Mexborough & Swinton Times – Friday 05 October 1883
Harvest Festivals
Harvest Thanksgiving at Conisboro’ Church
On Friday last the annual harvest thanksgiving service was held in St. Peter’s church, Conisboro’. The sacred edifice had been tastefully decorated for the occasion and presented an unusually attractive appearance, the decorations at the pulpit and font being especially worthy of remark.
The following ladies and gentlemen took part in the work:—Mesdames Wood, Chambers, Colley, Hawkins, Wilbraham; Misses Ley, Burton, Burnett, and Messrs. Hawkins, Colley, W. Wiggall, Bigo-Williams, and Pearson.
The church was filled to overflowing in the evening. The hymns, psalms, and lessons used were appropriate to the occasion. The anthem was taken from the words “Ye shall dwell in the land,” and was sung in pleasing manner by the choir, the solos especially being well rendered.
The Rev. J. G. Wood intoned the prayers. The sermon was preached by the Rev. C. Olsson, head master of the Rotherham Grammar School, from St. Mark iv. 29:—“But when the fruit is brought forth immediately he putteth in the sickle because the harvest is come.”
The preacher said soon they would say that the harvest was gone, and they were there, gleaners, as it were, in God’s great harvest field, to gather from it some spiritual truth—to learn some touching lesson. There was perhaps no season of the year more eminently suggestive and admonitory than the season of harvest.
The summer was then passed—the pathetic autumnal sunshine, the still autumnal air, crisp and chill, betokened the waning year. The leaves fell around them withered and dead, and as they crushed them rustling beneath their feet they reminded them that as they faded, so did mankind. The rev. gentleman said: Leaves are born to wither, flowers bloom to die, to the sickle all must come.
The golden grain is gathered, the ripe fruit is plucked, and autumn finally deposits the glories of summer in her wintry tomb. How keenly alive was the divine mind of our Lord Jesus Christ to all the touching symbolism of nature. The sower scattering the seed; the reaper gathering in his sheaves; the sparrow’s flight; the lily’s blossom, were invested by his teaching with a charm and reality as emblems of spiritual truth.
It was with reference to the seed corn and harvest that our Lord first taught His disciples to see in the natural world, and their work in it, types and symbols of the spiritual. This method of clothing spiritual truth in imagery borrowed from the lower world was the chief characteristic of Christ’s teaching.
Nature as He views it is full of tender and sublime symbolism, and surely none can fathom better than He those deep harmonies which exist between the two worlds. So long as the lilies of the field shall grow He has made them teachers of the providence of God; while the vine shall spread its branches and shoot forth its leaves and tendrils to support its graceful clusters will it tell His disciples of their union with and dependence upon Him.
The majestic mountain seems not more moveless than the obstacles which He told His disciples their faith should remove and cast into the sea. In these recurring harvest seasons we are not glimpsing of the great harvest ingathering, which is the end of the world, when the angels shall be the reapers.
Nature is, as it were, a transparent screen, on which God has pictured all that is beautiful in form and colour, but it is only as the light of God shines through it that we can discern the loveliness and harmony of the whole. In God’s light we see light and are able to discover the true lessons which nature was designed to teach.
It is the universal law of all that exists in finite nature not to have in itself the entire aim or reason of its own existence. It is intended to subserve some higher end; to promote our education in divine things and give outward expression to the inner workings of our spiritual life.
Hence we find that the teaching of our Lord is full of expressions drawn from the simplest of natural objects; He seizes upon them to shadow forth truth as it is in the spirit of man and in the spirit of God. We are not to look upon them as mere happy contrivances of the Creator to be admired for their wondrous skill and wisdom and carrying no further lessons; they are full of instruction to a Christian believer and our faith in Christ should draw confirmation from the consideration of them.
Let us then take up the thread of our Lord’s teaching in the parable, and let these fruits and flowers of the earth we see around us impress upon our minds that as it is in the natural so it is in the spiritual world. “When the fruit is brought forth immediately he putteth in the sickle because the harvest is come.”
The parable from which the text is taken follows closely upon that of the sower, and our Lord’s explanation of it. He is speaking of the kingdom of God and the silent, yet powerful, growth of it. What is our Lord teaching us here but the progressive development of our own spiritual life. Growth and progress is a necessary condition of all life, whether natural or spiritual.
It is a plant be not growing it is dying. Life is essentially a motive power, mysterious in its origin and mode of operation, yet proving by its results to be ceaselessly active, manifesting itself in infinite variety of expression, yet always under the same features of activity and progress.
It is true of our natural as well as of our spiritual life. There is this difference, however, that our natural life, however mysterious in its working and influence, is a life outwardly manifest. We see it in all its phases. It shows through in the loveliness of infancy, in the exuberance of youth, in the maturity of manhood, and in the deep-toned experience of age.
A natural life is bounded by time—our spiritual life stretches out into the eternal future. All its limitations are there—not here. “Life is a pendulum,” says the poet, “which oscillates betwixt a smile and a tear.” Rather would I change the figure and say that our life is a pendulum which oscillates betwixt a cross and a crown.
The cross of Jesus Christ is the foundation of all true spiritual life. “The soul that sinneth it shall die,” and as death passed upon all men, for all have sinned. “The wages of sin is death,” not the mere severing of the link which unites soul and body, but the crushing out of the soul—life by separating it from the one source of purity, life, and joy.
Man has wandered from God in thought and in conviction, and this awful severance has come to be death—his highest woe. What right have we to reckon upon God’s forgiveness—where is the pledge and the assurance of it?
God’s answer to this question is given us in the life and death of our Lord Jesus Christ—who came that we might have life—life infinite and eternal; but this life can only be ours through the death upon the cross. Through death to life—that is the principle which God is at infinite pains to teach us in all the processes of creation.
You have it exemplified every day—almost every hour of your lives, and there is no other way of salvation. From death to life, from sin to holiness, then through the great sacrifice upon the cross—bright of all, through the dying Christ—God comes near to man, and man turns to draw near to God.
As the end life breathes on human death; at the last life dawns on human darkness. The necessary condition of all natural life’s growth. Nor is it otherwise with the spiritual. God never gives man anything to nurture or cherish but He furnishes him with the means for so doing.
In the divine forces of the Gospel are the elements of ceaseless and everlasting growth and improvement.
The rev. gentleman, after pointing out that whatever a man sows that should he reap, concluded in the following words: I cannot close without adverting to this object for which your offerings are asked to-night. If anything could touch your hearts and move them to a generous liberality, it would surely be the restoration of this venerable church, an inheritance left to you by generations long since passed away.
Here it stands, a monument of peace and goodwill from God to men, under the shadow of the crumbling walls of that historic castle—
“Whose ponderous gates and massive bar
Have oft rolled back the tide of war.”
You will not allow this church, with all the associations and memories which linger around its memorable walls, to crumble and decay. You are not such traitors to the past, or so hopeless of the present, or so despairing of the future as that.
Although I am but a passing stranger among you, whose face you may never see and whose voice you may never hear again, I commend the matter to you earnestly and faithfully, and I am sure that what you do you will do for the glory of God and the love of Christ, as a testimony of your faith in the grand principles of our common Christianity.
The collection realised £3.
The services were continued on Sunday, and were well attended, considering the weather, which was very bad, and in the evening the church was quite full. The rendering of the musical portion of the service by the choir was that could be desired; in fact such hearty service in the church have not been known for many years past.
The anthem was well sung at the evening service, the solos being taken by Mr. Chambers and Master Charles Stenson. The services throughout the day were thoroughly congregational, and the hearty manner in which the musical portion was rendered showed that the congregation appreciated the change which had taken place in the worship at the old parish church.
The Vicar preached both morning and evening. The text in the morning was “I am the bread of life,” and that in the evening—“Praise ye the Lord.” Both texts were placed on the screen.
The sermons were very earnest, and that in the evening we may specially mention as being a sermon on praise, which was well to the point and showed the different ways in which good people nowadays can offer up their praises to God, by singing hymns, psalms, and spiritual songs.
The collections were made on behalf of the Church Restoration Fund. A children’s service was held in the afternoon, when there was again an exceedingly hearty service.