NEW HINKSEY.
OPENING THE NEW CHURCH.
The new church of St. John the Evangelist, New Hinksey, was formally opened by the Bishop of Reading on Thursday. The foundation stone was laid on June 8th, 1899, by the Bishop of Oxford. This church, when completed, will consist of a nave of five bays and a chancel of three bays, and will have a total length of one hundred and thirty feet, exactly one-half of which, consisting of the four western bays of the nave, is now built. The chancel will be separated from the nave by transverse arches, but otherwise there will be no structural difference between these two parts of the church. The boarded ceiling, the apex of which is forty-one feet from the floor, will be the same throughout. The two aisles will also run from one end of the church to the other without further break, and with the nave they make a total width internally of fifty-seven feet. There is no clerestory, and the aisles are separated from the body of the church on each side by a row of seven pillars twenty feet high. The windows are also all of one pattern on each side, but the design of the two aisles is different in every respect. The wider aisle and that with the higher wall is on the north side. It will have seven windows of five lights each, four of which are already built, and a porch and parvis will occupy the next and easternmost bay of the nave. The nearly-flat roof of this aisle is surrounded by a battlement. The other aisie has a more sloping roof, the lead of which shows outside, and the heads of its four-light windows are flattened. The difference between the aisles is further emphasised by the painted decoration of their ceilings. The rafters are white throughout, but the boarding between is counterchanged with squares of red and green in the north aisle, and in the south aisle it is all a red ground, upon which the sacred monogram changes with the eagle for St. John. The eagle and the chalice are also blazoned on the corbels which terminate the principals, interchanged with the gridiron, which shows the connection with St. Lawrence, the mother church of Hinksey. The nave roof is divided by red and green ribs into white squares, powdered with roses, which will give place in the chancel to blue, with gold stars. The manner of the window tracery is somewhat of a compromise between the flooring and the perpendicular, and the mouldings are of the latter type. The church also has the general features of spaciousness and lightness, which are characteristic of the later English Parish Church. Such of its ornaments as have yet been obtained are also of this type, as the high steps for the font in the midst of the west end of the nave, and the long and low reredos to the altar, which now stands beneath a blue tapestry, hanging against the temporary east wall, but will take its place eventually beneath the east window. Externally the building is of red brick and stone; but within only the stone and plaster show, and the windows are glazed throughout with large roundels, in the manner of the Bavarian churches. The west front, like the sides, has large windows and deep buttresses, one of which is surmounted by a small steeple, which carries the bell, and a somewhat similar turret will mark the division between then ave and the chancel. The architects are Messrs. Bucknall and Cowper, of Old Queen-street, Westminster, and the builders Messrs. Kingerlee and Sons.
Choral Communion was celebrated at 8 o'clock, and at the 11 o'clock service a procession was formed at the infants' school and consisted of the surpliced choir and clergy, and the Bishop, who was accompanied by his chaplain. The hymn “God the Father, God the Son,” was sung as a processional, and after the choir had taken their seats and the clergy had arranged themselves in the front seats opposite the Communion Table, the Bishop offered special prayers. The proper Psalms were the lxxxiv., cxxii. and cxxxii. The first lesson was read by the Rural Dean, the Rev. H. E. Clayton, from Genesis xxvii. 10-17, and the second by Canon Ince from Hebrews x. 19-25. The service was intoned by the Vicar. The surpliced clergy present included the Revs H. W. Macreery (Shippon), H. L. Thompson, C. R. Carter, T. O. Floyd, Canons Irvine, Ince, King, Sanday, W. E. Allen (Exeter), Seager, Winship, H. T. Adams, C. H. B. Hudson, L. K. Greenaway, H. E. Clayton, H. F. Leigh, W. B. Duggan, P. Doyne (Beckley), R. Hartley, Hutchinson (Water-eaton), H. A. Harvey, the Rector of Exeter, and the Precentor of Christ Church. The Mayor, who wore his robes and chain of office, had a seat in the body of the church. The sermon was preached by Canon Sanday, who chose as his text Psalm lxxxiv, 1-3: “O, how amiable are Thy dwellings.” He said he could not refrain from giving utterance to the sorrow which all who were assembled there would feel at the sad event which had robbed them of an eloquent voice that day. Their thoughts involuntarily travelled to those familiar lines of their great poet, suggested by the picture which his imagination conjured up of a still summer night and the glimmer of a solitary candle shining out into it,
There was a radiance cast from a really good life, especially a life in high station, lived worthily of that station, that imperceptibly penetrated and permeated a whole neighbourhood. The touch of true religion, when they saw it, was communicated from soul to soul and blended subtly with the life of the whole society in which it moved. Although on an occasion quite queenly in her dignity and grace she also had—all of them knew it—that deep-seated goodness and devoutness, the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which was in the sight of God of great price. Now she had “gone into the world of light,” and of her it might be said, “Her very memory is fair and bright and our sad thoughts doth clear.” For the memory of the blessed dead, of the dead who died in the Lord, could not be, even for those whom it was saddest, predominately a thought of sadness. There was nothing so calming, nothing so chastening and hallowing, nothing that so took away the mind from the things of earth, and that so seemed to lay a quiet head upon the struggling soul and filled it with the place of heaven. It would not be forgotten in after years how the opening of that beautiful church was associated with the taking from them of her who slept not far away beneath the shadow of the Cathedral which she loved, and which had some strong links of connexion with the building of the church in which they were worshipping. This was, he might say, the first of the memories that would gather round it, the first link in that endless and countless chain of memories that would go on lengthening with every month and every year of its existence. Having remarked that the church was the centre of all the parish societies, Canon Sanday went on to say that their new and stately church might well be endeared to the parishoners by a sense of the efforts and sacrifices it had cost to build it. They might say of the liberality of his Corinthian converts: “For to their power I bear record, yea, and beyond their power they were willing of themselves, i.e., without any prompting of their own accord.” Nor did that church represent only the efforts and the sacrifices of a parish. To build it had required, and might for some time to come to require, the efforts and sacrifices of a whole neighbourhood, more especially of the city of which Hinksey was a suburb. And amongst the memories which were enshrined in it must be the liberality of individual donors, those generous gifts which made the building possible; and particular articles of furniture given by individuals—the lectern by one, the altar and reredos by another, the candlesticks upon the altar by a third, and the cross over the altar by the whole body of the parishioners. It seemed to him, if he might say so, that their own architect had worked in the spirit of the old builders. He had produced a very noble and impressive church, the full proportions of which could not, of course, yet be seen, but which already gave promise of what it was to be hoped that they might some day be, and which already presented much beauty of performance. Its loftiness was a great feature, so was its brightness and its originality. They had a church of which they might be proud—with a humbling pride that feared to be unworthy of it. So noble a building must needs, one would think, banish all frivolity of thought and want of reverence. Yes, for he took it that that new church meant a new start, a new departure, as they sometimes said, in the life of the parish. And a new start which had set for itself no mean standard. If the life of the parish was gathered up in the church, if it was brought there to be purified, invigorated, elevated, to be laid before its God and to receive the strength and grace that came from Him; if that was what coming together in church meant, then it seemed to follow that their meetings for worship in that beautiful church should have a life to correspond with it—a life spreading all through the parish and felt in every corner of it. The change from the old church to the new seemed to constitute a call, a very striking and impressive call, addressed to the outer senses, as well as to the mind, to live up to their privileges. They often heard of the pride, pomp, and circumstance of glorious war; of armies marching forth, with bands playing and colours flying, among the acclamations of admiring crowds. The purpose of this was to rouse in the minds of those who were going out, a high temper of courage and fortitude, ready to face hardship and suffering and death for the prize of victory. Did not that spacious and soaring church appeal to them in something of the same way? Would it not lift up their hearts in prayer and praise? Would it not add more fervour to their communions? Would it not rouse them to higher aims and greater exertions? Would not the whole pulse of their parish life beat quicker and stronger for it? Should not that life be lived more as in the sight and presence of God, visibly dwelling among them, than it had ever been before? Let him just remind them of those things, and leave them to apply them. “My soul longeth, yea, even fainteth for the Courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cryeth out for the living God.” There was an ideal description of the love and affection and inward zeal that should be directed towards the House of God. If the opening of that new church kindled or strengthened such feelings in their hearts, that would be a bright day in the annals of Hinksey and for all that side of Oxford.
A collection having been taken and hymn 228, “The Church's one Foundation,” sung, the Bishop pronounced the Blessing, and the congregation dispersed. Evensong was said at seven o'clock, when the preacher was the Rev. Halsall Segar.
