St Thomas’ Church, Selside

St Thomas’ Church at Selside in Westmorland was unlocked when we called, for which I was grateful. Even the tower steps were accessible, though prudence prevented a full ascent, the passageway being narrow, the belltower dark. Although a Victorian church through and through (1838 while the tower is 1894), I found it both interesting and welcoming, despite the externals being rather grey and forbidding. It looked not unlike one of those fortified tower houses which our northern gentry and farmers constructed to keep Scots and Reivers at bay.

The building’s finest feature, however, was a painted text over the tower’s arch looking west. It is a quotation from the Lord Jesus from John 20:29:

Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.

As this is St Thomas’ Church, the Lord is here speaking to the whole congregation, clergy and laity. The most solid church and strongest of congregations are only so because of their unstinting, unyielding and uncompromising belief in Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection. Bend on these, and the whole faith wobbles and flops.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Romans 10:9