Pew Sheet – 29th May 2022

Thank you to Wilfred Baker who takes the services in both churches this morning.

There are now Bishops’ Appeal envelopes in a basket at the back of both churches should you like to donate to their Ukraine appeal. Any money not in envelopes will be assumed to be intended for Parish funds.

Sundays in June

5th June Pentecost. Holy Communion Services at 9:30/11am

12th June Sunday Club Prizegiving at 11am Service

19th June United Service at 11am in St Mary’s Church

including the ‘Service of Light’ for our 12 Confirmation candidates. As it is World Refugee Week, our Guest Speaker is Sr Jo McCarthy from Cork Migrant Centre. Sr Jo will then officially open the week long Photographic Exhibition in the Parish Hall.

26th June United Service at 11am in St John’s Church

Our 12 candidates will be confirmed by the Bishop.

Random Notes CDXXVI

‘ The Rev. Augustus M. Toplady, when Vicar of Blagdon, in Somersetshire, was walking through Burrington Combe, a beautiful spot some two or three miles from his home, when he was caught in a sudden storm. The Particular place is very exposed, affording no shelter, but Toplady espied a cleft running down a mass of rock beside the road, in which he was able to take refuge until the storm abated.

A man of saintly character, his thoughts were turned by the incident to spiritual things, and picking up a playing card which he found lying on the ground at his feet, he wrote upon the back of it the hymn of which it can be said that “no other English hymn can be named which has laid so broad and firm a grasp upon the English speaking world”, beginning,

Rock of Ages! cleft for me!

Let me hide myself in Thee!

The playing card upon which the hymn was first written is still preserved in America. It was this hymn which afforded such comfort, among multitude of others, to the Prince Consort and which he repeated constantly upon his death-bed. “For,” said he, “if in this hour I had only my worldly honours and dignities to depend upon, I should be poor indeed!” ‘

The above is transcribed from a little book entitled ‘Great Hymns and their stories’, by W. J. Limmer Sheppard, D.D., first published in 1923, a book much read by my father, Erik Hodder Roberts, and was the inspiration for he with my mother both visiting Burrington Combe on the afternoon of Wednesday, 18th. September, 1974, during which the annexed photograph of my mother standing in the cleft was taken.

As a postscript it may be mentioned that the hymn was used at the funeral services in St. Mary’s Church, Carrigaline of both my parents, my father in February of 1979, and mother in September, 2017, and furthermore, it is hoped, although not, I trust too soon, of their son also, the compiler of this note!