St Cuthbert's Church, Lytham

Submitted by Alan Marsden on Mon, 01/07/2024 - 00:00

I called at St Cuthbert’s Church at Lytham this summer. Sadly, it was locked, which sometimes puts me in a sour mood, but the day was warm and the sun shone brightly and I enjoyed looking around its exterior. I thought some of this red brick building might have been Georgian on account of an eighteenth century sundial and some older brickwork, but online research states it is entirely nineteenth century albeit with various additions from 1909 and 1931.

I find brick churches rather warm-looking (which is surely the psychology of colour) and interesting (probably on account of their relative rarity), and St Cuthbert’s I rather liked. Its website is JC Lytham (St John’s and St Cuthbert’s churches at Lytham); I could not decide if this most sounded like the name of a black rapper, a member of the England cricket team, or a Reformed, American theologian.

I was a little bemused by a large noticeboard by the road. It simply stated, in large white letters against a black background:

DO A GOOD DEED TODAY

As a general rule this is not bad advice, though aiming at more than one deed each day does not seem unreasonable. On the other hand, this sign is grossly misleading. Many of the tourists and locals who read it on that busy road may well associate the doing of good deeds with the message of Christianity. Indeed, there are many church-goers who are little wiser. Our good deeds cannot and will not save us: only Christ crucified and risen can do that, in whom we must have simple faith. It seems a dreadful pity that something more gospel-like could not have been placed on the board, instead of some generic piece of lifestyle advice with little spiritual benefit. As Joseph Hart wrote in The Moon and Stars:

His word is this (poor sinners, hear);

“Believe on me, and banish fear;

Cease from your own works, bad or good,

And wash your garments in my blood.”

Its website, which isn’t bad and even has a Bible verse on it (which is highly unusual in this day and age) says it is ‘here for every step’: baptism, wedding and funeral. Let us hope there is also a step offered in the direction of a personal and living faith in Christ. That old, eighteenth-century sundial has a little Latin upon it:

Dum spectes fugio which may be translated

While you look, I run away

Time is running on, and even ‘Heaven and earth shall pass away’ (Matt. 24. 35), but the words of Jesus shall survive all. There is too little time to meditate upon trite imperatives and corny maxims about doing good deeds: it is Jesus Christ to whom we must turn, without delay.