Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Thursday 23 September 1909
Archbishop at Denaby.
Address to Working Men.
The Spoilers of Human Life,
Dr. Cosmo Lang, Archbishop of York
The Archbishop of York’s visit toDenaby Main last evening aroused much interest. At the Parish Church there he inducted the recently-appointed Vicar, the Rev. Sidney Featherstone Hawkes, M.A., who succeeds the Rev. J. Brookes, M.A.
The church was crowded, among those present being Archdeacon Norris (Halifax), the Rev. W. Parker (chaplain to the Archbishop), the Revs. W. H. F. Bateman (Vicar of Mexborough and Rural Dean), A P. Glower Rees, C. H. Pauling, and W. C. S. Rutter (Doncaster), C. P. Mellor (Conisborough), J. Davies (Edlington), A. D. Alderson (Tickhill), Greenwood (Barnsley), H. R. Evers (Huddersfield), F. S. F. Jennings (Warmsworth), and T. Todd (Kirk Sandal).
Later, his Grace “shook hands,” so to speak, with the miners of Denaby Main, who gathered in strong force in the large Hall, Rossington Street. The colliery officials present included Mr. W. H. Chambers (managing director), Mr. C. Bury (manager, Denaby Main), and Mr. H. S. Witty (manager. Cadeby Main).
The new Vicar, after a preliminary word thanks to the parishioners for the warm welcome extended to him, introduced The Archbishop, who appealed direct to his hearers, who evidently appreciated his homely phraseology. “Your Vicar has lost no time in getting to work,” was the opening comment. Evidently, he continued, the people of Denaby liked doing things in their own way. The usual way was for him to introduce a new Vicar, but, instead, they had put the Vicar at once to the collar, started him to work, and made him introduce the Archbishop. (Laughter.) The fact that the new Vicar had first addressed a meeting of men, among whom he had right to talk as their Vicar, would lead them to make up their minds that, whatever was going to mark his ministry in their midst, it was going to be largely a ministry in which parson and men were going to stand together and work together for the good of the place where they lived. (Applause.)
Why was he at Denaby ? He was there for a very important purpose —to meet his brother man, not to make an eloquent speech, as there was time for that, for many of them had to work that night. He had to do business with workingmen. That business was not to preach them, but to ask for their help in the work that was going on. What was that work? was the building up in that part of the North of England of the Kingdom of God, which meant men of justice, honour, truth, soberness, honesty, purity, sound family life, good fellowship, good citizenship and the fear of God and loyalty to Christ, His son, our King. That was the Kingdom of God. For it he asked from the men of Denaby the best of their life, the best of their brain and heart. This was a great day in the history of Denaby, because there had come into their midst a man who had been sent by God to help men to care about certain things more than anything else in the world.
But what were the things spoiling the life and keeping men from rising to the Kingdom of God? Speaking in ignorance of things locally, but man with wide experience of human nature, he believed that if this question were put to the vote in that meeting, he had no doubt that the first’ thing they would attribute the spoiling of human life in Denaby Main was the drink, which was the main force that was dragging English life down, it could not have the liberty to be what God meant it to be. The day had gone by when it could be stopped by eloquent sermons and public meetings. The mischief was deeper, and was to be found in the habits of men, the soddening of men’s minds and souls, the keeping back from the wives and children the food and clothing they had a right have. Such men must make a new start, and they at Denaby must take their share of stopping the spoiling of human life.
He did not think he was wrong if he said that if he had asked for their vote that the large minority would have said that gambling was another spoiler of human life in Denaby. If he was wrong in this surmise, then Denaby was different place from many that he knew in Yorkshire. Yorkshiremen, he had been told, and he believed it, were at heart sportsmen, and he put it to them sporting Yorksniremen that one of the main things that they had do was to prevent this poor, miserable spirit of gambling from spoiling Yorkshire sport. (Applause.) But he was speaking not so much of Yorkshire sport as the spoiling of human life, and why it was that gambling was spoiling human life. Gambling was fever that unbalanced the nerves of men and women, and was nothing else than a disease. The Archbishop concluded with an appeal to all to help to build up on earth the Kingdom of God. At the close he blessed the meeting, which then dispersed.
Career of the New Vicar.
Denaby’s New Vicar was scholar of Wadham College, Oxford, from 1894-1898, and travelling secretary of the student movement, 1898-9. He was ordained In the Exeter Diocese in December, 1900, and worked six years in that diocese. He came to be senior curate of Barnsley Parish Church in June, 1907. and was appointed from there to the Vicarage of Denaby Main