the services on Sunday, July 16th, or they may be given to the Clergy or Churchwardens at some other time. Those who prefer to give in another way are reminded that there is a box near the south door of the Church for this purpose.
A GREAT CHURCH NEED.
It is surely time that a church of such noble dimensions and perfect dignity as ours should possess a worthy organ. The present instrument has done excellent service, but its size alone is out of all proportion to the church. If it is not replaced by a better before long, money will have to be spent upon it, and in that case it would be in a large measure money thrown away, for no amount of improvements and additions would ever make the present organ what it ought to be. It must be self-evident that nothing but a new instrument costing at least ^iooo would ever meet the requirements or prove worthy of a great church like ours. In order to accommodate the new organ it would no doubt be necessary, and certainly most desirable, for the key board to be downstairs. This would block the existing passage way from the vestry to the nave, but this difficulty could perhaps be overcome by piercing the west wall of the present blowing chamber, and making an entrance for the choir that way.
This is not for obvious reasons a very opportune time for sending out a special appeal, but it is well that the need should be understood, and the prospect of having to raise the money resolutely contemplated.
THE CHURCH’S MISSION TO THE NATION.
The first meeting in this connection took place on Tuesday, June 20th, when Dr. Longford, Vicar of Almondbury, addressed a gathering of Church workers in the Schools, at 7-30 p.m.
What he had to say was exceedingly interesting, and delivered in a masterly way. We can only attempt to give a brief outline of his address. The National Mission, he said, was rather a movement than a mission. It would go on from year to year gathering weight and momentum. It would aim at getting hold of those who are at the centre of the Church's life, so as to purify and intensify those inside, that they might be more truly a leaven to the nation, purified, strengthened, and more fitted for the service of our Lord.
We had been doing wrong in our attitude to the nation at large. Church-people did wrong in not worrying their neighbours about their religion, so long as their neighbours didn't worry them.
Their neighbours were debtors to God, yet Church-people had not tried to bring them to see it. We should all be missionaries to our neighbours. They should bear in mind the words "It is as when a man, sojourning in another country, having left his house, and given authority to his servants, to every man his work" (S. Mark xiii, 34). "To every man his work” said the speaker, but we, the lay Church-people, have left it to the few. We have left it to God and His official workers, the clergy. When the confirmed fall away from their communions, the layman says "Why doesn't the parson get after them?" When all the time, if they, the laymen of the Church, were doing their duty to their children, they would be getting after them themselves.
In this matter the lay people of the Church were "bone idle." "The Lord has gone to a far country and left us His service."
But service depended on the pure motive. So often we preached Christ of contention, or the clergy were guilty of self-aggrandisement, the lay-worker of self assertion, service in the Church having given them that awful opportunity. So the service was entirely vitiated for lack of the pure motive.
We had relied upon ourselves in our work. He asked the question, how many Sunday school teachers, the number of which as recorded in the Church of England year book was truly astonishing, made their communion even once a month. Were there even 10% who received the Blessed Sacrament weekly? Were there not many who thought they were largely dispensed from attending the services of the Church because they were teaching in the Sunday School. There seemed to be no idea of the need of absorbing God’s power for the doing of God’s work.
Lastly, not only was there needed the pure motive, but also "the clean instrument." It didn’t matter how sincere might be the point of view if they had not the clean instrument. Not many years ago there was scarcely a single major operation in surgery that was not fatal. The knife that was used looked all right, but it was not really clean enough, and was all the time carrying germs. Then antiseptic operations were brought in. This was an illustration to them that in dealing with the spiritual disease of sin they must have the clean instrument. Church-people should be able to go to the clergy as to physicians of the soul. If they would give their confidence naturally and rationally to a doctor of the body why should they fear to do so to the doctor of the soul, that so he might be the better able to prescribe for the soul’s special need.
He closed by exhorting all present to wait quietly and prayerfully in hope and expectancy for the new age that was surely coming upon the Church, when, as he believed, the whole nation would slowly perhaps but surely come back into the embrace of "Mother Church."
THE TOWER SERVICE.
For the fourth time now since its inception in 1913, members of the Choir ascended the West Tower on Ascension Sunday and made upon the summit an offering of praise and thanksgiving on behalf of themselves, the congregation and the parish at large. Seen from the top of the tower the very houses of Marsden seemed asleep, very few blinds were raised, very few persons were abroad. Was it not natural, seeing that in the celebration of the Holy Mysteries half-an-hour later the highest act of Christian worship would be enacted in the sanctuary below, that such outward signs of somnolent indifference should bring instinctively to one's lips the ancient prayer "Awake thou that sleepest and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee."
It is often said that the people of industrial Yorkshire lack imagination. But imagination is not so much lacking as dormant for want of stimulus. And a service like this supplies that stimulus, symbolising in a ceremonial manner the inner and spiritual truth that "in heart and mind we may also ascend into the heavens, and with Him continually dwell, Who liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end." An outward and visible stimulus to the imagination is a valuable thing whether one is religious or not, but to those who have any faith at all it is almost indispensable. Many a man has failed to acquire even a passing interest in matters of faith, because they have been presented to him without any such stimulus to the imagination.
Thirty-seven in all made the ascent, nine men, ten ladies, and sixteen choristers. Hymns 160 and 301 and the Te Deum were sung. The proceedings closed just as rain began to fall.
C.E.M.S.
In connection with the National Mission of Repentance and Hope, an open-air meeting was held on June 3rd, in the Quarry at Mirfield, for men only. The Marsden branch of the C.E.M.S. was represented by two members. Archdeacon Harvey, who presided, said that there were far too many slackers in the C.E.M.S. It was high time that Churchmen, as such, made their influence more felt in every department of life in England. The Rev. W. H. Elliott spoke of the two-fold rule of the Society — prayer and work — as representing man’s need of God, expressed in prayer, and God’s need of man, responded to in work for the Church. He suggested that prayer should often take the more definite form of intercession for particular persons, and that the "work for the Church" should consist of more definite attempts to bring their fellow-men to Church, as the rule is in the Brotherhood of St. Andrew. Prebendary Burn, D.D., Vicar of Halifax, spoke of the value of "quiet days," and described a plan which was being considered, of taking some central Church in each district, suspending all its ordinary services for one Sunday, and using it to provide a quiet day for laymen. Men would be invited to leave their usual Church-work (Choir, Sunday-school, etc.) for the day, and come and spend the time at this central Church in prayer and meditation. Canon Welch, Vicar of Wakefield, told of an amusing definition of the word "layman" which he had recently obtained from a child. The little one, evidently thinking of a bricklayer, said a layman was a man who helped to build a house. Canon Welsh applied this answer to the work of the C.E.M.S., pointing out how it was the work of laymen as well as of the clergy, to build up the Church of God.
About 200 laymen were present, and their unaccompanied singing of the hymns was an impressive feature of the meeting.
THE S.P.G. SUMMER MEETING.
This will be held, as previously announced, at Thorp Grange, Almondbury, at 3-30 p.m., by kind invitation of Archdeacon and Mrs. Harvey. The speaker will be the Rev. J.B. Hall. Tickets can be obtained of the clergy. A charge of 6d. will be made for tea ; there is no charge for admission.
As this has been such a popular gathering in the year, we look for a good attendance from our congregation, especially those who have learned that to help extend the Kingdom of Christ in other lands is part of their simple duty towards God.
CHILDREN’S SPORTS.
The races organised for the children on Whit-Monday, were run with considerable vigour by the young people. The evening was so cold that there were only a few spectators to cheer on the competitors. About sixty prizes were given, and we take this opportunity of thanking all those who so generously contributed towards them.
MISSIONARY BOXES.
Per Miss Stansfield. — Mrs. Kershaw, 2/7; Mrs. A. Hirst, 2/-; Miss N. Dawson, 1/5½. Total, 6/0½.
Prairie Church Fund. — Mrs. F. Shaw, 1/9; C, A. Pearson, 1/9; Children’s Service, 10/8; Church Box, 2/5. Grand total, £14/6/6.
THE WHITSUNTIDE FESTIVAL.
Very few words must suffice to report our Whitsuntide doings. The services of Whit-Sunday were attended. The Rev. W. Turner (St. Andrew’s, Huddersfield), preached in the morning, the Vicar in the afternoon, and the Rev. A. Kerr (Lockwood) in the evening. The collections reached £27. In the morning the anthem "Come Holy Spirit come" was reverently rendered, the solo being 'well taken by Miss M. A. Dyson. In the evening Spohr’s "Blessed are the departed" was sung in respectful memory of the late Lord Kitchener and those who perished with him off the Orkneys, and also of the brave sailors who fell in the battle of Jutland. In the morning the Dead March was played before the Blessing.
The Whit-Monday procession was a great success, and a longer route than usual was followed. The hymn singing brought cheer to many a poor sick person, who listened with emotion to the children’s sweet voices.
We have again to thank Mr. J. Whitehead (of Oldham), for his generous gift oranges and sweets, which were distributed at the Vicarage gate.
The cool weather was a distinct advantage on the march, and rain kept off, though the clouds seemed to be only obliging us because of the importance of the occasion.
The best thanks of all are due to the hardworking teachers, to whose enthusiastic efforts the day’s success was so largely due.
