St George’s Field's Chapel

This last year marked 25 years since I graduated at Leeds, above. I was a fairly idle student; it was not until halfway through my second year that I knuckled down and worked hard. Although my working day started in the early afternoon, I was found in the library until 10pm when the staff kicked us out. I was not very mature for an 18-21 year-old, and I was too shy to fully involve myself with student life, though I threw myself into a church and am still in touch with the pastors. I was in the last intake not to have pay tuition fees and was still in receipt of a grant, so it was a good time to have graduated.

I recently preached on Apollos in our pulpit, who was clearly an educated, erudite man with the ancient world’s equivalent of several degrees. Yet I also quoted the late, great Bert Chambers who, when I was off to university, turned to me and said, with that look of earnest menace peculiar to Ulstermen:

“The church is growing colder by degrees!”

Am I colder for having gone to university? Is our chapel? I have heard one voice over the years tell me that I am too educated and too clever for my own good (whereas the reality is that I feel especially ignorant and un-read). Curiously, in the midst of Leeds University’s campus is a cemetery: St George’s Field, previously the Leeds General Cemetery.

Between 1835 and 1969, over 97,000 people were interred here, and a rather splendid classical chapel. Not only does this remind us that clever people die just as much as the ignorant, but that human knowledge and wisdom lies buried with them. Only knowing Christ will survive the grave, for he is the only One worth knowing, in this life or the next.

But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Phil 3:7-11